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Irish public rather blasé about PRISM?
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I had a different post lined up, but it strikes me that I don't think you know what they are doing.Cody Pomeray wrote: »To be clear, facebook is only an analogy. I am aware that the 'surveillance' goes beyond facebook and gmail. I'm just using them as examples of where personal information is "volunteered to the internet", so to speak.
The core issue heres here are
1. The right to privacy is not, and must never be, absolute. It must be balanced with other rights, and the rights of others.
2. The internet is not an absolutely private space. Just like the family home, which is otherwise inviolable under common law and the Constitution, your pocket of the internet must be subject to a "search" by the police when they have legitimate grounds for suspecting you of a crime.
3. Legitimate grounds for suspicion cannot be established by the unlawful violation of privacy, but it seems clear that the use of algorithms to scan information which is volunteered to the internet is not actually an invasion of privacy in the sense of normal human observations.
Only if you think rights to privacy is being violated by technology which scans the internet for the vocabulary of terrorism, and only if you believe freedom of expression and the right to privacy are absolute rights, and no Constitution that I have ever heard of provides that they are absolute.
Do you know what they are storing? That they have the capacity to store complete Internet data for everyone, and that they don't discriminate, they store it all and flag people for retrospective inspection later?
It's not a terrorist-word-scanner or the like; what is your interpretation of the system they have in place?0 -
KyussBishop wrote: »That is the whole point: The US government is trampling all over the constitutional and privacy rights by doing this
I'm more concerned about the fact that they openly declare that they'll kill anyone they like anywhere in the world.
The Bourne movies, to take a recent example, are based on the idea that the US ran a kill-list and assassinated people on it but it was a deep secret and would be shut down if revealed, and destroy the careers of agents and politicians.
Now Obama defends this power openly. They'll drone strike anyone they please anywhere they like, and sorry about the collateral damage.
PRISM is only trotting after the drone program for rights violations.0 -
Agreed to an extent, though one of the big things about PRISM is that it is an enormous threat to US citizens, whereas drones have not (yet) been used for assassinations on US soil.0
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I think the main reason for the lack of outrage is twofold,
1 People either dont understand it, think it only affects Americans or terrorists rather than understanding that it is monitoring everyones usage
2 What can realisticly be done to stop the Americans from illegally monitoring our actions? Do you think our polititions will stand up to them? Doubtful.0 -
Of course, I'm basing my knowledge of it on what I've read in the Guardian, a newspaper I don't typically enjoy but seems to have the most indepth analysis/ outrage.KyussBishop wrote: »Do you know what they are storing? That they have the capacity to store complete Internet data for everyone, and that they don't discriminate, they store it all and flag people for retrospective inspection later?
Sorry, but your post is coming across a bit like 'if you don't get outraged by this, you must not sufficiently understand it'. As far as I can see the important principles at work here are not the technical aspects of how it work at the operational level, the questions that matter here are
(Q1) To what degree do individual interactions get monitored by human beings (A: very insubstantial, and based on automated scanning) and
(Q2) To what extent is it necessary (A: absolutely necessary in order to regulate human interactions above a reasonable threshold whereby only the suspected crimes are pulled up, imo)0 -
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2:It would only draw attention to the local equivalent of PRISM, the Data Retention Act which stores all our call details, locations, email and Internet meta-data making it available on request to a variety of government agancies such as the Gardai and Revenue.
There are crucial differences between PRISM and the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011.
The key one is that we know what is being done. Originally, this data was being recorded and access to it provided by telcos & ISPs on foot of a secret cabinet directive. After several threats by the then Data Protection Commissioner, Joe Meade, to bring the Irish government to court for exceeding its powers it was put on a statutory basis, with a definite time limit for the retention of the data.
By contrast, the NSA was keeping secret the nature and gigantic extent of the data it is harvesting, lying to Congress about it and vastly exceeding its legal authority. When challenged on this in recent days, James Clapper of the NSA said that in his related testimony to Congress he tried to give the "least untruthful" answers he could. That's what you're dealing with - he felt free to perjure himself in sworn testimony and now feels free to admit it, presumably confident that he'll suffer no repercussions.
This is also the main point that Snowden the whistleblower makes. Maybe the public is OK with its personal data being recorded in this way. But we have the right to know about it and make that decision, through our elected representatives.0 -
Cody Pomeray wrote: »To be clear, facebook is only an analogy. I am aware that the 'surveillance' goes beyond facebook and gmail. I'm just using them as examples of where personal information is "volunteered to the internet", so to speak.
The core issue heres here are
1. The right to privacy is not, and must never be, absolute. It must be balanced with other rights, and the rights of others.
2. The internet is not an absolutely private space. Just like the family home, which is otherwise inviolable under common law and the Constitution, your pocket of the internet must be subject to a "search" by the police when they have legitimate grounds for suspecting you of a crime.
3. Legitimate grounds for suspicion cannot be established by the unlawful violation of privacy, but it seems clear that the use of algorithms to scan information which is volunteered to the internet is not actually an invasion of privacy in the sense of normal human observations.
Only if you think rights to privacy is being violated by technology which scans the internet for the vocabulary of terrorism, and only if you believe freedom of expression and the right to privacy are absolute rights, and no Constitution that I have ever heard of provides that they are absolute.
Is it acceptable to open others communication en masse during a war, yes.
But resolving to treat your citizens as well as all non-citizens as though in a permanent war to prevent criminality is not going to end well.
The shock to US citizens was the secret court order delivering call records to the NSA of US-to US calls en masse with no time limit, and that a similar setup is alleged to affect their other data and communications stored.
Regarding PRISM
Keyword and location based ads are seen as far less threatening than a nearby official with a fairly common security level looking for dirt, to construct a smear campaign against you or those close to you.
There used to be the idea of personal papers, nowadays these will by default be uploaded to a cloud backup by the software that is provided with the computer.
And there is potential for this to be reversed. An item placed on the cloud synced back to your local devices.
When traveling to certain countries, your laptop is taken for 40 minutes or so, and as a consequence it is assumed that when returned it can have a bug or at least the hard drive has been cloned with the intention of examining it for potential national commercial interest.
At what level could an NSA official look for data of commercial benefit to the US from a non-US business / businessperson?0 -
Eh? Yes, the technical matters are important. They are storing everything, and they have a very low barrier to entry, for accessing all of that.Cody Pomeray wrote: »Of course, I'm basing my knowledge of it on what I've read in the Guardian, a newspaper I don't typically enjoy but seems to have the most indepth analysis/ outrage.
Sorry, but your post is coming across a bit like 'if you don't get outraged by this, you must not sufficiently understand it'. As far as I can see the important principles at work here are not the technical aspects of how it work at the operational level, the questions that matter here are
(Q1) To what degree do individual interactions get monitored by human beings (A: very insubstantial, and based on automated scanning) and
(Q2) To what extent is it necessary (A: absolutely necessary in order to regulate human interactions above a reasonable threshold whereby only the suspected crimes are pulled up, imo)
This has created a situation where everything that everyone does on the Internet, can be monitored, with very little effort.0 -
This monitoring is not necessarily illegal. The US military initially developed the internet, they host the vast majority of root hint servers, most internet traffic goes through the US at some stage and the Patriot Act specifically gives the US government the right to access this data. The Patriot act may be wrong but it is the Law and anyone can read it. Anyone who thinks data on the net or in the cloud is private has their head buried in the sand.2 What can realisticly be done to stop the Americans from illegally monitoring our actions? Do you think our polititions will stand up to them? Doubtful.
This is no more surprising than finding out the US has spies in Moscow and vice versa.
What will be more interesting will be to see what industrial data is being pushed back to Microsoft, Apple and Google on their Chinese competition by the US security apparatus.0 -
KyussBishop wrote: »This has created a situation where everything that everyone does on the Internet, can be monitored, with very little effort.
This has always been the situation, government access to electronic communications happened years ago and will keep happening. All calls between the UK and Ireland were monitored in the 80’s and as far back as 1993 Pablo Escobar was found and killed with the help of voice recognition software on the Columbian phone network. If the US and France could do that 20 years ago they can do far more now.0 -
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This monitoring is not necessarily illegal. The US military initially developed the internet, they host the vast majority of root hint servers, most internet traffic goes through the US at some stage and the Patriot Act specifically gives the US government the right to access this data. The Patriot act may be wrong but it is the Law and anyone can read it.
Jim Sensenbrenner is the US Congressman who drafted the Patriot Act. He is strongly of the view that the NSA's actions aren't compliant with it - http://bit.ly/18iDA3x
"The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can. I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law."0 -
Can't really answer this because it's vague, can you first clarify what you mean by "low barriers to entry"? Are you talking on behalf of the analyst or the agency?KyussBishop wrote: »Eh? Yes, the technical matters are important. They are storing everything, and they have a very low barrier to entry, for accessing all of that.0 -
Yes we don't want to completely eliminate our privacy, over totally overblown fear of terrorists (created by unwinnable-by-design wars on drugs and terrorism), where the situation needed to try and provide 'perfect' defense (an impossibility), requires constant escalation of civil liberties breaches, with the logical conclusion total surveillance and total breach of privacy, in a way that can be turned on the domestic population at the flick of a switch.This has always been the situation, government access to electronic communications happened years ago and will keep happening. All calls between the UK and Ireland were monitored in the 80’s and as far back as 1993 Pablo Escobar was found and killed with the help of voice recognition software on the Columbian phone network. If the US and France could do that 20 years ago they can do far more now.
That's an extraordinarily authoritarian mindset.0 -
We don't know the criteria they use for even deciding who they track, because it is completely secret. The laws used (the Patriot Act, as mentioned above) are known, but the legal interpretation the US government uses is kept secret using the excuse of 'national security' concerns (which puts them free of any oversight - effectively free from the law).Cody Pomeray wrote: »Can't really answer this because it's vague, can you first clarify what you mean by "low barriers to entry"? Are you talking on behalf of the analyst or the agency?
You're also missing the point, that the infrastructure is in place to 'at the turn of key', monitor everyone, completely discarding any principles of privacy etc..
It's not just todays interpretation of the law that matters, but it's the potential illegal abuse of the law in the future, and the potential harm that could cause to the public (and with long-term storage of data, it can be used by any future government to persecute people).
The US is a country, that has more than shown its complete willingness to break domestic and international law, at multiple levels, and to pretty much trample their own constitution; the government simply can't be trusted not to abuse such enormous (potentially tyrannical if abused) power, and to defend them on the good-faith assumption that they just wouldn't, is naive, very authoritarian, and contrary to all the past evidence showing illegal abuses.0 -
Well Edward Snowdon appeared to indicate that there certain analysts are responsible for certain 'nets' (the Islamic terrorism net, the Presidential assassination net, etc.) and that the analysts can only examine what is in those nets based on what has been fished out of the water.KyussBishop wrote: »We don't know the criteria they use for even deciding who they track, because it is completely secret.
The machines are what bring up the fish, but I'm not sure that the analysts themselves can delve into the water, or certainly not without the approval of a Federal Judge under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to which PRISM activities are answerable.
No, that's false. It needs judicial activation to target an individual for surveillance, just like regular police surveillance.You're also missing the point, that the infrastructure is in place to 'at the turn of key', monitor everyone, completely discarding any principles of privacy etc..0 -
Cody Pomeray wrote: »The machines are what bring up the fish, but I'm not sure that the analysts themselves can delve into the water, or certainly not without the approval of a Federal Judge under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to which PRISM activities are answerable.
No, that's false. It needs judicial activation to target an individual for surveillance, just like regular police surveillance.
The FISA court has a decades long track record of approving whatever federal agencies want to do and is certainly no real constraint on their actions:
From its inception, it was the ultimate rubber-stamp court, having rejected a total of zero government applications - zero - in its first 24 years of existence, while approving many thousands. In its total 34 year history - from 1978 through 2012 - the Fisa court has rejected a grand total of 11 government applications, while approving more than 20,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/03/fisa-court-rubber-stamp-drones0 -
which is a very different thing to:The FISA court has a decades long track record of approving whatever federal agencies want to do
According to your own article, Federal judges have turned down applications made under FISA.and is certainly no real constraint on their actions:
Lets be clear one one thing. A high rate of judicial assent to applications does not mean that there is abuse.
What rate of judicial assent would people estimate exists for Garda search warrants? I would guess it must be close to 100%
A search warrant is pretty analogous to a Section 702 application under FISA.0 -
Let's distinguish between live surveillance, e,g. phone tapping and retrospective surveillance, which is mostly what is at issue here. Retrospective surveillance is the use made of data collected about everyone by the phone companies and ISPs, which they must keep for two years in case the authorities want to learn more about you.Cody Pomeray wrote: ».No, that's false. It needs judicial activation to target an individual for surveillance, just like regular police surveillance.
In Ireland, the Gardai, Revenue and others can get access to your phone, movements, email and part of your web surfing data, just by asking for it. No court order is required.0 -
You're missing the point of what I said: The criteria for picking people, is secret, and thus there is nothing to stop extremely broad criteria being set.Cody Pomeray wrote: »Well Edward Snowdon appeared to indicate that there certain analysts are responsible for certain 'nets' (the Islamic terrorism net, the Presidential assassination net, etc.) and that the analysts can only examine what is in those nets based on what has been fished out of the water.
The machines are what bring up the fish, but I'm not sure that the analysts themselves can delve into the water, or certainly not without the approval of a Federal Judge under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to which PRISM activities are answerable.
What the analysts examine does not matter. They have years worth of data on everyone, and if they decide to broaden their criteria for picking people in the future, they can apply that retroactively.
That is wrong. Any communication with a non-US citizen can be grabbed without warrant, and any US citizen in communication with a non-US citizen, can have the communication grabbed without a warrant.Cody Pomeray wrote: »No, that's false. It needs judicial activation to target an individual for surveillance, just like regular police surveillance.
Even the burden-of-proof for identifying non-US citizens is weak, with only 'reasonable belief' being stated in the guidelines.
The court which also issues the warrants for certain parts of the program (as gizmo555 said), is regarded as a 'rubber stamp' court which never refuses to provide warrants either, making it effectively warrantless as there aren't any real checks for suitability.
So, this is nothing like the checks and balances that are in place for the police, these are heavily eroded/rolled-back.
Really, given the scale and secrecy of this, and the heavily warped legal interpretations used to get there, there isn't any justification for your good faith in the US government; given the wide ranging abuses here, and evidence of bad faith, to continue to give them the benefit of the doubt here, requires applying a very authoritarian mindset.0 -
US law makes a distinction between wire-tapping of a conversation and accessing information concerning an individual which is held outside of their home.KyussBishop wrote: »That is wrong. Any communication with a non-US citizen can be grabbed without warrant, and any US citizen in communication with a non-US citizen, can have the communication grabbed without a warrant.
Even the burden-of-proof for identifying non-US citizens is weak, with only 'reasonable belief' being stated in the guidelines.
Thus, wire-tapping requires a warrant, but slurping a person's phone and ISP data does not.
Not mentioned yet, is if the big corporations are sharing people's cloud storage with Uncle Sam. It is known that, Microsoft scans people's private online storage held on their servers and flags up anything that might be illegal to the Feds.0 -
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Cody Pomeray wrote: »According to your own article, Federal judges have turned down applications made under FISA.
They have. At the rate of 0.03%. Even assuming no malice or abuse of powers on the part of the requesting agencies, does it seem realistic that so few of the tens of thousands of applications made contained mistakes or flaws?
It's really beside the point of what's been done in the PRISM programme anyway. FISA warrants are sought in respect of named individuals. PRISM involved the NSA exceeding its powers to collect data on effectively the entire adult US population, not to mention all the non-US citizens affected, and then the director of intelligence James Clapper perjuring himself before Congress when challenged about it.0 -
True, that's not something I would have a problem with. Based on what Edward Snowdon said, I'm not personally worried (actually quite relieved), about the current criteria.KyussBishop wrote: »You're missing the point of what I said: The criteria for picking people, is secret, and thus there is nothing to stop extremely broad criteria being set.
In the future, however, now that this is all official, I think the public should be informed what the criteria are, i.e. what tags (broadly speaking) are on the nets. No argument there.
Here's where I disagree. Again, take a search warrant issued by the District Court or even a Garda Superintendent. The point of that warrant is to grant access to all evidence in a person's possession, even evidence which is of a historical nature - letters, photgraphs, diaries, computer files, and yes, web browsing history.What the analysts examine does not matter. They have years worth of data on everyone, and if they decide to broaden their criteria for picking people in the future, they can apply that retroactively.
Obviously this is something that could be abused, in theory, and the inclusion of the Gardaí in being able to grant search warrants is not without controversy. But a certain stage, you've just got to say "ok, I generally trust the law enforcement agencies not to abuse this process". Blind faith is a sign of stupidity of course, but that doesn't mean that Trust is a dirty word.
I'm happy to live in a society where I usually trust our police and our Courts, and to a certain extent, in a world where I trust "the world's policeman".
Not according to my understanding. My understanding is that a Federal Judge has to satisfy himself that the individual being targeted has met certain criteria. Admittedly, not all the 'targeting' criteria are available, but based again on Edward Snowdon's account, it doesn't appear to extend beyond a reasonable suspicion of involvement in terrorist or "anti-American" (groan) activities, although the main focus appears to be on identifying the individual as non-American.That is wrong. Any communication with a non-US citizen can be grabbed without warrant, and any US citizen in communication with a non-US citizen, can have the communication grabbed without a warrant.The court which also issues the warrants for certain parts of the program (as gizmo555 said), is regarded as a 'rubber stamp' court which never refuses to provide warrants either, making it effectively warrantless as there aren't any real checks for suitability.
So, this is nothing like the checks and balances that are in place for the police
Again, how many cases of a District Court or a Garda Superintendent refusing a search warrant have you ever heard of say, in the last 35 years (which is the age of FISA)? I'd suggest there have been less cases than FISA rejections - possibly none at all, except for a few procedural refusals. And yet there doesn't appear to be any significant abuse of the process (there is, in fact,one famous case).gizmo555 wrote:Even assuming no malice or abuse of powers on the part of the requesting agencies, does it seem realistic that so few of the tens of thousands of applications made contained mistakes or flaws?
So a high assent rate doesn't prove anything. It has no bearing on whether the applications sought are actually justified or not justified.
No but a licence is required, and they need to behave within the confines of the Constitutional provisions on privacy, the European Convention, and it appears as though there has been no systematic abuse of this process.opti0nal wrote:In Ireland, the Gardai, Revenue and others can get access to your phone, movements, email and part of your web surfing data, just by asking for it. No court order is required.0 -
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Cody Pomeray wrote: »What rate of judicial assent would people estimate exists for Garda search warrants? I would guess it must be close to 100%Cody Pomeray wrote: »Again, how many cases of a District Court or a Garda Superintendent refusing a search warrant have you ever heard of say, in the last 35 years (which is the age of FISA)? I'd suggest there have been less cases than FISA rejections - possibly none at all,
I've no idea - but you're the one making the comparison and it's clear you haven't a clue yourself. You're just assuming the truth of a hypothesis that suits your argument.
Anyway, your comparison it's entirely beside the point of the mass surveillance of entire populations numbering hundreds of millions if not a billion or more individuals in secret, and the perjury of the senior official concerned, which is what's involved in PRISM.0 -
Ok, well while I definitely do have a problem with it, we can agree here that the criteria should at least be open/transparent.Cody Pomeray wrote: »True, that's not something I would have a problem with. Based on what Edward Snowdon said, I'm not personally worried (actually quite relieved), about the current criteria.
In the future, however, now that this is all official, I think the public should be informed what the criteria are, i.e. what tags (broadly speaking) are on the nets. No argument there.
It's a simple comparison between the potential harm, and the potential gain:Cody Pomeray wrote: »Here's where I disagree. Again, take a search warrant issued by the District Court or even a Garda Superintendent. The point of that warrant is to grant access to all evidence in a person's possession, even evidence which is of a historical nature - letters, photgraphs, diaries, computer files, and yes, web browsing history.
Obviously this is something that could be abused, in theory, and the inclusion of the Gardaí in being able to grant search warrants is not without controversy. But a certain stage, you've just got to say "ok, I generally trust the law enforcement agencies not to abuse this process". Blind faith is a sign of stupidity of course, but that doesn't mean that Trust is a dirty word.
I'm happy to live in a society where I usually trust our police and our Courts, and to a certain extent, in a world where I trust "the world's policeman".
The potential harm: Government can (with the 'flick of a switch') discard respect for legal principles (which there is enormous past precedent for), and turn this system on its people, and start targeting political opponents in various ways; massive potential harm.
The potential gain: For a very short period of time, until 'bad guys' start automatically encrypting communications they use online, some amateur criminals/terrorists who don't know about encryption, will be found.
That's a very clear-cut case of the potential harm, astronomically dwarfing the potential gain.
Trusting this, is not a case of having to trust government because this is an essential power, it is exactly a case of blind authoritarian faith, because government absolutely should not have such potentially abusive power.0 -
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Agreed.KyussBishop wrote: »Ok, well while I definitely do have a problem with it, we can agree here that the criteria should at least be open/transparent.
No, the potential for any harm is curbed by the constitutional authority affirmed by and amongst US citizens - "we the people...", as they assert in their fundamental law - is the bedrock of their constitution. The Irish Constitution makes the very same affirmation.It's a simple comparison between the potential harm, and the potential gain:
The potential harm: Government can (with the 'flick of a switch') discard respect for legal principles (which there is enormous past precedent for), and turn this system on its people, and start targeting political opponents in various ways; massive potential harm.
It just so happens that my signature is a reference to this very point, it is from David Hume and relates to the widespread misconception that legal rights are the gift of Government. It is not so. It is the Government who are constrained by the Constitutional and unenumerated natural rights of the people. It is plainly visible that both the US Courts and the superior Irish courts demonstrate an almost infatuation with 'the people' for this reason, which one scholar has described as a “quasi-religious intonation” with which Irish judges have proclaimed “their complete devotion to the demos”.
So my point is that you might suggest that our rights are in a theoretical danger of being usurped; my response would be that there are very clear and fundamental protections that would prevent us in ever getting to that doom-filled place.
I am not a solicitor, I have no idea, you're quite right. But it's not so much that I haven't a clue, anyone who has seen or known of a search warrant being assented to will be aware that it is a quasi-clerical affair and it is in that context that I put the question. The very notion that judges would be pressing Gardaí on delphic terms like "reasonable belief", let alone systematically refusing to grant search warrants, is just wrong.I've no idea - but you're the one making the comparison and it's clear you haven't a clue yourself.
In case anybody thinks I'm pursuing a false comparison here, that's not the case. I am not comparing a search warrant to a Section 702 FISA application, I am just placing the powers of 702 in their context, and it is appropriate to highlight the extent to which search warrants, warrants to restrict human and civil and constitutional rights (arrest, detention, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of privacy) might be abused, but are not abused. PRISM is - or appears to be - just another one of those examples.0 -
Cody Pomeray wrote:So my point is that you might suggest that our rights are in a theoretical danger of being usurped; my response would be that there are very clear and fundamental protections that would prevent us in ever getting to that doom-filled place.
This is regrettably characteristic of your tendency to beg questions! The question many people are asking is whether those "very clear and fundamental protections" have prevented us reaching a position in which government actions endanger our liberties, and your response is to state that since they exist, they have necessarily done so. That does not follow - rights and legal protections require enforcement, they achieve nothing by mere existence.
cordially,
Scofflaw0 -
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