Former CIA and NSA employee source of intelligence leaks

[Zanza]

No.  Anyone who wishes to do so can view this post.  The internet is very different from a sealed package sent in the mail.  People post on the internet via face book and forums like this knowing that what they post are very public.

Most communication on the internet is not public, it is meant for specific addressees or at least groups with small membership. This forum has PMs and a backroom, neither of which are publicly accessible. Even most Facebook entries are only for a certain group of people.

From what I can gather, the NSA surveillance measures are not directed at publicly accessible information, but rather at communication between very few people. Telephone calls are typically not public, e-mails are typically not public, chats are typically not public.

[crazy canuck]

No.  Anyone who wishes to do so can view this post.  The internet is very different from a sealed package sent in the mail.  People post on the internet via face book and forums like this knowing that what they post are very public.

Not really. You have no way of ascertaining who I am. You cannot use other activity to build a complete profile of me. The government does. It makes a huge difference.

Furthermore, not all the communications over the Net are 1-to-N. If my girlfriend sends me a picture or my doctor the results of my latests test, the act is not meant as a broadcast to the public at all.

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

[crazy canuck]

No.  Anyone who wishes to do so can view this post.  The internet is very different from a sealed package sent in the mail.  People post on the internet via face book and forums like this knowing that what they post are very public.

Most communication on the internet is not public, it is meant for specific addressees or at least groups with small membership. This forum has PMs and a backroom, neither of which are publicly accessible. Even most Facebook entries are only for a certain group of people.

From what I can gather, the NSA surveillance measures are not directed at publicly accessible information, but rather at communication between very few people. Telephone calls are typically not public, e-mails are typically not public, chats are typically not public.

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

[Zanza]

You repeat yourself.

You repeat yourself.

[crazy canuck]

You repeat yourself.

You repeat yourself.

If you had read the post above yours I would not have had to do so.

[Zanza]

I can't really anticipate future edits or future posts.

[Iormlund]

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

Maybe Canada is different, but here you can mail stuff without writing your name in the return address. Or you can use a P.O. box.

As for court orders, that goes against the stated MO. They are performing datamining on their entire databases, not just those where they've acquired warrants.

[DGuller]

No.  Anyone who wishes to do so can view this post.  The internet is very different from a sealed package sent in the mail.  People post on the internet via face book and forums like this knowing that what they post are very public.

Not really. You have no way of ascertaining who I am. You cannot use other activity to build a complete profile of me. The government does. It makes a huge difference.

Furthermore, not all the communications over the Net are 1-to-N. If my girlfriend sends me a picture or my doctor the results of my latests test, the act is not meant as a broadcast to the public at all.

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

It sounds like the "court order" in this case is something like:

"To whom it may concern,

Go ahead, take a look."

[Sheilbh]

No it's not. The Internet is a means of communication. Just like normal mail, the inviolability of which falls under the European Human Rights Convention.

Except it's not just a means of communication. You choose to reveal details of yourself online to, say, Amazon or Facebook and if they then get a warrant the government can use that information. The US Post has, I believe, previously kept notice for the government of who is sending mail to each other and that's been allowed by the Supreme Court because what's on the outside of your message isn't private - same goes online.

Also I doubt mail would be inviolable under the ECHR. Some articles are absolute, there are no exceptions. The right to privacy, family life, home and correspondence isn't. The second part of Article 8 is 'There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.'

So the question even under European human rights law would be whether the US government's actions are proportionate and lawful. Clearly they're lawful and I think they're proportionate too. Store the data, but to access it get a court order.

[crazy canuck]

Your first point does not equate public messages to a postal service activity.

Your second point is why court orders are required for this activity.

Maybe Canada is different, but here you can mail stuff without writing your name in the return address. Or you can use a P.O. box.

As for court orders, that goes against the stated MO. They are performing datamining on their entire databases, not just those where they've acquired warrants.

From what I have read, the data mining does not involve personal information but is rather numbers called, time and duration of call.  With that data evidence can then be provided to the Court in support of an order to actually view confidential information.

[Sheilbh]

As for court orders, that goes against the stated MO. They are performing datamining on their entire databases, not just those where they've acquired warrants.

So they should need a separate warrant to analyse the general trends of the data they have, not just to access individual records?

It sounds like the "court order" in this case is something like:

What's your basis for that?

[Zanza]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/phone-call-metadata-information-authorities

The court order doesn't allow the NSA to collect any information whatsoever on the contents of phone calls, or even to obtain any names or addresses of customers.

What's covered instead is known as "metadata": the phone number of every caller and recipient; the unique serial number of the phones involved; the time and duration of each phone call; and potentially the location of each of the participants when the call happened.

All of this information is being collected on millions of calls every day – every conversation taking place within the US, or between the US and a foreign country is collected.

The government has long argued that this information isn't private or personal. It is, they say, the equivalent of looking at the envelope of a letter: what's written on the outside is simple, functional information that's essentially already public.

That forms the basis of collection: because it's not personal information, but rather "transactional" or "business" data, there's no need to show probable cause to collect it. Collection is also helped by the fact this information is already disclosed by callers to their carriers – because your phone number is shared with your provider, you're not treating it as private.

But that is not a view shared by privacy advocates. Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation say that by knowing who an individual speaks to, and when, and for how long, intelligence agencies can build up a detailed picture of that person, their social network, and more. Collecting information on where people are during the calls colours in that picture even further.

[...]

The view on whether such "transactional" data is personal, and how intrusive it can be, is also being tested in the appellate courts, and the supreme court is likely to see more cases on the issue in the near future.

Discussing the use of GPS data collected from mobile phones, an appellate court noted that even location information on its own could reveal a person's secrets: "A person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups," it read, "and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."

The primary purpose of large-scale databases such as the NSA's call records is generally said to be data-mining: rather than examining individuals, algorithms are used to find patterns of unusual activity that may mark terrorism or criminal conspiracies.

However, collection and storage of this information gives government a power it's previously lacked: easy and retroactive surveillance.

If authorities become interested in an individual at a later stage, and obtain their number, officials can look back through the data and gather their movements, social network, and more – possibly for several years (although the secret court order only allows for three months of data collection).

In essence, you're being watched; the government just doesn't know your name while it's doing it.

[Zanza]

So the question even under European human rights law would be whether the US government's actions are proportionate and lawful. Clearly they're lawful and I think they're proportionate too. Store the data, but to access it get a court order.

I think they are not proportionate at all. Why keep complete communication profiles of millions of innocents?

The same is true for the stupid European data retention laws.

[Iormlund]

Proportionate my ass. Terrorism has killed a few thousand people in a handful of places.

You have a much better chance of being killed by your partner. The government is clearly entitled to bug our homes then, surely.
And let's not mention drunk drivers. Surely everyone's liquid intake should be monitored at all times.

[The Minsky Moment]

Not really. You have no way of ascertaining who I am. You cannot use other activity to build a complete profile of me. .

Sure I could.  Not me personally, but I could hire an investigator.  You'd be surprised how much information they can gather, and while an invetigator may not have access to all the material the government has, in some ways they are less constrained.
True I would have no motivation to spend resources to do that, but then again for 99.9% of the population that is true for the government as well.