PRISM: NSA/FBI Internet data mining project

Sun Jun 9 16:10:34 UTC 2013

On 06/07/13 18:20 -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
>While the government has no responsibility to protect my data, they do
>have a responsibility to respect my privacy. While you are correct in that
>proper personal security procedures to protect my data from random
>crackers would, in fact, also protect it from the government, that's a far
>cry from what is at issue here.
>
>The question here is whether or not it should be considered legitimate for
>the US Government to completely ignore the fourth and fifth amendments to
>the constitution and build out unprecedented surveillance capabilities
>capturing vast amounts of data without direct probable cause for that
>snooping.
>
>I'm not so much concerned about them gaining access to data I don't want
>them to access. I am far more disturbed by the trend which reflects a
>government which increasingly considers itself unrestrained by the laws it
>is in place to support and implement.

Let me put my gold tipped tinfoil hat on in response to your statement.

Suppose the following are true:

* Meta data for emails sent to and from most US citizens can be captured on
   a government scale budget
* Meta data for all phone calls and skype sessions can also
* Cell phone location data - which cell towers your device associates with,
   over a long period of time - can be captured in log form or stored in a
   database
* Social data can be analyzed to determine who your acquaintances are, and when
   you communicate with them over time.

Now suppose that the NSA contracts with a private company to collect
information about terrorist entities, who in turn privately contracts with
the top X telecom providers and Y social media companies to obtain all
available information that it can, via TAP ports or direct database access.

That private organization, through analysis, knows a lot about you, such as
every place you've physically been in the last 10 years, what your political
leanings are, what criminals you have associated with in that time period,
what the likelyhood is that you are a future criminal and of which crimes,
how many guns you own, your browsing history and what you like to do in
your free time, and <insert your own creative idea here>.

Have your 4th Amendment rights been abridged in this scenario? If you think
they have, how confident are you that the court system will agree with you?

-- 
Dan White