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US Spies Are Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance ‘Loophole’

167 points by jbotdev 3y ago

RyanAdamas 3y ago
This is exactly why the US Government will not create a Citizen Network for authenticated social sharing among actual participants in our Social Contract. It's absolutely a path to despotism, and very few have the stomach for rebellion.
- ozymandias12 3y ago
  >will not create a Citizen Network for authenticated social sharing What do you mean? Care to elaborate on the network (I think I know what you mean about authenticated, but I need to be sure where for).
mc32 3y ago
It’s so obviously unconstitutional. If Congress gives them a pass, I don’t see how they would explain allowing agencies to sidestep the Constitution. At that point they’re not upholding the Constitution any more. The only chance is bringing it up to the Supreme Court.
- petesergeant 3y ago
  For those of us not well-read on the Constitution, which specific parts does it violate?
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    I would say it qualifies under unreasonable. It's unreasonable to expect every citizen to understand when and where their data is being taken. It's unreasonable to expect people to understand what actions lead to what data points. It's unreasonable to assess data for unrelated traits that don't match every person perfectly. It's unreasonable to trust a company selling data to not at some point include illegal data. Certainly not without a verified chain of custody. It is unreasonable for the government to bypass the constitution by using limited interpretation of language.
    - krapp 3y ago
      The "unreasonable" part of the Fourth Amendment refers only to "unreasonable search and seizure" by law enforcement, not to any and every subjectively unreasonable aspect of society or law.
      - troll_v_bridge 3y ago
        Collecting data is specifically searching and seizing, and in an unreasonable manner without warrant.
      - weard_beard 3y ago
        … they’re using the data to perform searches …
      - haswell 3y ago
        I'd state what the parent comment says a bit differently: the availability of data for purchase does not make its purchase by law enforcement magically "reasonable". > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. In a digital world, one's "Person" and "effects" have become inseparable from the phones/platforms we communicate with. Participation in many cases is not a choice if one is to function in society. The requirement that warrants are issued only upon establishment of probable cause also highlights the issue here. It seems highly dubious that a company holding your data and selling that data is somehow an acceptable end-around the warrant requirement. Is this all technically legal? Seems like it might be. Is this what the authors of the 4th amendment had in mind? Seems extremely unlikely.
        iinnPP 3y ago
        I should have been more clear, but it seems the message got to you correctly. I can't read the 4th amendment and this article and not come to a conflict. It seems obvious to me that it is unreasonable to expect a person (with the average IQ being 94-98) to understand what data on their phone is public or private. It's obvious because we have millions of teenagers believing they have privacy on their phones to a point where they break incredibly consequential laws to store sexualized imagery there. What the average citizen believes is private is where the goal posts should be. So a potential solution is to poll America asking the following question: Donald Trump and Joe Biden would both like to download all the data on your phone to share with the world via press conference. Do you accept? If 50% of people so no, it is unreasonable. Disclaimer: I worked on Geolocation products with the top 3 aggregators and have extensive experience with Palantir.
  - mc32 3y ago
    Fourth amendment to the constitution. They would need a warrant. Laws don’t evaporate just because it’s in the digital realm.
    - space_fountain 3y ago
      If you have a friend who's willing to report on you for a price and the government pays the price the 4th amendment wouldn't have been violated. Why is is different because it's digital? The government isn't spying on you, it's just paying for information collected legally
      - weard_beard 3y ago
        The government paying a contractor to circumvent the constitution is still the government violating the constitution.
      - mc32 3y ago
        If you call the gov and you confess to something that’s on you. Your friend also cannot just bust into your house and search through your things. Now the government because it has enormous powers behind it and people willing to do the wrong thing on its behalf is specifically limited in what it’s allowed to do.
        somenits 3y ago
        It depends. If someone breaks into your house with government encouragement, that’s a Fourth Amendment violation. If he breaks into your house because he’s a burglar, and then happens upon something he knows the government would want, and then sells that information to the government, it’s not a Fourth Amendment violation.
        krapp 3y ago
        The question is, if you hold a garage sale and someone buys your stuff and the governments then buys that stuff from whomever you sold it to, is it a Fourth Amendment violation? Because that's what's really happening here. Once you sell your data to Facebook, Twitter, etc, it's no longer "in your house." If you granted third parties license to collect and sell your data under terms of service, then that data no longer belongs to you, and you agreed to that.. To me the bigger problem isn't the government buying data on the open market, it's that data is a market to begin with.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
I actually think that is reasonable. If the data is already commercially available, why not access it. If you want to fight this, regulate the commercial collection and sale of this data.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  It's unreasonable to expect a person to understand when and where their data is being leaked/sold.
- barnabee 3y ago
  Really a warrant should be required to carry out any kind of in-depth, prolonged, or otherwise invasive surveillance or investigation into someone. It’s not just which data or where they get it (though surely many types and sources of data should be restricted too, especially without a warrant) but the fact that they are building a profile, targeting, etc. at all. These are things the government/law enforcement should not be doing lightly or without supervision.
- slim 3y ago
  if the availability of commercial data becomes necessary for a functioning NSA, it will be used as an argument against any attempt to regulate data collection
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  I think it is reasonable for governmental agencies to have greater restrictions on their behavior without due process than a private company because the government has vastly greater opportunity to abuse this power.
jwie 3y ago
If they can buy it then I can opt out. It is an unconstitutional practice. If they didn’t think it was they wouldn’t go through the extra steps to get the data. Outsourcing one part of the illegal enterprise doesn’t make the whole thing legal. But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data.
- hiatus 3y ago
  > But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data. Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything?
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    > Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything? Within the jurisdiction of a state, probably. States rights should have precedent over federal except in cases that involve interstate activity. This is being tested in Texas right now with various firearm laws that are meant for items made in and staying within Texas.
    - hiatus 3y ago
      The Texas situation as I understand it is the state refusing to enforce federal law, which makes sense as the federal government has their own enforcement agencies. That seems a bit different from the state compelling the federal government to do anything.
- space_fountain 3y ago
  It's not just the NSA buying this data right? So is it illegal when say a marketing agency buys the data? If not why should it become illegal for the government?
  - oneplane 3y ago
    Because the government can put you in jail and the marketing agency can't. (I think I heard this simplified response on the Risky Business podcast) Realistically, scraping people for their data like this should just not be allowed at all. People are more important than corporations.
sandworm101 3y ago
If you don't want them to buy your data, stop selling it. Lock down your browsers. Don't use Facebook. Put a better OS on your phone. And sue every company that even hints at violating privacy rules.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  Your actions will signal X,Y,Z and qualify you for intrusive monitoring "because you are hiding something." This is reality.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    There's probably a market for fake id streams: want my contact history? Fine here's 100 fake contacts. Want my location data? Fine. I'm at the Taylor Swift concert two states over. Want to listen in on my microphone? Fine. Here's a recording of Pat Boone trying to do rap. I'm far from the first person to recommend this.
    - pydry 3y ago
      There is a market for this but while Google controls android and Apple controls iPhone and it remains a duopoly theres no way in hell they will unlock their ecosystems enough to allow it to thrive.
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      That will come in next-gen adblockers. Ads will run in an emulated sandbox, unseen by the user. And many user-agent tools already allow randomization, a tiny fictional history.
      - retrocryptid 3y ago
        Sure, but they'll be banned by Apple / Android ToSes. But meh, that shouldn't stop everybody. And it would be fun to watch the back and forth between ad tech and ad blockers.
tiahura 3y ago
If it’s publicly available, they don’t need a warrant. That’s been the 4A law from the beginning.
0xParlay 3y ago
Wait is Snowden still considered a loser here? I can't keep track of the narrative. We have an agency beholden to no-one with the power to blackmail any journalist, lawyer, politician, associate, etc. We have an agency that seems to take pride in "hacking" the constitution. We've been shown glimpses and glimmers of clever mechanisms to run-around the US Constitution. Go ahead and use a VPN and lock down your stupid android OS. You fail to grasp the breadth and depth of sources for harvesting "public" intel. If you want to be a founder and have no moral code there's ample opportunity here. IoT and connectivity make it cheaper than ever to generate intel on people. Fingerprint people's voices in public, travel patterns, associations, bluetooth/wifi device ids, home wifi attributes, etc. Who's the customer? Big Brother.. Spy on your fellow Americans to help combat Terrorism. Tin foil hat on: It might be too late for any of this to be meaningfully reformed. The people-in-charge already have enough blackmail on politicians they can drown out dissent. If there is any reform, the info gained from illegitimate sources is already stored as weights into a neural model for future use. Creating the neural model would be "constitutional" because the models aren't "searched" lol Our national security apparatus is running on self-signed certs. Hope nothing goes wrong with that!
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  > beholden to no-one They're beholden to congress. No US entity is beholden to no-one
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    The NSA is beholden to Congress until the NSA sends a few messages to fix it.
    - pydry 3y ago
      The NSA is beholden to the people whom it is almost certainly collecting kompromat on.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        Would it be too cynical if I suggested that many of our laws (worldwide, I'm not in or of the USA) exist in order to be sure компромат can be found on almost everyone?
exabrial 3y ago
For the love of all that is good... the problem isn't "omg the NSA is buying data!" the problem is this data is being collected in the first place. ALL data collection should be restored to its natural state of OptIn, no matter what zuck or any other silicon valley bro says.
- pydry 3y ago
  There is no "one" problem. Both are problems.
singingwolfboy 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230729141840/https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-ndaa-lobbying-privacy-loophole/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230729141840/https://www.wired...
thefurdrake 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about all this. Obviously, the intelligence agencies are thwarting the spirit of the law requiring warrants by buying data hoovered up by big data. But I was always told growing up not to share things on the internet I don't want everyone to know. I feel like you kind of deserve having your data hoovered up by the government if you share that data publicly on social media, but personal responsibility doesn't appear to be a contributing factor in this discussion for some reason. That's not the only source of data, obviously, but there are a lot of people on HN who think blocking ads is piracy. To those people, I present this exact problem, because they should have seen it coming. Adtech is amoral and unethical, and ways of life that rely upon it should collapse. No mercy, I don't care, find a better business model or live on the street.
- tamimio 3y ago
  [flagged]
- saikia81 3y ago
  personal responsibility is always important, but you are just blaming the victims. And you ignore the responsibilities of those we trusted. The tech companies have lied about, and disavowed the surveillance systems they use. Let's be glad then, that policy is not based on your feelings. You had the privilege of education, that doesn't mean those still ignorant deserve the abuse.

167 points by jbotdev 3y ago

This is exactly why the US Government will not create a Citizen Network for authenticated social sharing among actual participants in our Social Contract. It's absolutely a path to despotism, and very few have the stomach for rebellion.

ozymandias12 3y ago
>will not create a Citizen Network for authenticated social sharing What do you mean? Care to elaborate on the network (I think I know what you mean about authenticated, but I need to be sure where for).

mc32 3y ago

It’s so obviously unconstitutional. If Congress gives them a pass, I don’t see how they would explain allowing agencies to sidestep the Constitution. At that point they’re not upholding the Constitution any more. The only chance is bringing it up to the Supreme Court.

petesergeant 3y ago
For those of us not well-read on the Constitution, which specific parts does it violate?
- iinnPP 3y ago
  I would say it qualifies under unreasonable. It's unreasonable to expect every citizen to understand when and where their data is being taken. It's unreasonable to expect people to understand what actions lead to what data points. It's unreasonable to assess data for unrelated traits that don't match every person perfectly. It's unreasonable to trust a company selling data to not at some point include illegal data. Certainly not without a verified chain of custody. It is unreasonable for the government to bypass the constitution by using limited interpretation of language.
  - krapp 3y ago
    The "unreasonable" part of the Fourth Amendment refers only to "unreasonable search and seizure" by law enforcement, not to any and every subjectively unreasonable aspect of society or law.
    - troll_v_bridge 3y ago
      Collecting data is specifically searching and seizing, and in an unreasonable manner without warrant.
    - weard_beard 3y ago
      … they’re using the data to perform searches …
    - haswell 3y ago
      I'd state what the parent comment says a bit differently: the availability of data for purchase does not make its purchase by law enforcement magically "reasonable". > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. In a digital world, one's "Person" and "effects" have become inseparable from the phones/platforms we communicate with. Participation in many cases is not a choice if one is to function in society. The requirement that warrants are issued only upon establishment of probable cause also highlights the issue here. It seems highly dubious that a company holding your data and selling that data is somehow an acceptable end-around the warrant requirement. Is this all technically legal? Seems like it might be. Is this what the authors of the 4th amendment had in mind? Seems extremely unlikely.
      - iinnPP 3y ago
        I should have been more clear, but it seems the message got to you correctly. I can't read the 4th amendment and this article and not come to a conflict. It seems obvious to me that it is unreasonable to expect a person (with the average IQ being 94-98) to understand what data on their phone is public or private. It's obvious because we have millions of teenagers believing they have privacy on their phones to a point where they break incredibly consequential laws to store sexualized imagery there. What the average citizen believes is private is where the goal posts should be. So a potential solution is to poll America asking the following question: Donald Trump and Joe Biden would both like to download all the data on your phone to share with the world via press conference. Do you accept? If 50% of people so no, it is unreasonable. Disclaimer: I worked on Geolocation products with the top 3 aggregators and have extensive experience with Palantir.
- mc32 3y ago
  Fourth amendment to the constitution. They would need a warrant. Laws don’t evaporate just because it’s in the digital realm.
  - space_fountain 3y ago
    If you have a friend who's willing to report on you for a price and the government pays the price the 4th amendment wouldn't have been violated. Why is is different because it's digital? The government isn't spying on you, it's just paying for information collected legally
    - weard_beard 3y ago
      The government paying a contractor to circumvent the constitution is still the government violating the constitution.
    - mc32 3y ago
      If you call the gov and you confess to something that’s on you. Your friend also cannot just bust into your house and search through your things. Now the government because it has enormous powers behind it and people willing to do the wrong thing on its behalf is specifically limited in what it’s allowed to do.
      - somenits 3y ago
        It depends. If someone breaks into your house with government encouragement, that’s a Fourth Amendment violation. If he breaks into your house because he’s a burglar, and then happens upon something he knows the government would want, and then sells that information to the government, it’s not a Fourth Amendment violation.
        krapp 3y ago
        The question is, if you hold a garage sale and someone buys your stuff and the governments then buys that stuff from whomever you sold it to, is it a Fourth Amendment violation? Because that's what's really happening here. Once you sell your data to Facebook, Twitter, etc, it's no longer "in your house." If you granted third parties license to collect and sell your data under terms of service, then that data no longer belongs to you, and you agreed to that.. To me the bigger problem isn't the government buying data on the open market, it's that data is a market to begin with.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

I actually think that is reasonable. If the data is already commercially available, why not access it. If you want to fight this, regulate the commercial collection and sale of this data.

iinnPP 3y ago
It's unreasonable to expect a person to understand when and where their data is being leaked/sold.
barnabee 3y ago
Really a warrant should be required to carry out any kind of in-depth, prolonged, or otherwise invasive surveillance or investigation into someone. It’s not just which data or where they get it (though surely many types and sources of data should be restricted too, especially without a warrant) but the fact that they are building a profile, targeting, etc. at all. These are things the government/law enforcement should not be doing lightly or without supervision.
slim 3y ago
if the availability of commercial data becomes necessary for a functioning NSA, it will be used as an argument against any attempt to regulate data collection
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
I think it is reasonable for governmental agencies to have greater restrictions on their behavior without due process than a private company because the government has vastly greater opportunity to abuse this power.

jwie 3y ago

If they can buy it then I can opt out. It is an unconstitutional practice. If they didn’t think it was they wouldn’t go through the extra steps to get the data. Outsourcing one part of the illegal enterprise doesn’t make the whole thing legal. But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data.

hiatus 3y ago
> But if they want to play this game, an interesting way to bait a Supreme Court case might be to request a CCPA delete for the NSAs “commercial” data. Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  > Can state law compel a federal agency to do anything? Within the jurisdiction of a state, probably. States rights should have precedent over federal except in cases that involve interstate activity. This is being tested in Texas right now with various firearm laws that are meant for items made in and staying within Texas.
  - hiatus 3y ago
    The Texas situation as I understand it is the state refusing to enforce federal law, which makes sense as the federal government has their own enforcement agencies. That seems a bit different from the state compelling the federal government to do anything.
space_fountain 3y ago
It's not just the NSA buying this data right? So is it illegal when say a marketing agency buys the data? If not why should it become illegal for the government?
- oneplane 3y ago
  Because the government can put you in jail and the marketing agency can't. (I think I heard this simplified response on the Risky Business podcast) Realistically, scraping people for their data like this should just not be allowed at all. People are more important than corporations.

sandworm101 3y ago

If you don't want them to buy your data, stop selling it. Lock down your browsers. Don't use Facebook. Put a better OS on your phone. And sue every company that even hints at violating privacy rules.

iinnPP 3y ago
Your actions will signal X,Y,Z and qualify you for intrusive monitoring "because you are hiding something." This is reality.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  There's probably a market for fake id streams: want my contact history? Fine here's 100 fake contacts. Want my location data? Fine. I'm at the Taylor Swift concert two states over. Want to listen in on my microphone? Fine. Here's a recording of Pat Boone trying to do rap. I'm far from the first person to recommend this.
  - pydry 3y ago
    There is a market for this but while Google controls android and Apple controls iPhone and it remains a duopoly theres no way in hell they will unlock their ecosystems enough to allow it to thrive.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    That will come in next-gen adblockers. Ads will run in an emulated sandbox, unseen by the user. And many user-agent tools already allow randomization, a tiny fictional history.
    - retrocryptid 3y ago
      Sure, but they'll be banned by Apple / Android ToSes. But meh, that shouldn't stop everybody. And it would be fun to watch the back and forth between ad tech and ad blockers.

tiahura 3y ago

If it’s publicly available, they don’t need a warrant. That’s been the 4A law from the beginning.

0xParlay 3y ago

Wait is Snowden still considered a loser here? I can't keep track of the narrative. We have an agency beholden to no-one with the power to blackmail any journalist, lawyer, politician, associate, etc. We have an agency that seems to take pride in "hacking" the constitution. We've been shown glimpses and glimmers of clever mechanisms to run-around the US Constitution. Go ahead and use a VPN and lock down your stupid android OS. You fail to grasp the breadth and depth of sources for harvesting "public" intel. If you want to be a founder and have no moral code there's ample opportunity here. IoT and connectivity make it cheaper than ever to generate intel on people. Fingerprint people's voices in public, travel patterns, associations, bluetooth/wifi device ids, home wifi attributes, etc. Who's the customer? Big Brother.. Spy on your fellow Americans to help combat Terrorism. Tin foil hat on: It might be too late for any of this to be meaningfully reformed. The people-in-charge already have enough blackmail on politicians they can drown out dissent. If there is any reform, the info gained from illegitimate sources is already stored as weights into a neural model for future use. Creating the neural model would be "constitutional" because the models aren't "searched" lol Our national security apparatus is running on self-signed certs. Hope nothing goes wrong with that!

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> beholden to no-one They're beholden to congress. No US entity is beholden to no-one
- iinnPP 3y ago
  The NSA is beholden to Congress until the NSA sends a few messages to fix it.
  - pydry 3y ago
    The NSA is beholden to the people whom it is almost certainly collecting kompromat on.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      Would it be too cynical if I suggested that many of our laws (worldwide, I'm not in or of the USA) exist in order to be sure компромат can be found on almost everyone?

exabrial 3y ago

For the love of all that is good... the problem isn't "omg the NSA is buying data!" the problem is this data is being collected in the first place. ALL data collection should be restored to its natural state of OptIn, no matter what zuck or any other silicon valley bro says.

pydry 3y ago
There is no "one" problem. Both are problems.

singingwolfboy 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230729141840/https://www.wired.com/story/nsa-ndaa-lobbying-privacy-loophole/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230729141840/https://www.wired...

thefurdrake 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about all this. Obviously, the intelligence agencies are thwarting the spirit of the law requiring warrants by buying data hoovered up by big data. But I was always told growing up not to share things on the internet I don't want everyone to know. I feel like you kind of deserve having your data hoovered up by the government if you share that data publicly on social media, but personal responsibility doesn't appear to be a contributing factor in this discussion for some reason. That's not the only source of data, obviously, but there are a lot of people on HN who think blocking ads is piracy. To those people, I present this exact problem, because they should have seen it coming. Adtech is amoral and unethical, and ways of life that rely upon it should collapse. No mercy, I don't care, find a better business model or live on the street.

tamimio 3y ago
[flagged]
saikia81 3y ago
personal responsibility is always important, but you are just blaming the victims. And you ignore the responsibilities of those we trusted. The tech companies have lied about, and disavowed the surveillance systems they use. Let's be glad then, that policy is not based on your feelings. You had the privilege of education, that doesn't mean those still ignorant deserve the abuse.