> Currently, Illston is the presiding judge in Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC v. George Hotz, et al.,[13] in which Sony claims that Hotz's jailbreaking of the Sony PlayStation 3 violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
> She has granted Sony permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video about the jailbreak and to read their comments, plus obtain access to IP addresses, accounts, and other details of visitors to sites run by Geohot. The access granted by Illston extends even to those who had not downloaded the jailbreak code.
So clearly her interest in information privacy is non existant.
The context of the order in Sony is with respect to discovery in an ongoing trial. There is very little "information privacy" with respect to the power of a court to seek out evidence in a trial, from anyone that might have it. See Elkins v. United States ("The pertinent general principle, responding to the deepest needs of society, is that society is entitled to every man's evidence.").
But that's a very different issue than privacy rights in general.
The judge granted access to get IP addresses of visitors to his website, whether or not they downloaded the code, which would be relevant to Sony in proving how widely the information was disseminated. There is nothing unusual about this. Information relevant to a claim or defense is fair game for a court's subpoena power. If this was a murder case, that took place in an apartment, the judge would allow the prosecution to subpoena the lobby's visitor logs, even as to people who were not visiting the victim's apartment. This doesn't say anything about the judge's views on "information privacy" just about the fact that there really isn't any as against the subpoena power of a court. If the material is private in some way, it will be treated confidentially and redacted in public filings, but that's about it.
That's the problem with talking about a "right to privacy" in Anglo American law: there really isn't one. There are various protections serving different purposes, but they're not unified into some overarching principle of a right not to disclose or have information disclosed. That's why the subpoena power is so much broader than the power of police to search: because the animating principle isn't "privacy" but rather the protection of criminal defendants. If it were about privacy it wouldn't make sense to e.g. treat witnesses, who can be compelled to testify, differently than defendants, who can't.
Now, I'm not arguing that this is the best possible way to do things. But it's the way we have been doing it for centuries (since the Middle Ages).
Another question - are there any protections from Sony using the information in other non case related activities -extortion letters similar to porn sites come to mind.
A subpoena is a signed litigation document, which means it's either ordered by the court or issued by an attorney of record. Abuse of the subpoena can result in sanctions on both the attorney who signed it and his or her client. It can also run into various statutes (e.g. the 9th circuit allowed a suit to proceed against an attorney who issued an overbroad subpoena for e-mail under the CFAA under the theory it was equivalent to hacking the e-mail provider). Extortion is of course also illegal. Finally, witnesses can invoke the 5th to avoid producing information that might incriminate them in a subsequent criminal case.
As a general rule, there's "no money" in doing something like that. You run the risk of getting sanctioned, and if you use the information improperly in other litigation, it'll just get excluded as having been obtained via abuse of a subpoena.
The sad thing here is that there is a real war on terror, no matter what you hear. There are actual violent-minded individuals that the state has an obligation to track and protect us from.
But the powers granted to the state to do this are humongously broad. It's ludicrous to have the FBI be able to write letters and retrieve any of your online activity it wants -- all without you knowing about it. The IRS has even more power. It can pull your records without the NSLs. All you have to be is "interesting" to them. (Don't know if they've exercised this power yet, but it's coming)
So when corporations like Google complain, out trots the assistant director to give classified testimony about all these evil folks in the world. Yes, sure. But one doesn't justify the other. I'm really happy somebody is doing something about bad guys right now. What I worry about is a few years down the road when all of this security state nonsense is used for political reasons.
Some people think you have to be afraid of the government knowing too much about you. Some people think you have to be afraid of corporations knowing too much about you. Some people worry that we can easily find out too much about just about anybody (facial recognition Google glass tied back to something like Spokeo isn't far off). But it's not an either-or choice. All of these factors work together, as we see in this case.
> The sad thing here is that there is a real war on terror, no matter what you hear.
No there isn't. That's the whole trick. It's a mind thing, as long as enough people believe there is a war on terror there is a war on terror, when they stop believing they'll resort to good old police-work and the judicial system to back it all up.
See Spain and the bombings there, the UK and the bombings there, India and the bombings there and so on. Everybody else seems to treat it as a series of acts by loosely organized and funded individuals that don't seem to have a common goal or even coherency about their deeds.
And the best bit: it doesn't work. You can't declare 'war' on lone wolves or small cells if they're careful enough. Any idiot (you, me, any other visitor here) could turn around and become a terrorist tomorrow, there would be no other outward distinguishing factor, just that bit that flipped in our heads. And by the time there would be an outside observable factor (objects going 'foom') it would be way too late.
I think the best summary of the war on terror can be found in the fact that the US is forcibly feeding the "terrorists" in Guantanamo while parts of the government are trying their best to cut the money for food stamps for people that are starving.
Actually it is even worse. The majority of the people on hunger strike are Yemen nationals that had been cleared for release in 2010 but stopped from Congress after the guy that could not shove the stick of dynamite up his arse properly (underwear bomber) scared them.
It is without doubt a terrible situation that should never have happened to begin with. It's a modern day POW camp. The problem that nobody seems to be able to answer is what exactly you do with them. Their home countries don't want them and the logistics of simply releasing them into the US is very complex i.e. what will they do and what if they don't want to be there.
If you stop eating voluntarily the government will literally shove food down your throat so you do not endanger your life. (a process disturbingly close to rape)
If you stop eating involuntarily and your life is in danger because you have no food the government will just pat you on the back if some ultra right republicans have their way. Should all the poor announce that they are on hunger strike too?
So you can have habeas corpus or food security from the government but not both :) It is a dark joke. Not serious policy analysis.
resort to good old police-work and the judicial system to back it all up.
The problem is that many countries where we have radical militants operating have (a) porous borders and (b) an inadequate police/judicial system. So unless you want another situation like in Mali where there was free reign for militants then you do need the military involved hence a war on terror.
And that is the crux of the issue. When you look at weak states like Mali or Nigeria do people really want a hands off approach ?
The US & friends is the invisible fist behind Smith's invisible hand. America makes markets safe for capitalism. Empire is concerned with simulation, not reality.
So depressing, the stated reason for invading Iraq was they had chemical weapons. While lately FSB advisers to the Syrian government have been tactically using sarin gas to repel the FSA and Sunni mujahideen from strategic defenses. I only mention this for perspective, not to start a debate about Syria.
No I don't. And as a non-US citizen we are grateful that under Obama there has been a push towards multilateral engagement. And that is how you police the world: with established international treaties and institutions that have a strong moral authority.
And yes stamping our radicalism in places like Mali or Nigeria absolutely makes the US safer.
The "war on terror" is actually a war against a specific few radical so-called-Islamist groups. The intelligence services of Spain, the UK, and India (among many others) are working closely with the U.S. intelligence services to wage it effectively.
They are not militant lesbians or Eco-terrorists, they are Muslim fascists who will be killed at our discretion, regardless of any weaker groups consternations.
"There are actual violent-minded individuals that the state has an obligation to track and protect us from."
It is hard to say, given the secrecy that surrounds all this. Who are our enemies right now? Who is the government trying to protect us from? We are meant to take it as a given that there are terrorists out there and that the government is actively protecting us from them -- yet so far, we have only heard about plots that either succeeded, or that never had a realistic chance of succeeding.
We need to know the danger and how it is being addressed. If the government will not even tell us who is a suspected terrorist and why they are under suspicion, we have no choice but to assume that they are abusing their power.
Do you deny the theoretical possibility that somewhere on this planet there are people actively attempting to hurt people in the US?
Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?
This should be an argument of degrees and to what extent, not an argument about the existence of a threat in the first place, or that the government should be absolutely open about everything. Such a position is quite extremist and completely impractical.
"Do you deny the theoretical possibility that somewhere on this planet there are people actively attempting to hurt people in the US?"
No, but (a) that is irrelevant to the issue of NSLs, which are a purely domestic matter, (b) we are spending real money on fighting these hypothetical enemies, and (c) we have yet to be shown evidence that this money is being used effectively.
"Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?"
The FBI is not supposed to be conducting foreign operations. They jurisdiction ends with the borders of this nation and its embassies.
"This should be an argument of degrees and to what extent, not an argument about the existence of a threat in the first place,"
You are basically admitting that when it comes to the war on terror, nothing is temporary. We will always be fighting the war on terror. What rights we give up in the name of fighting terrorists will be permanently lost.
This is a matter of civil liberties. The secret list of suspected terrorists has come to include journalists, political dissidents, anti-war protesters, and so forth. Being on the list means losing your privacy rights, being harassed while you travel even within US borders, and potentially being assassinated by the government.
We need to able to judge this program and decide if it is something we want in our society. Secrecy is incompatible with that.
Who said anything about foreign operations or foreign terrorists? Domestic terrorists, the ones actually here, are very much under the purview of the FBI.
I asked in my previous comment, "Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?" Can you answer this?
I have another question: do you believe your/the public's judgement is going to be the best method by which to determine the efficacy of a counter-terrorism strategy, even assuming the program can be communicated in such a way so as to not compromise it's ability to be effective?
"Who said anything about foreign operations or foreign terrorists?"
Was I supposed to assume that "somewhere in the world" meant something different?
"I asked in my previous comment, "Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?" Can you answer this?"
Sure: yes. Yes, the FBI will be impeded when they are held accountable for their actions and when their actions are not secret. This is no different from warrant requirements, Miranda rights, the second amendment, the right to an attorney, etc. A democratic society where civil rights are valued gives up some law enforcement power in order to preserve its democracy and civil rights.
"I have another question: do you believe your/the public's judgement is going to be the best method by which to determine the efficacy of a counter-terrorism strategy, even assuming the program can be communicated in such a way so as to not compromise it's ability to be effective?"
When you are asking to use my tax dollars to fight terrorism, you had better be able to convince me that (a) there are terrorists to fight and (b) that you are effective at doing so. Otherwise I want tax money spent building better schools, paying for universal healthcare, paying for scientific research, paying for competent public defenders, etc. Sorry, but you cannot scare me with hypothetical terrorists.
Since you are a fan of asking pedantic questions, I have one for you: do you believe that the war on terror will ever end, or do you believe that it will always be necessary to violate basic civil rights in the name of fighting terrorists?
> Yes, the FBI will be impeded when they are held accountable for their actions and when their actions are not secret.
That's not what I asked. Can you answer the question I asked?
> Otherwise I want tax money spent building better schools, paying for universal healthcare, paying for scientific research, paying for competent public defenders, etc. Sorry, but you cannot scare me with hypothetical terrorists.
The US is a representative democracy, so this is exactly what you are putting money towards, as is the intent when conceived. We don't live in a direct democracy because of precisely the answer to the question I had asked - the layman is incapable of safely guiding a government due to the layman's general ignorance. Representatives are selected among the layman population and then these representatives are educated and given the ability to make decisions on behalf of those who elected him/her. Your tax money is not yours to decide what to spend it on directly. You indirectly decide by electing someone. Oftentimes this upsets people mostly because it puts in perspective exactly how little control over their government any one individual has, but that's how it's designed.
No one gets to be king, not even you.
And to answer your question: no. There will always be people who want to hurt the US and the people who live in it. Obviously it's a constant struggle between those who care more about keeping us safe and those who care more about maintaining freedom for the citizens of the US, but that's a good thing. The struggle will never end, neither side will ever stop fighting, and the US will (hopefully) be better for it. Your extremist view is unhelpful and frankly not relevant. You remove yourself from the conversation by taking such an outside stance.
So you support the idea of a representative democracy, but you do not think people should be allowed to review what the government is doing. That makes it pretty hard for people to choose who to vote for. If a candidate says they will increase funding for counterterrorism operations, and their opponent says they will decrease that funding, how do you think people will make a decision? How do you think people can vote against an ineffective counterterrorism program if they have no way of knowing that the program is effective?
No, we do not just select people who then learn how the government works. We select people who will carry out our will. If you want more funding for scientific research, you vote for someone who works to expand that funding. We need to know what the government is doing in order to have an effective vote. Your idea of representative democracy is a sham -- the government acting in secret is not compatible with any form of democracy. There are limited exceptions during times of war, but we are not at war (not formally), domestic surveillance is not in this category, and even military secrets are supposed to be declassified after some period of time (so that we can review past decisions).
Of course, you leave no room for ever declassifying details of the counterterrorism program in your argument. You openly admit that the "war on terror" will never end.
When even the criteria for targeting people is a secret, there is no balance being struck. All your talk about representative democracy and striking a balance is meaningless in the context of such secrecy. This is not an "extremist" position, it is just liberalism -- the same political philosophy on which America was based.
Like I said, this is an argument of degrees and extent, not yes or no. It's not "disclose everything right now" or "disclose nothing ever". Please don't pretend like those are our only two options.
It is an extremist position (and one that will get you absolutely nowhere, like it or not) to demand the FBI disclose information about ongoing investigations.
It is an extremist position (and one that will get you absolutely nowhere, like it or not) to demand the FBI disclose information about ongoing investigations.
I don't think that's the position the parent is taking. As it stands now, the FBI does not disclose information about investigations, even long after they are completed.
There's a huge difference between "don't disclose information about some ongoing investigations" and "information about these investigations will be classified forever." Many people see the validity of the former. Attacking the latter gets you nowhere.
>>Do you deny the theoretical possibility that somewhere on this planet there are people actively attempting to hurt people in the US?
Personally, I'm more worried about the Yellowstone Caldera. Its eruption is long overdue, and when it does it will damage the entire continent and kill millions.
Why isn't the government doing anything about that?
"The 2008 Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF) has estimated that the probability of an M ≥ 6.7 earthquake within the next 30 years on the northern and southern segments of the San Andreas fault as 21% and 59%, respectively."
A M 7 earhquake in California is bearly newsworthy and far from a significant threat. A low to mid 8 would cause significant property dammamge but few deaths. Even a 9 would only cause local problems. The Yellowstone Calder on the other hand would easily kill 50+% of everyone in the US with a low end eruption. Or put another way it's a significant threat to people livening in India.
PS: A great way of comparing threats is to multiply risk times death totals over a decade. On that scale terrorists and eathquakes are a joke.
Death's != property damage. Even the 10th most expensive hurricane to hit the US did 10billion in property damage with Katrina hitting 108 billion.
Consider the 9.0 that hit japan in 2011. Despite 129,225 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 254,204 buildings 'half collapsed', and another 691,766 buildings partially damaged it killed under 20,000 people.
That said, we have invested a lot to drive the death totals down in large part because earthquakes and hurricanes are fairly common. In comparison we are spending far to much on terrorism and far to little on the rare but civilization ending mega disasters.
> The Yellowstone Calder on the other hand would easily kill 50+% of everyone in the US with a low end eruption.
This stat is crazy. A low-end eruption (by far the most typical kind) at Yellowstone would kill few people in the U.S. The eruptions aren't that big and the Yellowstone downwind area is one of the least populated areas of the country.
The U.S. government dedicates many millions of dollars per year to monitoring Yellowstone, Rainier, the San Andreas Fault, and many other potential geologic threats.
What does this monitoring achieve, though, exactly? If the parent is correct in that a high end eruption at Yellowstone would kill >50% of the US's population, saying "hey guys, it's gonna erupt soon" doesn't do all that much for us.
Now, if our monitoring of earthquakes was advanced enough that we could say, "hey, San Andreas is gonna go nuts approximately 3 days from now in this general area", we could meaningfully evacuate people and save lives. But we don't have that kind of prediction accuracy.
Personally I'm more concerned by Mount Rainier, continental America's only "decade volcano".
"The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas."
"More recently (since 2001) funding from the federal government for lahar protection in the area has dried up, leading local authorities in at-risk cities like Orting to fear a disaster similar to the Armero tragedy.[38][39]"
This site is filled with knuckleheads who actually think that the fall of the US would be a good thing, but they mostly live with their parents and have certainly never run a business never mind any government. Every man is a king now that the internet is here so clowns can spout off bullshit. We are at war with Muslim extremists, pretending we aren't is not helpful.
We are at war with terror (and have been, and always will be), just as we are and have always been at war with Eastasia, but that is completely irrelevant to the question of whether massive domestic surveillance with poor oversight and even poorer accountability is a good idea.
Even if your goal is solely to prevent terrorist attacks and you don't give a damn about domestic collateral, it is still not so obvious. The question is whether, with all the data in the world, there are signals in that data that are exclusively correlated with terrorists and terrorist activities. And, secondarily, whether data mining and ML techniques have found, or can in the near future find, those signals. If not, then, in Schneier's words:
"Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through." [1]
Unless you'd care to show otherwise, you like data to support your assertions re:HN's demographics.
We--by which I assume you mean the United States--are at war with whatever seems to be most profitable to the powers-that-be at the time, whether that is drugs, Muslims, or our own citizens. There is a very valid concern that such a policy of scaremongering and sly abuse of power could result in Bad Things (tm) if the beast decides that a war on one of us would be a worthwhile expenditure of time.
To pretend otherwise is foolish.
There are people out there that wish us harm, as there always have been. Part of the burden of doing great things is the acceptance of the fact that you'll be targeted by those less capable--and part of the requirement is that you bull ahead and don't let it bother you.
> the United States--are at war with whatever seems to be most profitable to the powers-that-be at the time
This is a good example of a knucklehead comment. There is no profit in fighting cave dwelling extremists who want to make sure girls don't go to school. Instead of wishing for the demise of the US you should be saying thank Christ the Americans are in charge. HN can be a bag full of stupid on non-technical issues. I am going to start actively campaigning for the US to stop paying for the EU's defense.
"There is no profit in fighting cave dwelling extremists who want to make sure girls don't go to school"
Unless you are making bullets, guns, body armor, etc. Never underestimate the US government's ability to do seemingly pointless things just to prop up certain businesses. We see that very same pattern of behavior elsewhere in the government; what makes you think the military is exempt?
Thus explaining the lack of military response in the "friendly" countries where those terrorists had been hiding, training, and collecting their money, and the continued military effort elsewhere that is directed at people who were not involved with the attack.
If you want to stay in office, you do things which gain you political capital--you protect your citizens from threats real or fabricated, you promote the economy through sound policymaking or cronyism, and so on and so forth. There is nothing inherently good or bad about my statement; one simply does not do anything in policymaking without a profit motive, be it for themselves or their constituents.
Well no - the metric you have given is people/seconds/people which is people/(seconds*people) which gives 1/s which is frequency and not time.
But anyway I have found that data based decisions and policies tend to produce better outcomes than emotional based ones.
I do find my theory sound - that currently in the world there is no terrorist organization (or even state actor outside of Russia/China) that is capable to deliver enough pain to convert the US to failed state.
The Russians were hammered terribly in WWI and WWII and survived - 20-40 million lives lost. Germany was razed and survived. Poland was decimated and survived. Japan got direct nuclear hits and survived as a state. Israel is under constant real treat for a tiny country and is doing fine.
9/11 was a black swan - a lot of systems already in place failed. The subsequent plots were all incompetent and much smaller in scale (which we are thankful for).
So the statehood of the US is in no danger. And there is tiny danger for the civil populace.
There may be a lot of factors that could turn the US into the Mad Max world - economic collapse, ecologic one, meteorites, IP laws gone berserk.
But the idea that terrorist could cause the fall of the US don't hold to basic napkin math.
Because its a "wicked" problem to put it in SV speak how do you know out of say 10k Suspects who is going to go nuts and behead a squaddie in broad daylight - I am sure that the FBI NCIS etc are worried that something could happen in the USA
Unfortunately you have to be able to monitor suspects and having some judicial oversight is the best solution we have come up with.
The problem is I think in the US that you have the FBI which have mostly a traditional policing role as well as CT and security so you get procedures meant only for serious cases available to you average copper.
Might have been better to split the FBI in two and have a federal police force and a separate version of MI5 - you have so many intelligence services whats one more :-)
"how do you know out of say 10k Suspects who is going to go nuts and behead a squaddie in broad daylight"
This is kind of like asking, "How do you know who in a town of 10,000 people will murder their spouse?" When did America become a country where people who might commit a crime tomorrow are targeted for surveillance or other investigation?
Yes and your point is? This is exactly the point the boss of MI5 made over the Woolwich killings.
Are you seriously saying if you where caught in a third country (and expelled) trying to cross to a failed state with an Islamic insurgency that the FBI should not be able to tap their phones which is what you are implying.
My point is that in this country, we do not conduct surveillance on everyone who might commit a crime. We conduct surveillance on people suspected of having already committed specific crimes, or for whom there is strong evidence that they are about to commit a specific crime. We do not just conduct surveillance of people who might be criminals -- we demand that the police have a good reason for labeling people as suspects ("probably cause"). There is some room for conducting searches or surveillance without a warrant, but nothing even remotely close to the FBI's behavior with NSLs.
The abuses of power are already evident. The FBI has not limited themselves to surveillance of militants or their leaders. Peaceful anti-war protesters have been targeted. Leftist professors have been targeted. Programmers writing cryptography software have been targeted. There should be no surprise that the FBI has abused its power, because no conclusions can be drawn about the criteria used to select surveillance targets. The criteria, like the list of suspects, is a secret.
"Are you seriously saying if you where caught in a third country (and expelled) trying to cross to a failed state with an Islamic insurgency that the FBI should not be able to tap their phones which is what you are implying."
This is a hard sentence to parse. What are you saying? That I am claiming foreign terrorists should not be the targets of FBI surveillance? Well, this may be news to you, but the FBI is not supposed to investigate crimes committed outside US borders, with the exception of crimes committed within our embassies (and certain crimes committed on military bases). Yes, I am saying that the FBI should not be investigating foreign terrorists. Yes, I am saying that the only reason the FBI should be investigating a foreign terrorist is if they come to this country and commit terrorist acts or organize a conspiracy to do so.
To summarize it for you: Yes, civil rights and democracy trump the war on terror.
That is exactly what happened in the UK a few days ago and I am talking about domestic terrorists in this case like Boston or Oklahoma City
How do you stop another oklahoma city other than by monitoring far right extremists/ How much info woudl you require to track members of a group?
I agree the standard cops should need a warrent for all access and NSL letters should only be for serious crimes and by that i mean only terrorism or national security ones.
Personally I think the FBI should have been split two one to do the day to day cop stuff and the other to do what in other countries is handled by there security service.
I think this is really the key flaw in what you're arguing for. You're asking the wrong question. The assumption you're making is that there is a group of people wanting to commit an act of terrorism the consequences be damned, and we have to stop them. But you're closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. You're fighting terrorism in the wrong place.
Apply your logic to any other crime. Murder is a good example. How can we stop spouses from killing each other unless we bug everyone's home in real time? The answer is, we can't. Anyone can pick up a knife in a fit of rage and commit murder. Anyone can mix common substances to make a bomb and kill a dozen people. You can't stop them. Stopping them after they've already committed to doing the deed is too little too late.
What you have to do is to not allow anyone to get to that point. The normal law enforcement method of doing this is to deter with punishment: If you murder someone you will be convicted, so you fear the punishment and refrain from committing murder, and then we don't have to stop you because you stop yourself. Notwithstanding the occasional zealot, this works just fine for most types of terrorism: If the terrorist expects to be executed, most people don't want to be executed, so they're deterred from committing any acts of terrorism.
This is the part where people's heads explode. Some terrorists don't care if they die, so you can't deter them. The normal law enforcement method doesn't work, so people assume we have to come up with some new draconian method of actually physically preventing crazy people from blowing stuff up, as if that's ever going to work. But here's the thing: In order to martyr yourself like that, you have to either be batshit insane or extraordinarily dedicated to your cause, if not both. And the first one is a mental health issue having nothing to do with law enforcement. The way you fix that one is to get the mentally ill into treatment before they decide that God is talking to them through a dog and wants them to steal an oil tanker and crash it into a fertilizer plant.
The second one is the one that makes people angry because the solution looks too much like allowing terrorism to be effective. But the fact is that going into foreign countries and killing mothers and fathers causes children to become radicalized. Nobody sane is ever going to be willing to die in order to punish Americans for eating pork. People may be willing to die because you killed their family.
But doing the right thing is not "letting the terrorists win." Completely regardless of its effects on terrorism, we should not be killing innocent people in foreign countries (or anywhere else). Stop doing that and soon enough you discover a dearth of terrorists to have to stop.
I think people forget that judges are appointed by elected officials who are acting on their behalf. They either forget this, or are unsatisfied with it due to the incredibly small ability this system grants any individual person (by design).
The idea is that a judge will act on behalf of those who appointed him/her, who are in turn acting on behalf of those who elected him/her. If you want something to happen differently, elect someone different. That's your only mechanism for change in this current system.
"There are actual violent-minded individuals that the state has an obligation to track and protect us from."
...And some of them are IN the government. Where do you think Hitler came from? He won a democratic election. Also Mussolini. Where Stalin came from? From the government itself.
Government (centralized power) attracts power freaks as dung does to the flies. The mechanism democracy has for protecting itself is people's supervision.
They are destroying the feedback look of people controlling power. Out of sight, out of mind in democracy means there is no democracy at all, as people can't see what they supposedly control.
Most people don't object the government tracking individuals, what people object is the removal of the knowledge about it. If they inspect my house, I know it, why I can't with my digital info?
No he got the enabling act passed by arresting and killing the opposition deputies I am sure that roberts rules of order don't suggest murder as valid form of political action :-)
Hilter's rise to power was through an election but prior to that there was lots of violence etc caused by the Nazi's so it shouldn't have been any surprise that he was a violent individual.
Mussolini led a coup d'etat to take a power.
And Soviet hardly had a peaceful start and Stalin played a part in that.
None of these exactly popped out of nowhere from within the government.
Last I checked none of the current 'western' governments rose to power via fear and intimidation.
That said, yes power attracts people who want power. I can't dispute that.
> What I worry about is a few years down the road when all of this security state nonsense is used for political reasons.
Why do you think this isn't happening presently? Are you aware of the IRS's targeted scrutiny of certain groups applying for 501c3 status? This does not directly relate to the NSLs being discussed here, but it is an indication of how politics enters government agencies.
Frankly, I would be surprised if these NSLs aren't currently being used for political ends, by whomever has access to their use.
Yeah, but those were groups who have as one of their political purposes tax avoidance...
I mean... it's like sending a police officer to a store where someone has threatened to rob it beforehand.
If the FBI wants to investigate someone who has said they're determined to kill people with a bomb, I don't have a problem with them surveiling that person.
I think yours might be more short sighted. I, quite explicitly, feel compelled to pay taxes. To say that you will always minimize your taxes explicitly denotes your misanthropy and failure to value civilization.
If I attended a protest like Occupy Wall Street or something, and gmailed my friends about it. Then, a year later, was told that I can't board an airplane because I'm on a no-fly list.
"A US government-mandated backdoor allowed China to hack into Gmail"
"In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access."
When you have a war on amorphous things like drugs and terror, the tactics, tools and strategies of the people waging said war will necessarily be amorphous as well. The war is broad, hence the tactics are broad. We as citizens should define what the war is and thus be able to define the tactics. Until we decide that the war on Terror is ridiculously broad in scope, we will continue to face tactics by our own government that are infringements on our rights.
In reality, you're more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than be killed by a terrorist. You're 1,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist. And so on. And one reason why the U.S. has been targeted by more Islamic terrorist attacks than say, the liberal democracy of Switzerland, is that we meddle far more in the Middle East countries that terrorists call home. It's policy blowback.
On HN, especially, we should be able to do simple statistical calculations of what we really should be worrying about. You're more likely to die from falling in the shower than being eaten by a shark, but one threat gets a lot more media coverage than the other.
It is true that some fraction of terrorists would happily kill hundreds of millions of Americans, if they had the ability. So it makes sense to concentrate on existential WOMD threats, improve cargo container scanning for suitcase nukes, place radiation scanners in major population centers, fund defenses against biological agents, etc.
To its credit, FedGov is doing that. But it's also doing far more than that, domestically and abroad. HomelandSec "anti-terror" grants have been used to fund cultural centers, zombie apocalypse demonstrations, armored vehicles for one-stoplight towns, snow-cone machines, etc. And people involved in the HomelandSec apparatus have incentives to exaggerate because their salaries or funding levels or relative prominence are tied to the perceived nature of the threat.
Beware the framing argument. If privacy advocates get stuck arguing about whether people "should" worry about terrorists, they are going to lose, because people do worry about terrorists. They've demonstrated it repeatedly in polls and elections.
What I worry about is a few years down the road when all of this security state nonsense is used for political reasons.
The use of the public's fear of terrorism to push for new "security" powers and other unrelated goals -- what I would call "used for political reasons" -- started within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Worrying about "a few years down the road" is decades too late.
Perhaps if these individuals were so dangerous, it would actually benefit everyone if they knew they were being watched and that not so many of these NSLs had the gag order attached. Just [the individual and even public] knowing the govt might be on to their activities might be enough to stop it in its tracks. Except then this creates the culture of fear and suspicion... welcome back 1984 references!
Its a question of response. And there are two broad policy approaches, both based on the transparency; In the first there is full transparency for the state and full opacity for the people. This is the current policy of the US Government and attempts to both mitigate conspiracies by making them hard to maintain, and enhance discovery by detecting people trying to maintain cover. In the second there is full transparency for both the state and the citizens (which is to say it goes both ways). This enhances discovery (both inside and outside the state) but also makes operations harder (on both sides).
It is asserted that the first policy converges on a totalitarian state solution, it is also asserted that the second policy converges on anarchy. As neither of those end points are stable, I don't agree that they are convergent so much as inflection or transition points.
The easier its made to track people the fewer trackers should be needed and the process should become far more transparent. Of course everything I hear about our "homeland security" leads me to believe the exact opposite is true.
In a free and open society, we can't accept a government which operates in secret. If our government is to be accountable to the people, it needs to be transparent in what it's doing and how it's doing it. Just crying "national security, national security" doesn't magically make it OK for the government to do whatever it wants.
I've often considered that if I were in a position to receive one of these, that I'd turn around and publish it on the web immediately after receiving it, and just accept the consequences. If that day ever comes, I hope I have the courage to go through with it.
If we posit that society should be free and open, then what is the problem with the government obtaining this information in the first place?
By analogy: I walk down a public street freely and you can take my picture freely, and follow me, and make notes about my whereabouts. You're under no obligation to notify me that you're collecting that information about me, since I'm moving in public.
Not that I'm arguing in favor of this government power. I'm just saying that I think the heart of the matter is that we feel that some aspects of society should not be free and open. There should be a significant legal burden on the gathering of certain information.
The most insidious thing about this is that the government is probably precluded from collecting the kind of information about us that companies like Google and Facebook routinely gather. But as long as someone else has already done the work, the government can just demand the information.
To be fair, that's literally the point of a search warrant (/subpoena/"demand letter"). It's a bit like saying that the phone company has already done all the work identifying who you call. Well, yes, that's what you use them for. I assume your point is more that we use these services for more than any one service in the past.
The real issue in this case, however, is that the FBI can request the data and no one will ever know that they did. That can only lead to abuse. How many of those 192,499 requests were actually used to fight terrorism? Well, we can't find out...
The text reads: "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."
The ", and" between "violated" and "no Warrants" complicates the interpretation.[1] At common law, there was a well-understood universe of things that required warrants. Thus, the comma can be read as creating two separate requirements:
1) All searches must be reasonable; and
2) All warrants (to the extent that a search requires a warrant) must be supported by probable cause.
This reading admits the possibility of searches that are reasonable but don't require warrants. And this is a common sense category (e.g. very few people would say that police should have to go get a warrant to search a robber caught at the crime scene for weapons).
Contemporary battles tend to be over what kinds of searches require warrants.
This isn't just a battle over grammar, however. It's a question of: "what did we agree on the scope of the government's powers being?" As a general rule, the law doesn't constraint the government's ability to subpoena information from a third party without a warrant. E.g. if you're being prosecuted for fraud, the government doesn't need a warrant to subpoena your business partners requesting all documents they have from their dealings with you. The purpose of the 4th amendment is to protect you from the indignity of the search, not to protect the information itself. Under that logic, you can make a reasonable case that nothing should stop the government from subpoenaing any information Google or AT&T have about you.
The real problem here is the secret nature of the NSL's, not the 4th amendment issues, IMHO. One of the things that justifies the far-reaching subpoena powers of common law courts is the fact that they are distributed, transparent entities--nearly everything is a matter of public record.
[1] In plain speech, I might say: "I eat pizza, and I eat cake." The ", and" combines two independent thoughts without any necessary relationship between them, other than the fact that I like both. It could be the case that I never eat pizza and cake in the same meal.
Many of the warranted search battles when dealing with online information center around who owns the data. "Persons, houses, papers, and effects" might have made a lot of sense when indirect communication only could travel via letters, and knowledge only stored in books and memoirs.
If a jewelry store puts up cameras to track people in the store, the jewelry store owns the footage and information. If Google tracks user queries, Google owns the tracking data (even if its about me). If I buy a storage locker, a warrant is needed to open it up without my consent. If Google "sells" me data storage either directly or indirectly, I assume I own the data stored within and it should take a warrant to access it, regardless of how easy it might be for the superintendent of the service to access it.
Right, but remember that NSL's are about metadata. Extending the 4th amendment to your Dropbox is an easier case than extending it to Google's metadata about what sites you visit and who you e-mail.
And as a practical matter, the legal status of online information needs to catch up not just in the police context. If Public Storage loses the contents of my locker due to their negligence, I can sue. Can I sue Google if they accidentally lose the contents of my gdrive? Can I insure the contents of my gdrive?
"Metadata" in this context is such a silly concept. It's another example of the hilarity that ensues when lawmakers attempt to use analogies to shoehorn digital concepts into the traditions of physical reality.
What's silly about it? The distinction is one that transcends "digital versus physical": information a third party collects about you versus information you yourself communicate. The relevant differences don't stop being relevant simply because everything is stored as bits instead of say paper records. If the government can ask a shopkeeper at a brick and mortar store what you bought there, it makes sense that it can ask a digital retailer what you bought there. That's not because we analogize from brick and mortar stores to digital retailers, but because in both cases we're dealing with information third parties have collected about you, based on your voluntary dealings with them.
Lawmakers use analogies because they're conceptually very powerful. Say you have two things: 1 and 2. 1 has characteristics X, Y, and Z, and 2 has characteristics X, U, and V. A rule applies to 1 because of characteristic X. Analogizing from 1 to 2 on the basis of the shared characteristic X is an intuitive (and logically valid!) way to argue that the rule should also apply to 2. Not because 1 and 2 are identical or even very similar, but because the animating force behind the rule is the shared characteristic X that is present in both 1 and 2.
It's silly because the specific examples you gave, which websites you visit and who you e-mail, are both deeply personal and speak to the innermost thoughts of a person. Attempting to trivialize the impact of their disclosure by calling them "metadata"[0] is detrimental to everyone but the police.
Physical-to-digital analogies are very dangerous in a lawmaking setting because lawmakers rarely understand the implications of applying a physical power they wield in the digital realm. Examples include the lobbyist-proposed law allowing IP owners to infiltrate others' computers and delete ostensibly stolen files, while simultaneously destroying the entire concept of digital security, and the DMCA making it illegal to recycle printer cartridges or switch cellular carriers.
[0] Yes, I know that is the technical term for data about data, but there are plenty of examples where technical terms and legal terms differ in definition, intent, and hidden implications.
> It's silly because the specific examples you gave, which websites you visit and who you e-mail, are both deeply personal and speak to the innermost thoughts of a person.
Except they're not personal at all, being visible to god knows how many intermediaries and being recorded in plain text for any sysadmin to see. Maybe we'd like to treat them as such, and legislate accordingly, but that's not their inherent nature.
I think the problem here isn't lawmakers not understanding the implications of digital technology, but technologists adhering to a romantic view of technology rather than a literal one. Forget the law, forget the philosophy, just look at the mechanics of the process. Reading a web page is not a private act. It involves plain text communications over public networks through intermediaries to a host that is free to and does record identifying information. Privacy is not a core tenant of the internet protocols, whether you're talking about TCP/IP, HTTP, or SMTP.
This is not an example of an impedance mismatch between a technical term and the same legal term. We don't treat mailing addresses the same and e-mail addresses the same because they both have "mail" in the name. We do it because both have the characteristic of being routing information visible to third parties outside the communication. The idea is that routing information can't be all that "deeply personal" if you voluntarily expose it to a bunch of people. It's irrelevant whether its digital versus physical, or whether you call it "metadata" or something else, or whether the "bunch of people" is the postal service or your e-mail hosting service.
> Isn't it more important to advocate a policy than to try to interpret the placement of a comma?
I mean that question is the "emacs versus vi" of holy wars in the legal community. My legal philosophy tends to lean towards pragmatic/conservative, which means I think it's generally more important to interpret the placement of the comma. The reason is that, like conservatives generally, I tend to view the Constitution as an agreement, the last time Americans ever agreed on anything (and then just barely). So given the extreme lack of consensus today, I think it's at least a principled position to fall back to the existing agreement.
At the same time, I'm pragmatically concerned about judicial legitimacy, which is a function of how the judiciary spends its political capital. The farther judicial decisions stray from the original intent of the laws, the more political capital is spent. Every time the judiciary disagrees with the elected branches, political capital is spent (see, e.g., the response to Citizens United, which is an excellent interpretation of the law, but went against what the political branches wanted). I don't think its wrong for judges to "legislate from the bench" but I recognize that it costs political capital to do so, and that this political capital is best saved for situations in which there is an acute need to overturn the existing agreement (e.g. I'll concede that Roe v. Wade was a very tenuous interpretation of the law, but I also think it was one of the rare cases where it was necessary for the court to make up law out of thin air).
But that's my two cents. As I said, it's the subject of much religious zealotry. Lots of people would say that the most important thing is to establish the "right" policies. In terms of what policy I think is best, I'm a huge fan of judicial oversight, so I think the only exceptions to the warrant requirements should be exigent circumstances (e.g. searching a suspect for weapons at a crime scene).
Agrees with what interpretation, Niels? That it's "reasonable OR with a validly issued warrant", or that it's "reasonable AND with a validly issued warrant"?
The key is to understand that "unreasonable" qualifies the set of searches that may not be undertaken without a warrant. And therein lies the gray fog of uncertainty...and potential abuse.
To be fair the NSL is the same thing as a warrant minus the judicial oversight (and possible paper trail). A NSL isn't diametrically different than a warrant.
> A NSL isn't diametrically different than a warrant.
The whole judicial oversight is the main and most important difference. Justice is supposed to be a balance and in these case the other side is loading the scale.
A NSL is a government order to produce something, so is a warrant. The difference is that a warrant has oversight as a check against abuse, and a NSL has removed all oversight (no judge, can't talk about it, etc).
| The whole judicial oversight is the main and
| most important difference
Not necessarily. If Google (or whomever) could publish all of the NSLs that they get, it would have the possibility to cause public backlash that spurns Congress into action. Let's not forget that if we use the 'secret court' (e.g. FISA) to approve these NSLs, there's a 99.9% chance of them being approved. The FISA court rarely rejects what is put to it (which makes it sort of telling that the government doesn't even want to deal with the formality of the FISA court).
| Justice is supposed to be a balance and in
| these case the other side is loading the scale.
You are trying to say that because you don't like National Security Letters, but you do agree with warrants that they have to contain no similarities. I disagree with NSLs, but talking about NSLs like warrants without judicial oversight doesn't require some addendum of, "OMG! NSLs ARE NOT WARRANTS! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!"
Well, yes. Both are legal requests, if you want to think of it that way. But types of requests can be differentiated. We can draw a distinction, for instance, between a charity requesting that you voluntarily donate $$$ and an armed man on the sidewalk pulling a gun and requesting $$$. :)
That's not correct. You can only request "non-content" data with a NSL, e.g. IP addresses, times of access, headers, etc. You need a warrant if you want actual content of communications, etc.
(that's legally, of course. Many companies will roll over for even an informal request if they don't know better or to play ball (see: the telecom industry))
The fact that there is no judicial oversight, and thus almost no paper trail, is the real problem. They may not be completely different; they are different enough to be a cause for concern.
Does anyone know if they're actually precluded from this, or if it's just a matter of it being far more convenient to NSL a company that already has the data? As least in the latter scenario, they're not simply collecting data on everyone all the time.
Relevant: "Illston, who is stepping down from her post in July, said another reason for her decision is her desire not to interfere while the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing the constitutionality of NSLs in an unrelated case that she also oversaw.
In that separate lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company, Illston dealt a harsh blow to the bureau's use of NSLs."
The mechanism for "watching the watchers" are the other two branches of government. One of the most worrying things I've seen is that the judicial branch seems unwilling to really oversee the executive branch. It's like judges want to abrogate their responsibility to check executive power. Are warrants really that much of a headache? Are they really that slow? Do the judges think that it matters that little to the public and the risk of harm that low?
It's not because judges think warrants are a headache. It's because judges are deathly scared of being perceived as "judicial activists." The story of the judiciary of the last 20-30 years is the story of the backlash against the judiciary for liberal activism during the 1960's and 1970's, and a subsequent tendency to defer to the political branches whenever possible.
As against the other two branches, all the court has is political capital. Nothing stops the President or Congress from just ignoring a court decision. The judiciary spent tremendous political capital during the civil rights era, and doesn't have enough left to battle the current era of overreaches in the name of national security. And in any case, national security was always one of the areas in which the executive branch was considered to be supreme over the other two branches.
Judges don't wake up in the morning and say, "Well, I would like to do the right thing and declare this surveillance unconstitutional, but there was that Brown v. Board of Education sixty years ago, and so I'm going to punt!" Especially when you have tenure for life and -- in the case of the judge mentioned in my article that started this thread -- are voluntarily retiring in a month anyway. (Even if you get removed from office, which of course never happens, you'd get 5x - 10x your salary in the private sector.)
In general, lower courts follow the lead of appellate courts, which in turn follow the lead of the Supreme Court. And on constitutional issues, those justices don't like to get too far out in front of what they believe the national consensus to be. That's why you have toothless rulings like U.S. v. Lopez, a commerce clause case that conservatives initially applauded, only to have Congress slightly tweak the law without complaint from the courts.
> Judges don't wake up in the morning and say, "Well, I would like to do the right thing and declare this surveillance unconstitutional, but there was that Brown v. Board of Education sixty years ago, and so I'm going to punt!"
Sure, but there is definitely a "mood" in the judiciary. If you read opinions from today versus those in say the 1970's, you can definitely see a self-concious deference to the political branches that didn't exist back then. E.g. compare the D.C. Circuit of the 1960's to the current one.
You might be right. Or at least I'm not saying you're wrong. But do you have any cites that compare then-vs-now?
In reality the DC Circuit spends much of its time today striking down regulations enacted by the political branches, and actually takes some glee in doing so. In HNesque areas, the court tossed out the Net neutrality regulations and the broadcast flag regulations. There's a reason the president wants to tilt the makeup of that court.
Responsibility is a headache. Even better than covering your ass is not having to.
Judges should be issuing warrants for searches, and denying them when appropriate. But what if a judge appropriately denies a warrant for an overly broad search with no evidence of wrong doing on the part of those being searched, and then a building is blown up and it turns out the overly broad search would have caught the bastard? The judge acted appropriately, but he'll be crucified none-the-less.
Too many people don't want to take the responsibility for doing the right thing and having bad come of it, so they'd rather do nothing, or even the wrong thing.
Judges can only act retrospectively. The Supreme Court cannot wake up and say "X is unconstitutional". They look at the issues as they apply to a particular litigation.
The laws that brought NSLs and similar things were designed to make it incredibly difficult and expensive to appeal in a court. The alternative to warrantless searches has been a top secret court dedicated to National Intelligence issues that approves 97% of warrants. The PATRIOT act laws circumvented even that nominal oversight.
All they would have to do is go through traditional judicial procedure to gather information and nobody would complain. That shouldn't be too much to ask.
FYI, folks, I just posted a new article about a different lawsuit in New York in which the U.S. Department of Justice is asking a asked a Manhattan judge to grant its "petition to enforce" the FBI's NSL:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-depart...
My god those comparisons are stupid. Was the U.S. getting involved in WW2 a severe overreaction since Americans were massively more likely to die of polio or black lung than Japanese or German bombs?
A foreign military's bombs were intended as a prelude to invasion or destruction of the entire military capacity. A terrorist attack is a prelude to ... nothing much.
I don't think Japan was interested in destroying our entire military capacity, just enough to get us out of the Pacific. It wasn't a radically dissimilar aim than Al Qaeda's goal to get us out of the Islamic world, though just about everything else about the two events was different.
As for a terrorist attack being "a prelude to ... nothing much", you know there was a first World Trade Center bombing, right?
Contempt of court. Also, even though some FBI NSL demands may improper, others would have a valid anti-terror component, and no company I'm aware of would intentionally interfere with such an investigation.
More importantly, the USG could find evidence against the individual, even invent something or help the target commit a crime, then "legitimately" say "See, Google is directly protecting real terrorists", which would help the USG far more than Google giving in to the NSLs.
The US government is missing the mark so completely, it is scary.
Does anyone here think that actual, real terrorists are going to be discussing their plans using anything other than highly encrypted protocols, along with code words?
These measures are absolutely of no use in catching anyone that is more intelligent than a gnat that actually wants to harm the US.
I'm right with you in spirit, you should be 100% correct. But these terrorists do keep using electronic communications.
I don't think any one serious and vaguely intelligent planning a major crime would do so using electronic communications. Surely every one now knows that it is iffy at best, and many believe that it is basically easily open to the authorities at a whim. But over an over again, these terrorists and/or their sympathisers do keep using electronic communications, then getting caught. Almost every case I can think of that has ended up in court and is reported on, has a big element of electronic communications evidence. It seems they are indeed as intelligent as that poor gnat, (who is probably asking why he is being bought in to it!!!). But, IIRC, a lot of the terrorists, we are told, are pretty smart people. They are not trailer trash (US) or chav scum (UK), they turn out to be degree level people, or students studying for degrees. Smart people, right?
Ok, a fair number of them expect to die as a result of their terrorist action, but as we saw in Boston, that was not the case for them. But, why risk the "mission" being blown before it happens because of an electronic interception? They then risk doing the time, with out doing the crime.
Worse still, it then gets used to justify the removal of various freedoms and liberty from the average citizen. And so on....
What you are saying should be 100% correct. It really should. But insanely, it isn't.
> Does anyone here think that actual, real terrorists are going to be discussing their plans using anything other than highly encrypted protocols, along with code words?
We keep seeing that a lot of terrorists are quite amateurish.
What is to stop Google from simply giving the FBI the runaround for as long as it takes to get the legality sorted out. They could agree to give them the data and then cite technical difficulties, bureaucratic red tape, and other mistakes to stall for a year or two.
What's with all the knee-jerk reactionary responses (and with all of them repeating roughly the same thing)? Under our legal system, it really shouldn't come as a shock to see how things turned out.
Is this a good time already to start building service clones from other countries that have a big stamp on it:
"FBI-SAFE! 100% guarantee there's no ~FBI CRAMPS~ on your private communication, photos, locations, likes, etc we respect your privacy and we care for the future of mankind! Want to live in dystopian 1984 future in just about 10 years? We don't, too!
Still, that's not the point.
The point is that all this madness is so fragile and stupid that it can give lever for digital businesses overseas to have competitive edge on yours by both not being forced to waste resources building backdoors and surveillance into their systems(which also make them less secure) and also by making them have an advantage no USA business will be allowed to have ever, which is to offer privacy. It's probably what MEGA was thinking.
Now when and if this happens the FBI will really see what's 'going dark'. Of course, they have plenty of means to try influencing things their ways but it's utterly unmanageable, if they choose to hack the servers and news break that US Government agencies are hacking into legitimate businesses overseas, it's not gonna sit well with both governments(Brazil, for example, is historically a pacific country that tries to not interfere with anyone, how will you make it into a terrorist country?) and to the general population, they can also do it politically but this won't sit well with the country's population too and are sure to have 'anti-american' vibes increasing, besides that, each country has it's culture and takes on civil liberties(and the chopping of them) and also it's own interests and industries it allows to influence it's politics, in Brazil that would be Meat, Soil, Mining, Cars industries... and if allowing privacy(or, at least, keeping civilian basic constitutional rights) ends up helping the economy too then it may also be a choice to be considered to support it too, right? Dunno if Hollywood bullshit will stick everywhere, and going heavy-handed on other countries matters are sure to spread the shit, there's plenty of countries in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Illston
> Sony v. Hotz
> Currently, Illston is the presiding judge in Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC v. George Hotz, et al.,[13] in which Sony claims that Hotz's jailbreaking of the Sony PlayStation 3 violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
> She has granted Sony permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video about the jailbreak and to read their comments, plus obtain access to IP addresses, accounts, and other details of visitors to sites run by Geohot. The access granted by Illston extends even to those who had not downloaded the jailbreak code.
So clearly her interest in information privacy is non existant.