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Title: With Facebook and GPS “they” know everything about you
Source:
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URL Source: http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/june2011/stevens611-2.htm
Published: Sep 1, 2011
Author: IVAR
Post Date: 2011-09-02 00:03:15 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 55116
Comments: 67
Someone took your photo on the street. In a minute they will know everything about you. Also where you will sleep in the night.
Facebook is a perfect tool for all totalitarian regime builders. - Facebook has 600 million members. - Each day, Facebook’s members upload over 200 million photos, and Facebook currently hosts over 90 billion photos. The new facial recognition technology, which was announced in December but only introduced to a small test group, is basically Facebook’s way of creating a huge, photo-searchable database of its users. And yes, it’s terrifying. Facial recognition technology will ultimately culminate in the ability to search for people using just a picture. And that will be the end of privacy as we know it–imagine, a world in which someone can simply take a photo of you on the street, in a crowd, or with a telephoto lens, and discover everything about you on the internet. Obviously, we can’t stop the world of technology from moving toward the development of accurate facial recognition software. But so far, no facial recognition software has really been a threat to our privacy, because nobody has that huge database of people and photos required. Oh wait, except Facebook totally does. Source: PCworld. My comment: You can not ban technology. After the nuclear bomb was invented, we had to live with it. We also have to live with Facebook. When this social media have 90 billion pictures in its databases, they have more knowledge about the human race than any other totalitarian leader could ever dream of. The last anti-Christ will find you with the help of GPS and Facebook. There is nothing worth mentioned about you, that He will not be able to use. Written by Ivar
Steven Jesus is coming soon! (1 image)
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#1. To: A K A Stone. badeye (#0)
Facebook is a perfect tool for all totalitarian regime builders. - Facebook has 600 million members. - Each day, Facebook’s members upload over 200 million photos, and Facebook currently hosts over 90 billion photos.
Badeye disagrees.
#2. To: A K A Stone (#0)
.
It's actually WORSE than that.
MOST of the photos that are uploaded to Facebook et. al. come from cameras where "geo tracking" is automatic.
Yep.
The "geo location" is embedded in the image header, even if you didn't put it there.
Yep.
The photo tells EXACTLY where it was taken.
NICE huh?
MOST digital cameras that have "geo location" require you to turn it OFF. The default is ON.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
If you are a tyrant.
Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
#3. To: Mad Dog, mininggold, badeye, cz82, Brian S, Murron, Lucysmom, Godwinson, Mcgowinjim (#2)
The photo tells EXACTLY where it was taken.
Not to mention your friend lists and things you are interested in.
#4. To: A K A Stone (#3)
The photo tells EXACTLY where it was taken.Not to mention your friend lists and things you are interested in.
Don't look at me I don't have an account there........
When asked by a Liberal what I bought my Granddaughter for her 1st birthday I replied, "MORE AMMUNITION"!!!! -----------------------------"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
#5. To: A K A Stone (#3)
Not to mention your friend lists and things you are interested in.
I have no facebook friends, but then I don't do facebook.
"...all of the equations in neoclassical economics are rubbish. The differential equations describe nothing. Economics is not about mathematics, it is about the human being." Sandeep Jaitly
#6. To: Mad Dog (#2)
MOST of the photos that are uploaded to Facebook et. al. come from cameras where "geo tracking" is automatic.
Nope. MOST cameras do not have GPS built-in. Smart phone cameras do, but you can disable GPS, although most people don't.
There two types of leftists -- idiots and tyrants. The idiots believe that big government has the answers. The tyrants exploit those beliefs to maintain power and control. -- jwpegler
#7. To: A K A Stone (#0)
I've been saying this for quite a number of years -- privacy is dead. It's been dead for a long time in ways that you probably don't know about.
If you use credit cards, debit cards, checks, or electronic funds transfer, there is a record of your purchases sitting in multiple places (your bank and the companies that you buy from).
If you use the internet, there is a record of the sites that you visited sitting in multiple places (at your ISP and the sites you visited).
If you've ever been arrested, gone through a divorce, sued someone, been sued by someone, or were involved in any other legal action, the government has a record of it, which is available at the clerk's office and now on the Internet.
If you have an account with the water company, electric company, phone company, cable TV company, or any other utility, there is a record of your activities.
All of these organizations sell information about you to other companies for the purposes of targeted marketing. They don't necessarily sell the details. Instead, they use data mining (traditional statics, like multiple regression and heuristics like neural nets, automated decision trees, support vector machines, etc) to create a very accurate profile of you.
There is even a company in Texas that buys information from thousands of sources, they have thousands of servers that are used to correlate the data together, and mine it, to create profiles that they then sell for targeted marketing purposes.
This has all been going on for years.
What is new, is that everyone is walking around with a smartphone that has a camera and video recorder. You never know who is talking your picture or recording a video of you. Yes, they share these things on social networks like Facebook.
Years ago, IBM developed a technology that could search a library of photos to find the ones that contained a certain shape. Now, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the U.S. government have developed technologies to search photo albums using facial recognition.
My strong advice is not to anything in public that you might later regret. Because at this point, all of your friends, family, and co-workers will know about it.
There two types of leftists -- idiots and tyrants. The idiots believe that big government has the answers. The tyrants exploit those beliefs to maintain power and control. -- jwpegler
#8. To: A K A Stone (#3)
I simply don't care who knows those things Stone. In fact, those in this forum and others that are friends of mine in the real world see I've never misrepresented anything about my life via 'Badeye'.
Further, I just don't believe I'm important enough to warrant 'black helicopter' type scrutiny from anyone, beyond my anti groupies, of course (laughing). It must really suck to be them, realizing I never lied about my life over the past 12 years doing this.
That is satisfying, gotta admit.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#9. To: mininggold (#1)
Yep...but then again I've never pretended to be something I'm not under this screen name, mingster.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#10. To: jwpegler (#6)
MOST of the photos that are uploaded to Facebook et. al. come from cameras where "geo tracking" is automatic.
Nope. MOST cameras do not have GPS built-in. Smart phone cameras do, but you can disable GPS, although most people don't.
IF you count phone cams as CAMERAS, (which they are, and I do).
Then since the majority of photos up loaded to social sites are from phone cameras. (Go ahead ask them).
Then given that the majority of current phone cameras have geo location ON as a default.
AND, given that the majority of current phone users don't disable geo locations. (The FACT is that the geo location is usually contained buried in the image header, and most users don't even know such tagging exists, let alone that is is ON in their "camera").
THEREFORE, (by OBVIOUS and actual LOGIC), the MAJORITY of images uploaded to social sites MUST HAVE geo locations in their headers.
Don't believe it?
Oh well ...
LOL!
Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
#11. To: jwpegler, A K A Stone (#7)
I've been saying this for quite a number of years -- privacy is dead. It's been dead for a long time in ways that you probably don't know about.
You are WISE grasshopper.
EVERYTHING that you have said here is TRUE.
I have NEVER had a cell phone for that exact reason. I had an old one given to me that did not contain geo tracking but the phone company wouldn't let me use it because of feral gooberment LAW.
I find peace in the fact that I am old. I will NEVER live under the TYRANNY that is coming at us ALL. BUT then I worry about OUR POSTERITY.
What have we allowed to be birthed through our own ignorance, laziness and foolishness?
What should WE have done?
Were WE supposed to KILL the abortionists?
Were WE supposed to tar and feather and then ride out of town on a rail ALL of these insane out of control wannabe tyrant politicians?
What we have witnessed here is the slow purposeful destruction of OUR way of life and OUR nation through the internal TREASON of OUR own citizens. With the full support of an increasingly out of control UNCONSTITUTIONAL gooberment, and the establishment powers that be.
BUT, A HARD TYRANNY that IS coming, IF we let the libTURD whores and establishment power structure get their way is something never ever seen before here in this nation.
Orwell was 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000% CORRECT.
He just got the year wrong.
So ... what's a FREE soul supposed to do?
Well the only control any of us really have is control of our own behaviors.
I say FIGHT the bastards for every inch in your own life.
EVERY F ing inch.
EVERY instant of EVERY day.
GOD Bless AMERICA!
FTW
Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
#12. To: Mad Dog (#11)
I have NEVER had a cell phone for that exact reason.
But you are on the internet, use your checkbook, and probably have a credit card too.
They know all about you. That's the point I am trying to make. There is nothing new here. It's just more pervasive now.
There two types of leftists -- idiots and tyrants. The idiots believe that big government has the answers. The tyrants exploit those beliefs to maintain power and control. -- jwpegler
#13. To: jwpegler (#12) (Edited)
LOL!
I didn't say that I had any delusions of personal "privacy".
Hell I've told the world, on several sites, that I swapped ships while in the NAV, and which ships. I even told everyone my rate. I'm the ONLY one to ever make THAT specific move. IF they want to know who I am, they already do.
You don't need to tell me the OBVIOUS.
I've seen it coming for DECADES. This is nothing new to me or any of us who have been watching it happen.
I don't care anymore. I'm NOT running to anywhere. I LOVE life but I don't fear death.
To ALL wannabe TYRANTS ...
I'd rather DIE FREE than LIVE as a SLAVE.
NO fucking hyperbole.
Come and git some.
Bring your lunch, because it's going to take you at least all day.
NOBODY gets OUT alive.
Spoiled, stupid and ignorant, brain dead phuckwads, libTURD fools, tools, and idiots, are the real sickness; the messiah "king" obammy and his regime are only the symptoms.
#14. To: Badeye (#8)
I simply don't care who knows those things Stone
You may not care. But that information in the wrong hands will lead to a totalitarian dictatorship.
#15. To: Badeye (#8)
I simply don't care who knows those things Stone. In fact, those in this forum and others that are friends of mine in the real world see I've never misrepresented anything about my life via 'Badeye'.Further, I just don't believe I'm important enough to warrant 'black helicopter' type scrutiny from anyone, beyond my anti groupies, of course (laughing). It must really suck to be them, realizing I never lied about my life over the past 12 years doing this.
That is satisfying, gotta admit.
Bravo!! Well stated!
#16. To: A K A Stone (#14)
You may not care. But that information in the wrong hands will lead to a totalitarian dictatorship.
Ah, they already have the information on hand, Stone. On all of us.
And while under the current, and yep, the previous administration, we've moved in that direction, we aren't there yet, and it can in fact be reversed.
JMHO
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#17. To: Badeye (#16)
Ah, they already have the information on hand, Stone. On all of us.
Correct.
While certain individuals may not find that bothersome. As a whole society we should understand its dangers.
How do you think "it" can be reversed?
#18. To: Murron (#15)
You know its all fact based...hell, you knew it long before Facebook.
'They' (meaning the anti groupies, especially the dwarf) don't like FB because they've grossly exaggerated who and what they are 'behind the screen name'. And it eats at em like acid....which kinda explains their behavior behind what they erroneously believe is anonymity in these forums.
Its why I don't take em seriously. The problem they have is I know who and what they are in the real world, and they know I know it (laughing). and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it, except screech on the internet incessantly.
It really does suck to be them. The irony? The hell they live in they created for themselves.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#19. To: A K A Stone (#17)
How do you think "it" can be reversed?
First, repeal the Patriot Act. I was originally a supporter. But the fact is almost a decade after its passage, its never been responsible for catching a terrorist, which was the point...or so we were led to believe.
Next, revise the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It contains a specific provision that allows the FBI to review anyone's credit report without notifying you, or getting a court order. Basically, anyone working their can review yours on a whim. And there is no available notification via the private sector if they do this.
Next, repeal the Frank/Dodd legislation. Its as intrusive and as unwarranted as both of the previous, as it relates to business owners. Not to mention its keeping business's from hiring, expanding, or getting small business loans.
Thats just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many other measures that could be taken.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#20. To: jwpegler (#12)
I have NEVER had a cell phone for that exact reason. But you are on the internet, use your checkbook, and probably have a credit card too.
They know all about you. That's the point I am trying to make. There is nothing new here. It's just more pervasive now.
Correct to a certain point, JW.
Its actually not more 'pervasive' however.
Its just much easier.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#21. To: Badeye (#19)
First, repeal the Patriot Act. I was originally a supporter. But the fact is almost a decade after its passage, its never been responsible for catching a terrorist, which was the point...or so we were led to believe.
Good to see that you have come around on that one.
I for one never supported the Patriot act. It is unconstitutional on its face. Glaringly so.
#22. To: Badeye (#19)
Thats just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are many other measures that could be taken.
Here is one to consider. How about the death penalty for anyone in government looking at any of your records without a warrant signed by a judge.
#23. To: A K A Stone (#21)
I for one never supported the Patriot act. It is unconstitutional on its face. Glaringly so.
I don't agree with that, Stone. There are a lot of misconceptions about who and what it applies to. In my view, it doesn't violate the Constitution at all.
I just know it doesn't work as advertised.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#24. To: A K A Stone (#22)
btw...waaaay off topic lmao.
Did you see the report today about Jane Fonda's 'only regret'?
She says her only regret was not sleeping with Che....(eyes rolling)
Basically, she's upset she wasn't more of a leftwingnut slut in the 60's then previously documented and admitted.
You can't make this stuff up. My only regret is she wasn't executed WITH Che rotflmao.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#25. To: Badeye, A K A Stone (#24)
She says her only regret was not sleeping with Che....(eyes rolling)
I'm sure Che had certain standards even he wouldn't compromise....
#26. To: Badeye (#20) (Edited)
Its actually not more 'pervasive' however.Its just much easier.
Move pervasive too.
20 years ago, people weren't walking around with cell phones that double as cameras and video recorders. There also weren't any systems that automatically snapped a picture of your license plate and mailed you a ticket when you ran a red light.
10 years ago, I used the term -- "pervasive computing" -- which described an environment where everything around us is going to get smart as the result of networked sensors, actuators, microprocessors, motion tracking, facial recognition, etc. We are just at the very beginning of that now with smart phones.
I just bought my middle daughter a Kinect for her 10th birthday. The thing is amazing. Now apply that motion tracking technology to other things in our environment and think about the possibilities.
There is technology on the market right now that can track the muscles in your face and determine if you are about to fall asleep and play a load noise to wake you up. There is another technology that can parallel park a car by itself.
In 10 years, everything is going to be online -- not just your computer and phone, but your car, house, traffic lights, shoes, cloths, toilet seat, you name it. All of these things will be collecting data about your behaviors. That data will be used to make life easier for you, sell you more things, and by government for nefarious purposes as well.
The hippies wanted peace and love. We wanted Ferraris, blondes and switchblades. -- Alice Cooper
#27. To: Badeye (#24)
Have you seen the Google car that drives itself?
The hippies wanted peace and love. We wanted Ferraris, blondes and switchblades. -- Alice Cooper
#28. To: Badeye (#24)
I don't even know who Che is.
#29. To: jwpegler (#26)
I have a wii, ps3 and a 360. For the kids. I heard the Kinect is supposed to be integrated into windows.
#30. To: Badeye, nolu chan (#23)
I for one never supported the Patriot act. It is unconstitutional on its face. Glaringly so.I don't agree with that, Stone. There are a lot of misconceptions about who and what it applies to. In my view, it doesn't violate the Constitution at all.
I just know it doesn't work as advertised.
Doesn't the patriot act let the government do stuff bypassing the normal procedures used to obtain a warrant?
Doesn't it violate habeus corups? Just off the top of my head. I bet chan can add much more to this discussion then I can if he willing.
#31. To: A K A Stone (#29)
I heard the Kinect is supposed to be integrated into windows.
Windows 8 will also have facial recognition that will log you into your computer when you sit in front of it. When you get up and leave, it will automatically hibernate. Microsoft has been working on this for years. It's finally ready for prime time.
Windows 8 is going to be all about multi-touch and tablets as well.
The hippies wanted peace and love. We wanted Ferraris, blondes and switchblades. -- Alice Cooper
#32. To: A K A Stone, Badeye (#30)
It does not bypass procedures but the Constitution. The search cannot be authorized without a warrant, and a warrant requires probable cause.
It directly contravenes the 4th Amendment.
Amendment IVThe 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.
#33. To: A K A Stone, Badeye (#30)
Here's an old article from 2005 by Judge Napolitano.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/napolitano2.html
How Congress Has Assaulted Our Freedoms in the Patriot Actby Andrew P. Napolitano
December 16, 2005The compromise version of the Patriot Act to which House and Senate conferees agreed last week and for which the House voted yesterday is an unforgivable assault on basic American values and core constitutional liberties. Unless amended in response to the courageous efforts of a few dozen senators from both parties, the new Patriot Act will continue to give federal agents the power to write their own search warrants – the statute’s newspeak terminology calls them "national security letters" – and serve them on a host of persons and entities that regularly gather and store sensitive, private information on virtually every American.
Congress once respected the Fourth Amendment until it began cutting holes in it. Before Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1977, Americans and even non-citizens physically present here enjoyed the right to privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment, which was written out of a revulsion to warrants that let British soldiers look for any tangible thing anywhere they chose, specifically requires that the government demonstrate to a judge and the judge specifically find the existence of probable cause of criminal activity on the part of the person whose property the government wishes to search. The Fourth Amendment commands that only a judge can authorize a search warrant.
FISA unconstitutionally changed the probable cause of criminality requirement to probable cause of employment by a foreign government, hostile or friendly. Under FISA, if the government can demonstrate the foreign agency or employment status of the person whose things it wishes to search, the secret FISA court will issue the search warrant.
But even FISA respects constitutional liberty, since it prohibits prosecutions based on evidence obtained from these warrants. Thus, if a FISA warrant reveals that the embassy janitor is really a spy who beats his wife, he would not and could not be prosecuted for either crime because the evidence of his crimes was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a judicial finding of probable cause of criminal activity. Instead of being prosecuted, he would be deported.
A year later in 1978, cutting yet another hole in the Fourth Amendment, Congress revealed its distaste for fidelity to the Constitution and its ignorance of the British government’s abuse of the colonists by enacting the Orwellian–named, Right to Financial Privacy Act. This statute, for the first time in American history, let federal agents write their own search warrants, but limited the subjects of those warrants to financial institutions. Just like FISA, it recognized the unconstitutional nature of evidence obtained by a self-written search warrant, and banned the use of such evidence in criminal prosecutions.
In 1986, Congress continued to cut. It disregarded yet again the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy when it enacted the Electronic Communications Privacy Act which allowed federal agents to serve self-written search warrants on collectors of digital financial data, but continued to recognize that evidence thus obtained was constitutionally incompetent for criminal prosecution purposes.
The deepest cut came on October 15, 2001 when Congress enacted the Patriot Act. With minimal floor debate in the Senate and no floor debate in the House (House members were given only 30 minutes to read the 315 page bill), Congress enacted this most unpatriotic rejection of privacy and constitutional guarantees. Together with its offspring the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal 2004 and the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, the Patriot Act not only permits the execution of self-written search warrants on a host of new subjects, it rejects the no-criminal-prosecution protections of its predecessors by requiring evidence obtained contrary to the Fourth Amendment to be turned over to prosecutors and mandating that such evidence is constitutionally competent in criminal prosecutions.
The new version of the Patriot Act which the Senate will debate this weekend purports to make all of this congressional rejection of our history, our values, and our Constitution the law of the land.
So, if your representative in the House has voted, or your Senators do vote, for the House/Senate conference approved version, they will be authorizing federal agents on their own, in violation of the Constitution, and without you knowing it, to obtain records about you from your accountant, bank, boat dealer, bodega, book store, car dealer, casino, computer server, credit union, dentist, HMO, hospital, hotel manager, insurance company, jewelry store, lawyer, library, pawn broker, pharmacist, physician, postman, real estate agent, supermarket, tax collectors, telephone company, travel agency, and trust company, and use the evidence thus obtained in any criminal prosecution against you.
Why would Congress, whose members swore to uphold the Constitution, authorize such a massive evasion of it by the federal agents we have come to rely upon to protect our freedoms? Why would Congress nullify the Fourth Amendment–guaranteed right to privacy for which we and our forbearers have fought and paid dearly? How could the men and women we elect to fortify our freedoms and write our laws so naïvely embrace the less-freedom-equals-more-security canard? Why have we fought for 230 years to keep foreign governments from eviscerating our freedoms if we will voluntarily let our own government do so?
The unfortunate answer to these questions is the inescapable historical truth that those in government – from both parties and with a few courageous exceptions – do not feel constrained by the Constitution. They think they can do whatever they want. They have hired vast teams of government lawyers to twist and torture the plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment to justify their aggrandizement of power to themselves. They vote for legislation they have not read and do not understand. Their only fear is being overruled by judges. In the case of the Patriot Act, they should be afraid. The federal judges who have published opinions on the challenges to it have all found it constitutionally flawed.
The Fourth Amendment worked for 200 years to facilitate law enforcement and protect constitutional freedoms before Congress began to cut holes in it. Judges sit in every state in the Union 24/7 to hear probable cause applications for search warrants. There is simply no real demonstrable evidence that our American-value-driven-constitutional-privacy-protection-system is in need of such a radical change.
A self-written search warrant, even one called a national security letter, is the ultimate constitutional farce. What federal agents would not authorize themselves to seize whatever they wished? Why even bother with such a meaningless requirement? We might as well let the feds rummage through any office, basement, computer, or bedroom they choose. Who would trust government agents with this unfettered unreviewable power? The Framers did not. Why would government agents bother going to a judge with probable cause seeking a search warrant if they can simply write their own? Big Brother must have caught on because federal agents have written and executed self-written search warrants on over 120,000 unsuspecting Americans since October 2001.
Is this the society we want? Have we ultimately elected a government to spy on all of us? The Fourth Amendment is the lynchpin of our personal privacy and individual dignity. Without the Fourth Amendment’s protections, we will become another East Germany. The Congress must recognize this before it is too late.
December 16, 2005
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel, and the author of Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.
#34. To: nolu chan, Badeys (#33)
the new Patriot Act will continue to give federal agents the power to write their own search warrants – the statute’s newspeak terminology calls them "national security letters" – and serve them on a host of persons and entities that regularly gather and store sensitive, private information on virtually every American.
This seems like a big problem constitutinally speaking Badeye. Wouldn't you agree on further reflection?
#35. To: A K A Stone, Badeye (#30)
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-would-patriot-act_20.html
Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn GreenwaldMarch 20, 2006
[excerpt]
The principal reason I am so excited by this book is because, as I have said from the time this scandal first emerged, what will determine the outcome of this law-breaking scandal specifically, and the crisis of lawlessness which we have in our government generally, is whether the public realizes how radical and dangerous this Administration has become and demands that it be held accountable. I have always emphatically believed and have repeatedly said that if Americans are truly informed about how radical and extreme this President has become with regard to the powers he claims he possesses, most Americans will find it intolerable.
At its core, this scandal is not and has never been about the scope of eavesdropping powers which the Government ought to have. It is much more significant than that. We face a genuine and profound crisis as a country because we have a President who has continuously exploited the threat of terrorism and engaged in rank fear-mongering in order to expressly claim the power to act without any checks or limits at all -- including, literally, the power to break the law. And he has been exercising that law-breaking power aggressively and enthusiastically in numerous ways, all of which are radically changing our national political character and the system of government that we have had since our founding.
It is that belief in his own monarchical power that led the President to eavesdrop on Americans in precisely the way that our country, thirty years ago, made it a criminal offense to engage in. And the President's illegal warrantless eavesdropping is but one example which arises out of these truly radical and decisively un-American theories of power which this Administration has adopted and put into practice. The Administration's ideology of lawlessness, in every respect, is contrary to the most basic and fundamental values on which our country was founded and which have defined who we are as a nation for the last 225 years.
#36. To: A K A Stone, Badeye (#30)
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act
Copyright 2010 American Civil Liberties Union
Reprinted with permission of the
American Civil Liberties Union http://www.aclu.org
Surveillance Under the USA PATRIOT Act
December 10, 2010
What is the USA PATRIOT Act?
Just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the "USA/Patriot Act," an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.
Why Congress passed the Patriot Act
Most of the changes to surveillance law made by the Patriot Act were part of a longstanding law enforcement wish list that had been previously rejected by Congress, in some cases repeatedly. Congress reversed course because it was bullied into it by the Bush Administration in the frightening weeks after the September 11 attack.
The Senate version of the Patriot Act, which closely resembled the legislation requested by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was sent straight to the floor with no discussion, debate, or hearings. Many Senators complained that they had little chance to read it, much less analyze it, before having to vote. In the House, hearings were held, and a carefully constructed compromise bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee. But then, with no debate or consultation with rank-and-file members, the House leadership threw out the compromise bill and replaced it with legislation that mirrored the Senate version. Neither discussion nor amendments were permitted, and once again members barely had time to read the thick bill before they were forced to cast an up-or-down vote on it. The Bush Administration implied that members who voted against it would be blamed for any further attacks - a powerful threat at a time when the nation was expecting a second attack to come any moment and when reports of new anthrax letters were appearing daily.
Congress and the Administration acted without any careful or systematic effort to determine whether weaknesses in our surveillance laws had contributed to the attacks, or whether the changes they were making would help prevent further attacks. Indeed, many of the act's provisions have nothing at all to do with terrorism.
The Patriot Act increases the government's surveillance powers in four areas
The Patriot Act increases the government's surveillance powers in four areas:
- Records searches. It expands the government's ability to look at records on an individual's activity being held by third parties. (Section 215)
- Secret searches. It expands the government's ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213)
- Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information (Section 218).
- "Trap and trace" searches. It expands another Fourth Amendment exception for spying that collects "addressing" information about the origin and destination of communications, as opposed to the content (Section 214).
1. Expanded access to personal records held by third parties
One of the most significant provisions of the Patriot Act makes it far easier for the authorities to gain access to records of citizens' activities being held by a third party. At a time when computerization is leading to the creation of more and more such records, Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the FBI to force anyone at all - including doctors, libraries, bookstores, universities, and Internet service providers - to turn over records on their clients or customers.
Unchecked power
The result is unchecked government power to rifle through individuals' financial records, medical histories, Internet usage, bookstore purchases, library usage, travel patterns, or any other activity that leaves a record. Making matters worse:
- The government no longer has to show evidence that the subjects of search orders are an "agent of a foreign power," a requirement that previously protected Americans against abuse of this authority.
- The FBI does not even have to show a reasonable suspicion that the records are related to criminal activity, much less the requirement for "probable cause" that is listed in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. All the government needs to do is make the broad assertion that the request is related to an ongoing terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.
- Judicial oversight of these new powers is essentially non-existent. The government must only certify to a judge - with no need for evidence or proof - that such a search meets the statute's broad criteria, and the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application.
- Surveillance orders can be based in part on a person's First Amendment activities, such as the books they read, the Web sites they visit, or a letter to the editor they have written.
- A person or organization forced to turn over records is prohibited from disclosing the search to anyone. As a result of this gag order, the subjects of surveillance never even find out that their personal records have been examined by the government. That undercuts an important check and balance on this power: the ability of individuals to challenge illegitimate searches.
Why the Patriot Act's expansion of records searches is unconstitutional
Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Constitution in several ways. It:
- Violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
- Violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy.
- Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.
- Violates the Fourth Amendmentby failing to provide notice - even after the fact - to persons whose privacy has been compromised. Notice is also a key element of due process, which is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
2. More secret searches
For centuries, common law has required that the government can't go into your property without telling you, and must therefore give you notice before it executes a search. That "knock and announce" principle has long been recognized as a part of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Patriot Act, however, unconstitutionally amends the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow the government to conduct searches without notifying the subjects, at least until long after the search has been executed. This means that the government can enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupants are away, search through their property, take photographs, and in some cases even seize property - and not tell them until later.
Notice is a crucial check on the government's power because it forces the authorities to operate in the open, and allows the subject of searches to protect their Fourth Amendment rights. For example, it allows them to point out irregularities in a warrant, such as the fact that the police are at the wrong address, or that the scope of the warrant is being exceeded (for example, by rifling through dresser drawers in a search for a stolen car). Search warrants often contain limits on what may be searched, but when the searching officers have complete and unsupervised discretion over a search, a property owner cannot defend his or her rights.
Finally, this new "sneak and peek" power can be applied as part of normal criminal investigations; it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or collecting foreign intelligence.
3. Expansion of the intelligence exception in wiretap law
Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap on American citizens to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment explicitly requires.
A 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created an exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirement for probable cause when the purpose of a wiretap or search was to gather foreign intelligence. The rationale was that since the search was not conducted for the purpose of gathering evidence to put someone on trial, the standards could be loosened. In a stark demonstration of why it can be dangerous to create exceptions to fundamental rights, however, the Patriot Act expanded this once-narrow exception to cover wiretaps and searches that DO collect evidence for regular domestic criminal cases. FISA previously allowed searches only if the primary purpose was to gather foreign intelligence. But the Patriot Act changes the law to allow searches when "a significant purpose" is intelligence. That lets the government circumvent the Constitution's probable cause requirement even when its main goal is ordinary law enforcement.
The eagerness of many in law enforcement to dispense with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment was revealed in August 2002 by the secret court that oversees domestic intelligence spying (the "FISA Court"). Making public one of its opinions for the first time in history, the court revealed that it had rejected an attempt by the Bush Administration to allow criminal prosecutors to use intelligence warrants to evade the Fourth Amendment entirely. The court also noted that agents applying for warrants had regularly filed false and misleading information. That opinion is now on appeal.
4. Expansion of the "pen register" exception in wiretap law
Another exception to the normal requirement for probable cause in wiretap law is also expanded by the Patriot Act. Years ago, when the law governing telephone wiretaps was written, a distinction was created between two types of surveillance. The first allows surveillance of the content or meaning of a communication, and the second only allows monitoring of the transactional or addressing information attached to a communication. It is like the difference between reading the address printed on the outside of a letter, and reading the letter inside, or listening to a phone conversation and merely recording the phone numbers dialed and received.
Wiretaps limited to transactional or addressing information are known as "Pen register/trap and trace" searches (for the devices that were used on telephones to collect telephone numbers). The requirements for getting a PR/TT warrant are essentially non-existent: the FBI need not show probable cause or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. It must only certify to a judge - without having to prove it - that such a warrant would be "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. And the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application.
The Patriot Act broadens the pen register exception in two ways:
"Nationwide" pen register warrants
Under the Patriot Act PR/TT orders issued by a judge are no longer valid only in that judge's jurisdiction, but can be made valid anywhere in the United States. This "nationwide service" further marginalizes the role of the judiciary, because a judge cannot meaningfully monitor the extent to which his or her order is being used. In addition, this provision authorizes the equivalent of a blank warrant: the court issues the order, and the law enforcement agent fills in the places to be searched. That is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment's explicit requirement that warrants be written "particularly describing the place to be searched."
Pen register searches applied to the Internet
The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses. On an e-mail message, for example, law enforcement has interpreted the "header" of a message to be transactional information accessible with a PR/TT warrant. But in addition to routing information, e-mail headers include the subject line, which is part of the substance of a communication - on a letter, for example, it would clearly be inside the envelope.
The government also argues that the transactional data for Web surfing is a list of the URLs or Web site addresses that a person visits. For example, it might record the fact that they visited "www.aclu.org" at 1:15 in the afternoon, and then skipped over to "www.fbi.gov" at 1:30. This claim that URLs are just addressing data breaks down in two different ways:
- Web addresses are rich and revealing content. The URLs or "addresses" of the Web pages we read are not really addresses, they are the titles of documents that we download from the Internet. When we "visit" a Web page what we are really doing is downloading that page from the Internet onto our computer, where it is displayed. Therefore, the list of URLs that we visit during a Web session is really a list of the documents we have downloaded - no different from a list of electronic books we might have purchased online. That is much richer information than a simple list of the people we have communicated with; it is intimate information that reveals who we are and what we are thinking about - much more like the content of a phone call than the number dialed. After all, it is often said that reading is a "conversation" with the author.
- Web addresses contain communications sent by a surfer. URLs themselves often have content embedded within them. A search on the Google search engine, for example, creates a page with a custom-generated URL that contains material that is clearly private content, such as: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=sexual+orient...
Similarly, if I fill out an online form - to purchase goods or register my preferences, for example - those products and preferences will often be identified in the resulting URL.
#37. To: nolu chan (#36)
Just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the "USA/Patriot Act," an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.
Nancy Pelosi's infamous quote from 2010 about 0bama's HealthKare comes to mind: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it". And just think for a moment, that same thinking started GWBush's War on Terror.
And today, are we any better off?
#38. To: buckeroo (#37)
And of course you Remember Ron Paul saying the didn't have time to even read the bill.
#39. To: buckeroo, A K A Stone (#37)
Nancy Pelosi's infamous quote from 2010 about 0bama's HealthKare comes to mind: “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it". And just think for a moment, that same thinking started GWBush's War on Terror.
It was really much worse than the Health Care bill. The USA PATRIOT Act was largely assorted amendments to other Acts.
I will provide an example:
Section 203 of the International Emergency Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1702) is amended--
(1) in subsection (a)(1)--
(A) at the end of subparagraph (A) (flush to that subparagraph), by striking '; and' and inserting a comma and the following:'by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States;';
Without having the other Act to read, it is practically meaningless.
It amended:
8 USC §1105, 8 USC §1182g, 8 USC §1189, 8 USC §1202, 12 USC §248, 12 USC §1828, 12 USC §3414, 15 USC §1681a, 15 USC §6102, 15 USC §6106, 18 USC §7, 18 USC §81, 18 USC §175, 18 USC §470, 18 USC §471, 18 USC §472, 18 USC §473, 18 USC §474, 18 USC §476, 18 USC §477, 18 USC §478, 18 USC §479, 18 USC §480, 18 USC §481, 18 USC §484, 18 USC §493, 18 USC §917, 18 USC §930, 18 USC §981, 18 USC §1029, 18 USC §1030, 18 USC §1362, 18 USC §1363, 18 USC §1366, 18 USC §1956, 18 USC §1960, 18 USC §1961, 18 USC §1992, 18 USC §2155, 18 USC §2325, 18 USC §2331, 18 USC §2332e, 18 USC §2339A, 18 USC §2339B, 18 USC §2340A, 18 USC §2510, 18 USC §2511, 18 USC §2516, 18 USC §2517, 18 USC §2520, 18 USC §2702, 18 USC §2703, 18 USC §2707, 18 USC §2709, 18 USC §2711, 18 USC §3056, 18 USC §3077, 18 USC §3103, 18 USC §3121, 18 USC §3123, 18 USC §3124, 18 USC §3127, 18 USC §3286, 18 USC §3583, 20 USC §1232g, 20 USC §9007, 31 USC §310 (redesignated), 31 USC §5311, 31 USC §5312, 31 USC §5317, 31 USC §5318, 31 USC §5319, 31 USC §5321, 31 USC §5322, 31 USC §5324, 31 USC §5330, 31 USC §5331, 31 USC §5332, 31 USC §5341, 42 USC §2284, 42 USC §2284, 42 USC §3796, 42 USC §3796h, 42 USC §10601, 42 USC §10602, 42 USC §10603, 42 USC §10603b, 42 USC §14601, 42 USC §14135A, 47 USC §551, 49 USC §31305, 49 USC §46504, 49 USC §46505, 49 USC §60123, 50 USC §403-3c, 50 USC §401a, 50 USC §1702, 50 USC §1801, 50 USC §1803, 50 USC §1804, 50 USC §1805, 50 USC §1806, 50 USC §1823, 50 USC §1824, 50 USC §1842, 50 USC §1861, 50 USC §1862, 50 USC §1863.
#40. To: Murron (#25)
(chuckle)
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
#41. To: jwpegler (#26)
JW,
While I don't dispute your assertions here, most of em aren't what we are actually talking about. Civilians with cell phone camera's isn' the government intruding on your life.
Proxy IP's are amusing.....lmao
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