If you are curious why people are saying this and would like some background information, here is the ACLU's report on the growing and unaccountable powers of the FBI: https://www.aclu.org/feature/unleashed-and-unaccountable
It's too bad. I was thinking about a website that would just identify cams. The website would just map out cams/cameras. I don't think I would have a problem getting info on cameras. The average American worker has been treated like dirt for too long.
My only problem is thiefs might take a liking to the site, and I can't stop that.
Anyways, I don't like being photographed for buying a bolt at Home Depot. I don't see it stoping until people say--no, but it seems like people don't care, or feel helpless?
Personally, I have never liked being photographed, or tracked. I don't think it's o.k. for anyone to bring out the video camera out after a few beers anymore. In my world, those innocent days are gone. I automatically think, "where will those pictures end up?"
There's an app called Wherearetheeyes that lets users report camera locations. I don't think it's going to do much good except maybe raising awareness.
To help people avoid surveillance, you'd need a map of cameras including field of view and expected effective recognition distance. Even then, I'm guessing most public spaces would simply turn out to be no-go zones for anyone not wishing to have their picture taken.
Given the US used to classify encryption export as a munition (and books where how stuff actually got out see the PGP hoops) that's not as unlikely as it sounds sadly.
Gun homicides are down dramatically[0], yet we hear a constant drum beat from the media about terrorists and mass shooters. Guns absolutely threaten the power structure they will be coming for them soon enough.
No they don't, at least not in the hands of white people and rightwing fringe groups. We can see this by contrasting the treatment of the Malheur occupiers versus the non-armed Standing Rock occupiers.
The Malheur occupiers carried out an armed takeover of a Federal building in the middle of nowhere. No economic threat, no political threat, so they were basically surrounded and left alone. The Standing Rock occupiers are not armed and are standing in the way of money, so they get the water cannon and worse treatment.
If there was a time for terrorism to be used as a pretext, it was much closer to 9/11. Similarly for mass shootings. Most of the public accept them as routine and children are drilled about the possibility at school. That isn't enough to make even minor gun restrictions happen. Obviously nothing is going to happen under a Republican government, especially a Trump presidency. "Soon enough" isn't this decade.
(The only thing which could provoke serious disarmament efforts would be an armed Black Lives Matter movement..)
As you mention though, Malheur vs Standing Rock is an apples to oranges comparison. The Bundy's took over a very remote ranger station that no one honestly cared about. The Standing Rock occupiers were actually in the way of something.
Other way round: guns are the distraction. You can't use them in any kind of regular politics. None of America's great moments of protest or social progress have been enabled by protestors with guns. Even mortally important ones like the civil rights movement. For obvious reasons: once you start shooting there's no easy way to stop until one side is dead.
You'll be allowed to keep them and feel good about it as a consolation prize. But when you're unemployed and lack health insurance, what good will that do you? Republicans will use gun ownership as the wedge issue while they loot the government.
Not only that, but the state has exclusive access to heavy weaponry. While some firearms are legal, many are not because they're considered too powerful — unless you happen to be the military, of course. Or the police...
Guns aren't quite as effective as they were in the times of the founding fathers, now that the government has RPGs and tanks and fighter jets, etc.
By that do you mean that a bunch of idiots on the coasts will think it's a big issue and and a bunch of people who grew up with them will think they're crazy for caring?
Instead of arbritary abuse of power by a despot we are doing the same only with processes and the law but the effect is the same.
Surveillance, secret courts, gag orders, harassment of activists and whisteblowers, no fly lists, militarization of the police, infiltration of dissenters and protest, and dubious relationships with terrorist sponsoring states show things are in a sinister and precarious state.
Our media and human right orgs so quick to turn the spotlight on others remain strangely reticent when it comes to self reflection. There is no frenzy and hysteria and no one is raising the bogey of totalitarianism and campaigning for sanctions.
Our media won't do its job and our instinctive rush to the moral high ground has lulled us in a sense of complacency.
But our moral highground and soft power built over generations is now toast. Every single bit of posturing about human rights by western media, NGOs and government will be met with derision and mockery. It is propaganda.
The use of surveillance both in the private and public sector is a 'gift' from our 'freedom loving' technologists. Ignore these naysayers and colloboraters, often found here. They have posed about freedom and liberty for decades only to suck up to authoritarianism given the slightest opportunity. The only thing they can do now is deny it, diminish it or wave it away making HN the single worst place to have a discussion on privacy and surveillance.
There's nothing wrong with being against this, but this seems like a huge stretch of the words "new" and "hacking" to the point of absurdity.
They are already allowed to remotely access this information based on the case that fired this off - the issue wasn't with their methodology but who issued the warrant. The entirety of what this rule changes is it defines special circumstances where it is appropriate for the judges in a district of a victim instead of the perpetrator to issue a warrant to do things that are already allowed.
> Under the proposed amendment, however, investigators could not obtain a search warrant merely because a user's location is concealed through technological means.
> The proposed amendment does not alter that rule, but instead provides an alternative means of satisfying Rule 41's venue provisions.
The rule clearly does not change anything about what is required to get a warrant, and concealment does not lower the bar for getting a warrant. The only thing that changes under this rule is it lays out scenarios where you would not be able to suppress evidence due to improper venue just because the warrant wasn't issued in the district you performed the crime from but instead where the crime actually occurred.
I'm not dismissing the concerns of all of those writing about this - just based on the comments and scenarios being laid out in them I think technically knowledgeable people are assuming the words "new" and "hacking" are being used correctly here without even looking into what has actually changed.
This also means people are completely unaware of what the government is already allowed to do apparently.
If everyone here got their way and this was magically blocked right now, absolutely nothing would change about what the FBI is allowed to do - only what evidence could be challenged if they ask judge A when they should have asked judge B (and can show they couldn't figure out that they were supposed to ask judge B (that's where the technological concealment comes in)).
Snooper's Charter US version. I wonder if their new found hacking powers will survive a court challenge, or will it only be used in parallel prosecutions so no court ever sees it. Guessing the latter.
That's complete and utter nonsense. The Snooper's Charter grants the UK government many new powers, and places obligations and restrictions on ISPs. It makes substantial substantive changes to the requirements for law enforcement to justify snooping and spying in the UK.
The Rule 41 change only applies to warrants seeking to access electronic documents, and makes no changes to what evidence must be presented to justify a warrant. It just changes, in two specific situations, where that evidence can be presented.
These situations are:
1. If it cannot be determined where the computer containing the documents is located, and the location has been hidden by technological means, then the warrant can be issued by a judge in any district in which the crime being investigated may have taken place. Under the old rule, the warrant had to be issued by a judge in the district where the computer was located, and so if that location could not be determined then investigators were out of luck.
2. If the crime being investigated is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the damaged computer are in five or more districts, then the warrant can be issued in any district where the crime may have occurred. Under the old rule, it had to be issued in the district where the computer was located.
This is not even remotely like the Snooper's Charter.
Which means they can now shop around for judges until they get the answer they want. Right up there with the UK in terms of severity since this means they can keep up doing what they have been doing.
For those who only started following these issues recently, standing arguments have been used for years to dismiss lawsuits against warrantless domestic surveillance. Basically, the court says that you can't sue a government agency for illegally wiretapping you unless you had evidence that they were actually wiretapping you. Which you obviously didn't, because such programs are classified and the wiretapper isn't going to volunteer that information. But since you can't prove that your rights are being violated, you don't get to bring a lawsuit.
You'll have a long wait, since this change is completely orthogonal to that.
The key change is to Rule 41(b), "Authority to Issue a Warrant". It contained a list of 5 circumstances under which a magistrate just can issue a warrant. A 6th is being added:
===={ begin quote
(6)
a magistrate judge with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district if:
(A) the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means; or
(B) in an investigation of a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5), the media are protected computers that have been damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.
=====} end quote
There is also a change to 41(f)(1)(C), which concerns serving a warrant. The prior version read:
===={ begin quote
The officer executing the warrant must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken or leave a copy of the warrant and receipt at the place where the officer took the property.
=====} end quote
The update adds another sentence to that:
===={ begin quote
For a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and seize or copy electronically stored information, the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized or copied. Service may be accomplished by any means, including electronic means, reasonably calculated to reach that person.
> issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district if ... the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means
Remote access to a computer and they don't know where it is? This basically means a Tor hidden service or something like that?
>The NSA is already allowed to collect all foreign and domestic encrypted traffic and store it forever
Nope.
"The 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."
Sure, I know the 4th Amendment, too. What's your point? Perhaps a better question: how do you establish standing to sue over the retention of your encrypted traffic? What constitutes evidence in that situation?
In a perverse way, these kind of restrictive laws starting in the US are good for the rest of the world. Let me explain.
Without doubt the concentration of computer science brilliance and investment is centred in the US, specifically in Silicon Valley. These kinds of restrictions on privacy and freedom upon those individuals will drive a kick back, investment and research into secure messaging and communication systems.
The encryption horse has already bolted, the proverbial stable door is wide open, and this could trigger the enabled and invested to bridle that horse for the good of mankind.
>> especially troubling in the hands of an administration of President-elect Trump, a Republican who has "openly said he wants the power to hack his political opponents the same way Russia does."
Who exactly are they quoting here, and is there a source? This is damning to trump if it's true, and damning to the authenticity of reuters if it's not.
Why does it take legislation by the Senate to block or delay rule changes, giving the FBI authority to remotely access computers in any jurisdiction, seems it should have required legislation to enact the changes in the first place. Unfortunately this will go unnoticed by the public until it is too late
The legislative branch has delegated extensive 'policy' and 'rule-making' (arguable legislative) powers to the executive agencies, though vague statements in legislation, and broad interpretations by the courts. The same 'deference' which has allowed HHS to re-sculpt Obamacare on-the-fly is what gives the FBI, CIA, and NSA the authority to pursue these massive surveillance programs.
As a result of the tacit support the courts and legislature have given the executive agencies in the past, the legislature is now required to affirmatively act to stop most executive actions.
There have been some proposals to require legislation to enact any large change in executive branch rules/policy/interpretations, but there is little support for such measures, as most people do not want to rule back the administrative state, they just want the state to do different things.
"We totally weren't trying to hack that vote tallying machine... it used a VPN so we weren't sure of it's location and thought it might have been a foreign system."
This is the same rule change that says if you use a VPN or TOR you can legally be hacked by the FBI, yes? I wonder if people who use work VPNs will be exempted since afaik the wording is about services that obscure your location, and most business VPNs aren't concerned with that (especially if they have split routing configured properly).
To be honest the answer seems simple. Get _EVERYONE_ on VPNs, regardless. Even if you don't really use it for much, make it connect automatically via some browser plugin and send some trash random data.
As a "data scientist" the most painful thing I have to deal with is data cleaning and data quality. Add to that the difficulty of actually getting into a (hopefully broad) array of VPN providers and tracking every person yelling into the pipe will make their (FBI/NSA) lives very very difficult, and this makes me happy on a rather visceral level.
That's actually why my group of friends all tag each others faces on Facebook as the other. Rather than not posting our faces, Facebook auto tags me as random people now (most often my wife).
> This is the same rule change that says if you use a VPN or TOR you can legally be hacked by the FBI, yes?
Emphatically no.
This rule changes absolutely nothing about what is required to get a warrant, including the specificity of it (must identify a specific computer and/or person - that doesn't change at all, so how they identify TOR, VPN, etc users is already enough and has been challenged up through the supreme court). Simply using concealment does not lower the bar or change the requirements for getting the actual warrant.
The literal only thing that changes is if you are located in District 8 and commit a crime with a victim in district 4, if the FBI can show you are using technological means to hide your location - they may handle getting the exact same warrant they are already allowed to get with the same amount of evidence in the victims district instead of having to find yours.
In the past, if you were concealing your location in a way that they filed in District 5, that evidence would have been subject to challenge due to improper venue. They are now saying that where the crime actually occurred is a valid place to get a warrant if they can also show you are using technological means to hide your location. Concealing your location isn't a crime and doesn't demonstrate that a search of a computer would uncover evidence of a crime (it's actually right there in Rule 41 (c)).
It explicitly doesn't change what methods they are allowed to use - so everything they can do after this change, they were already allowed to do.
In the Goldman Sachs case I do recall charges being brought in certain states where CFAA laws were more favorable for the prosecution, and those charges being thrown out on appeal because they were brought in the wrong jurisdiction. I don't see how this changes that.
This is a procedural change the Surpeme Court already voted in favor of. The title is clickbait from what I can tell. I'm much more concerned with recent erosion of the right to remain silent.
Hacking powers are not being expanded. A loophole that has stymied investigations had been closed.
Now what we do need is reasonable limits on the scope of allowable warrants to prevent dragnets. The more interesting question is whether the FBI should be allowed to use drive-by malware to infect all visitors of a site, and if so under which very well defined circumstances?
What TFA missed is the reason we are worried about this rule change is that it could make dragnets easier to get seemingly valid warrants for. E.g. Even if Hidden Services are not being used, investigator claims it's not 'reasonable' to get warrants for each IP accessing a site and so just infects all visitors with malware to scan the hard drive and local network for some evidence.
But that needs to be illegal for more than just the reason of not knowing what jurisdiction to get the warrant in.
One of the most important stories of the year, on HN for 6 hours, with 11 comments and 105 points. Is everyone already afraid? I always said "I told you so" would ring hollow and have no satisfaction in it, but this is what happens when everyone forgets about our foundational principles and waves injustice away with arguments such as 234dd57d2c8db's.
The constitution is the supreme law of the land, created to protect, not establish, natural rights. As such, such general warrants do not properly satisfy the constitutional requirements our country established.
Actions like this, are the result of the allowed slippage, from both sides of the isle, as prescribed to them by the shadow masters.
We have allowed our true foreign enemies to infiltrate and subvert our system, falsely focus our efforts on foreign boogeymen, all the while our domestic enemies run rampant (often backed, or blackmailed, by foreign ones).
The true, the capable, the already somewhat successful enemies of the constitution don't wear hijabs, they wear business suits and ties.
This is a turning point for America, where we either cower in fear of the coming totalitarian surveillance dystopia, or we speak up and push back. Silence now will be nothing less than acquiescence.
As Hitchens said, the American revolution is the only revolution that still stands a chance.
"I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other as this Writ of Assistance is."
> Discussion here is controlled by pro government forces
For the record, I very often see criticism of the U.S., U.K., and many other governments on HN. I see it so much that I have no problem stating unambiguously: The above statement is false.
I would expect your post to be voted down because it clearly violates HN guidelines.
Seems like the above comment complies with HN guidelines, unless you believe they are 'baiting', but they seem to be arguing that there is a systematic bias, which is a legitimate point to bring up. I see posts about race, gender, and sexuality discrimination all the time, and think a post about viewpoint discrimination is equally legitimate.
I thought that was just me. It has seemed like posts critical of government policy can disappear quickly, but I don't have a comprehensive feel for how posts move on HN so it was only ever a feeling.
How can we collect data on the mobility of posts?
I've wondered this on Facebook too. Post something about a robot I made and people love it. Post something about US weapons killing children in Yemen and no one reacts or comments.
How much of that is the fact that people just don't respond well to those things and how much of that is the algorithm hiding the post for some reason?
How can we monitor moderated sites like this? What are the metrics we could collect?
It depends on user action. User flags affect submission rankings even before the [flagged] tag appears. There's also a "overheated discussion detector" algorithm that can also depress the rankings of a submission. I think ranking may also be improved depending on the rate of upvotes (besides just quantity), e.g., if a submission gets 4 up-votes in an hour it'll have a higher rank that receiving 4 up-votes over 4 hours.
Mods can add weight to a submission as well, but from what I've seen of their public behavior on the site, I suspect they're not using such weight very often.
>I think ranking may also be improved depending on the rate of upvotes (besides just quantity), e.g., if a submission gets 4 up-votes in an hour it'll have a higher rank that receiving 4 up-votes over 4 hours.
Sure, that's true but go to new submissions page and look at the posts that got 4 votes in 15 minutes. None of them are on the front page let alone in the top 10.
I believe it also has to do with the context of activity of other submissions. Compare the activity of those submissions with the others on the top page.
If you believe someone is pushing an agenda, please be explicit about what you mean. Who is it? What agenda are they pushing? Hand-waving vague accusations sound like vague conspiracies: it's "them"! The nefarious "they"!
Edit to add: From what I've send there is one agenda that is being pushed: keep the community healthy. Try to keep flame wars, off-topic, and other non-constructive discussion to a minimum. If that happens to conflict with what you'd like to see on HN, then likely yes, there is something nefarious going on.
I'm not saying it's nefarious but mods quite often push a story up on the front page with only few votes. I've witnessed it about a dozen times. And given that it happens, they definitely want some stories to be seen. By the definition, that is an agenda -- nefarious or not.
Well that's a surreal one. I'd be shocked, though morbidly interested, if you could find even a single comment of the 16k or so we've posted that merits such a description.
What you're really describing, shorn of hyperbole and wake-up-sheeple indignation, is that the HN community is divided and there are lot of users here who just don't agree with you. That's no reason to fulminate. Please don't fulminate here.
I share your frustration about these developments, but I don't share your perception that people on HN as a whole cheerlead for the government this way. I've seen huge amounts of animosity and opposition here toward government surveillance and other expressions of government power -- often upvoted, not downvoted -- and lots of people also saying how they feel sad, angry, or helpless at some of these developments.
HN as a whole? No. But I have frequently seen pro-surveillance comments highly placed and more than a few politely spoken criticisms flagged.
This perspective may be biased by what actions are more memorable-- someone saying something I agree with in a way I've heard before isn't very memorable. But a top contributor aggressively apologizing for absurd government overreach and attacking whistle-blowers for months at a time is very memorable.
At the end of the day the extreme levels of government overreach -- the industrial scale levels of unlawful surveillance, the multitude of improperly handled security vulnerabilities, and so on-- requires that the tech industry be complicit in this unlawful and unethical conduct at least to an extent.
I've found it much more comfortable commiserating with civil rights activists who are _not_ involved with technology than talking to audience like the one here at HN-- at least with people outside the tech industry I don't have to worry that the person I'm talking to has a day job building information weapons which are being recklessly deployed against the public.
BTW, the comment you're responding to has now itself been hidden.
You, and the commenter voted into oblivion below, are blamers. If one perceives a loss of control around having a "free" existence, the easiest thing to do for resolve is to blame someone else for a) taking one's external controls away and/or b) "observe" someone else allowing their own control to be taken away. Option B is clearly "speaking" for another entity's intent for themselves (blaming). Case in point, making up a bunch of BULLSHIT that HN mods are cheerleaders for the government is absolutely crapola rationalization. They may themselves be cheerleaders for capitalism, but there's no truth they represent or support a more controlling government. Even arguing this point is a complete waste of time, which I hazard is the point anyway with dissonance.
Stop introducing dissonance into rational conversations. If you were being trustworthy, you'd put your name to your words.
Not only are you going beyond "rational conversation", you seem to be violating the HN guidelines by saying the above comment is "a bunch of BULLSHIT".
>"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""
> You accept the tyranny before you and laugh at those who resist
There are many who claim tyranny and resist just because they aren't the ones in power. I'm not so sure that just because someone shouts tyranny that we all have to fall in line behind them.
I think you're over-reacting, this change just allows the FBI to pursue investigations on the internet. Having these jurisdictions made sense in the time of horse and buggy when people weren't as mobile, but a crime committed on an IP address, forcing the FBI to get a warrant from a SPECIFIC judge where the IP address matches the jurisdiction seems unnecessary and doesn't provide much actual value.
The term hacking is overloaded anyway. If a criminal is hiding out in a concrete building with a big steel door, is the FBI committing burglary with burglary tools if they use a pick gun to pick the door lock? I don't think so. Just because a method (hacking, lockpicking, etc) is used, doesn't make it automatically some evil conspiracy to hack into everyone's machines all the time and blackmail you based on your usage habits and personal preferences for things like political affiliation, sexuality, religion, etc.
In general I think the problems with this change have been slightly overstated. However, GP is correct.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution provides in relevant part:
> [N]o 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.
A general warrant is one which does not "particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized".
The amended rule provides in relevant part
> A magistrate judge [...] has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media [of which the location] has been concealed through technological means.
Now, one doesn't have to be a constitutional scholar to see that "the place to be searched" hasn't been interpreted recently (if ever) to mean "latitude and longitude". However, there's a valid concern that the inability to even place the "where" to a particular jurisdiction is a massive weakening of the requirement to "particularly describ[e]". It may indeed be so weak that the result can be fairly called a "general warrant". How could the warrant be written otherwise? What information could it contain? I speculate the "description" will amount, in practice, to "unknown hard drive in unknown location, possibly containing X contents". That is a general warrant, because no hard drive fails to meet those criteria.
It really feels like we're marching towards a brave new world. They can pry my copy of Applied Cryptography from my cold dead hands.