1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively.
2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
It's been free-game for a hundred years. Keep up with the law dude. USPS "metadata" has been copied and tracked. Such information was used for the Anthrax cases of early 2000s... and other such crimes.
It is illegal for police to read the contents of an envelope, but they can (and have been) scanning the outside of envelopes and storing that metadata for police use for decades.
The difference between snail-mail and the business records provision is... terrorism was added to the words. But I'd bet what they were doing was legal before the Patriot Act was made.
> 2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.
That doesn't answer the question. How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
Okay, doing it for decades doesn't mean they need it. It wasn't there from the start.
>How do you expect to track down a Swatter without using metadata?
As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada. I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
> As I said in my other post, you don't actually need call records to find a swatter. They called the police, the police have the number, tada.
And if the Swatter used another phone to call a Google Voice number to create a local line in another city, they will need Metadata to figure out what that _OTHER_ telephone number is.
Otherwise, they have a phone number to a fake google-account created in TOR. That's not very useful.
Phone Number 555-0000 called Google-Voice 555-9991, which THEN called the Police. Only having "555-9991" is completely worthless. You need metadata analysis to unravel the proxies.
Furthermore, executing a warrant generally requires a name and a case. You don't got a name yet, you're trying to build a case without warrant powers at this point of the Police game.
Do you think these Swatters are dumb or something? They aren't using their personal phone numbers to call the police, they're actually redirecting themselves a little bit.
> I'm not arguing against deleting everything that could possibly classify as metadata, I'm saying we should cut down the types of metadata available. And we need to stop the government from making copies of private data 'just in case' and declaring it not to be a search/seizure until some later stage.
The legal standard between 1940s (since the closure of the Office of Censorship, which straight up allowed the US Agents to read mail and censor them), and now has been that metadata collection doesn't need a warrant.
Metadata collection is NOT search/seizure in Smith v. Maryland. Its how things have operated for literally decades.
Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least (see again... Smith v. Maryland).
Going back to the cases before that was Olmstead v. United States, 1928, which collection of straight-up data was considered not search/seizure btw. (So we've actually cut back upon collection from a historical perspective. Police powers were greater in the 1920s than today)
Okay, you have a point, but that's about proxies, not normal calls between two people.
If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata.
>Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated since the 1970s at very least
Fine, I want a change from the status quo. But it's not just that, I'm saying two things.
1. It is important that metadata (and data) collection does not expand because of the ease of technology.
2. I would prefer metadata collection to be rolled back a few decades and limited.
It's 1 that really worries me, and no amount of historical collection is going to comfort that.
> If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata.
Read it again. It requires the agencies to check off with a Judge. It already _has_ oversight built into it. If something is wrong with the oversight, then tell me what you think is wrong with it.
From what I have heard, requests even by normal law enforcement are often for unreasonable amounts of data, and data is held onto and used for things other than the case they were requested for without oversight.
In addition, the NSA collects data before asking for permission. And I am doubtful that their oversight is effective.
But I don't want to argue about it for hours. I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
> In addition, the NSA collects data before asking for permission. And I am doubtful that their oversight is effective.
Snowden's first revealed document was the court order where the NSA / FBI was asking for permission from the FISA courts. Now I don't think you've even read Snowden's docs.
> But I don't want to argue about it for hours.
Fair enough. I hope that in our short discussion, you learned how things actually work.
> I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
You're welcome to have your opinion, but your opinion was tainted by horribly inaccurate facts. I thank you for being a good sport and listening to me through this.
In any case, now you know the specific law that grants the powers. You can now write to a Senator / House Representative and argue specifically against the law on your own. Even if you are on the "other side" of this debate, we Americans are much better off when all sides understand the debate. Our political system also works out well when discussions like what you and I just had happen more often.
Summary: Business Records Provision of the Patriot Act. Know it well, so you can criticize it. Take it down and the metadata of the NSA should fall.
Good luck on the political battlefield. Again, thank you for working with me in this debate.
Okay I'll be more specific. Without specific permission pertaining to a specific case, they collect whatever they feel like to sort out later. I don't like that.
>I hope that in our short discussion, you learned how things actually work.
I learned there has been more access to metadata than I previously thought, but my main worry is and has been the exploding amount of metadata and analysis, which I do have a pretty good grasp on.
I know we want to close the discussion, but let me note one more thing.
> Okay I'll be more specific. Without specific permission pertaining to a specific case, they collect whatever they feel like to sort out later. I don't like that.
How do you expect the Police to go after a swatter then? The creation of 'nameless warrants' is looked down upon in general, and is grossly illegal in many jurisdictions. You cannot get a warrant unless a specific person is named.
Without a warrant, police cannot continue investigating. Police need access to the metadata to get a name so that they can get a warrant.
I know John Doe warrants exist, but their use is highly criticized. And it should be! We can't have the police getting nameless warrants regularly. With that said, we have to give the Police enough room to maneuver so that they can build a case before they are granted the high-powers of a warrant.
The Fourth Amendment promises _due process_. Metadata, in my opinion is a "reasonable" search. Or at least, we should _define_ metadata as the part that can be reasonably searched. (After all, not all data is innately private. The data that is "public" should be easily searched by the Police without warrants). The debate really should be about determining which bits of data are "public" and which bits aren't.
>How do you expect the Police to go after a swatter then? The creation of 'nameless warrants' is looked down upon in general, and is grossly illegal in many jurisdictions.
Well we're talking about a 'nameless warrant' to only access something they could access at-will before, so I don't see that as a real problem.
>we should _define_ metadata as the part that can be reasonably searched.
That sounds like a mess. Metadata has a pretty clear meaning already when it comes to communication.
>The debate really should be about determining which bits of data are "public" and which bits aren't.
Maybe, but things are much more complicated than public and not public.
> Well we're talking about a 'nameless warrant' to only access something they could access at-will before, so I don't see that as a real problem.
No. A warrant means they can start accessing data. Install bugs, tracking devices... the whole works. All fourth amendment protections are gone once a judge grants the Police a warrant.
The question is whether or not you want "Metadata" to be part of that pool or not. Personally speaking, I don't.
> Maybe, but things are much more complicated than public and not public.
Which is why discussion of this issue is important. The fact is, you expect something from the Police that is different than the Status Quo for the past decades.
It frustrates me to no end when all the YCombinator posters around here complain and protest in obscure ways (ie: putting Snowden up as a statue in a park), and then they don't really try and learn the intricacies of the law and try to find changes that everyone actually agrees upon.
The reason our political system is borked is because no one is actually discussing the law or how to change it. Our Congressmen get vague clues (ie: SOPA BAD!!), but they really are struggling to understand our opinion in general.
Are you serious? We're talking about a new thing that only restricts access compared to before. It would not be the same as a warrant today. That objection is ridiculous.
>Status Quo for the past decades.
Part of the problem is that it used to take manpower to spy on people, and a lot of that is getting replaced with computers that do it for nearly free. It's not a legal change, but it changes the end result in a terrible way.
> Are you serious? We're talking about a new thing that only restricts access compared to before. It would not be the same as a warrant today. That objection is ridiculous.
Okay, I'm gonna cut off the conversation at this point. YCombinator is not a good forum for discussion. I see you're frustrated so we'll just let it end here.
I strongly disagree with your opinion, so I'm thinking its best to just agree to disagree at this point.
If you're seriously suggesting that FISA is some kind of check on the use/abuse of the government's surveillance powers, you're either a shill, or deluded.
And if that is where you stop your argument, then you aren't helpful at all.
Why don't you trust FISA? And if you don't trust it, what reforms to the FISA courts are you proposing?
Or are you just a lazy armchair protester who doesn't even think about how to improve the world around you? Hey look, I can fling insults at you too and be unhelpful!!
Seriously, the FISA system is documented, and it is part of the debate. Do you actually have an argument, or are you just gonna leave it there?
Since 1979, out of 33,949 requests submitted, the FISA court has denied 12 of them, 4 of which were later partially granted after being resubmitted. You're correct in saying that it's good that this number is documented, but it also makes it extremely clear that the FISA court cannot be meaningfully said to constitute independent oversight.
At a minimum, I'd like something enabling me to trust that FISA isn't just the rubber stamp it has every appearance of being. It has denied less than 0.035% of the requests ever submitted to it (and a third of those were subsequently at least partially granted, anyway), and "modified" (where "modification" appears to be a request for clarification, given the public remarks one former FISA judge made on the subject) less than 1.5% of them.
As "oversight" goes, that sounds rather a lot like, "That's nice, son. You run along and play, now..."
Almost all of the sitting members of the court are former law enforcement in some way, and many of them have evinced strongly statist and authoritarian views in the rulings they've made in the trial courts they also sit in.
So I'd also like to see some membership on the panel that doesn't seem hand-picked to yes-man (nearly) every request that comes along. I'm not suggesting this as a definitive proposal for changing the court, but what about including members from (or elected by) demonstrably pro-liberty organizations like the EFF or ACLU or whatever, with some kind of veto-like power?
I legitimately believe that there is value in being able to investigate suspected "bad" actors — and that sometimes those investigations must be surreptitious, or that actor will become aware of the suspicion and change his behavior. I don't buy the leap from that being the case to, "We can look into anyone at any time for any reason, or no reason at all, and then use whatever we find against you down the road, or hand it off to sibling agencies for 'parallel construction' type purposes." (And don't even try to suggest that doesn't happen. We know it does.)
2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.