Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities > Science, Culture, & Humanities
Privacy, Big Brother (State and Corporate) and the 4th & 9th Amendments
Crafty_Dog:
All:
I suppose I could have put this very important topic on the Political Forum, but I have decided to put it here where I am hoping it will get the attention it deserves.
Marc
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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...=2007701080415
Quote:
U.S. may check Web use
Privacy advocates challenge push to track sites visited
January 8, 2007
BY JOHN REINAN
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.
For more than a year, the Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.
The idea is to help law enforcement officials track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens -- joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused.
"I don't think it's realistic to think that we would create this enormous honeypot of information and then say to the FBI, 'You can only use it for this narrow purpose,' " said Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes free speech and privacy in communication.
"We have an environment in which we're collecting more and more information on the personal lives of Americans, and our laws are completely inadequate to protect us."
Need to safeguard children
So far, no concrete proposal has emerged, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has made it clear that he would like to see quick action.
In testimony before a Senate committee in September, Gonzales painted a disturbing picture of child pornography on the Web.
But federal agents and prosecutors are hampered in their investigations because Internet companies don't routinely keep records of their traffic, he told the committee.
Gonzales also pushed for Internet records tracking in a speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in April.
"Privacy rights must always be accommodated and protected as we conduct our investigations," he said.
But, he said, "the investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers.
"This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time."
Rationales differ
Internet service providers typically keep records of Web traffic for 30 to 90 days, as a way to trace technical glitches. Many ISPs and privacy advocates say it's already easy for government agents to get the information they need to investigate crimes.
The FBI, without a court order, can send a letter to any Internet provider ordering it to maintain records for an investigation, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that promotes free speech and privacy on the Web.
"If this passes, there would be a chilling effect on free speech if everyone knew that everything they did on the Internet could be tracked back to them," Bankston said.
The government has offered differing rationales for its data-retention plan, said Harris, the privacy advocate.
"I've been in discussions at the Department of Justice where someone would say, 'We want this for child protection.' And someone else would say 'national security,' and someone else would say, 'computer crimes,' " Harris said.
Types of records unclear
There are questions about what records would be kept, said David McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, a Virginia-based group that represents about 800 ISPs.
Is it a log of every Web site a user visits? Is it the actual content of e-mails and other Internet communications? Nobody in the government has offered specifics, he said.
"When we go to them for specifics, they start shuffling and hemming and hawing, and the issue goes away until the attorney general gives another speech," he said.
"This is all being driven by a political need, not a law enforcement need."
Kathleen Blomquist, a Department of Justice spokeswoman, wouldn't comment on specific proposals for tracking.
Crafty_Dog:
EditorialTwitter Tapping Sign in to Recommend
Published: December 12, 2009
The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.
Law enforcement is not saying a lot about its social surveillance, but examples keep coming to light. The Wall Street Journal reported this summer that state revenue agents have been searching for tax scofflaws by mining information on MySpace and Facebook. In October, the F.B.I. searched the New York home of a man suspected of helping coordinate protests at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh by sending out messages over Twitter.
In some cases, the government appears to be engaged in deception. The Boston Globe recently quoted a Massachusetts district attorney as saying that some police officers were going undercover on Facebook as part of their investigations.
Wired magazine reported last month that In-Q-Tel, an investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has put money into Visible Technologies, a software company that crawls across blogs, online forums, and open networks like Twitter and YouTube to monitor what is being said.
This month the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law sued the Department of Defense, the C.I.A. and other federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about their use of social networking sites.
The suit seeks to uncover what guidelines these agencies have about this activity, including information about whether agents are permitted to use fake identities or to engage in subterfuge, such as tricking people into accepting Facebook friend requests.
Privacy law was largely created in the pre-Internet age, and new rules are needed to keep up with the ways people communicate today. Much of what occurs online, like blog posting, is intended to be an open declaration to the world, and law enforcement is within its rights to read and act on what is written. Other kinds of communication, particularly in a closed network, may come with an expectation of privacy. If government agents are joining social networks under false pretenses to spy without a court order, for example, that might be crossing a line.
A national conversation about social networking and other forms of online privacy is long overdue. The first step toward having it is for the public to know more about what is currently being done. Making the federal government answer these reasonable Freedom of Information Act requests would be a good start.
G M:
How would being undercover in real life be different than being U/C online?
Crafty_Dog:
Eric Schmidt on Privacy
Schmidt said:
I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't
want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is
that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this
information for some time and it's important, for example, that we
are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is
possible that all that information could be made available to the
authorities.
This, from 2006, is my response:
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're
doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We
are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private
places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals,
sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret
lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.
[...]
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under
threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our
own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes,
constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future
-- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us,
by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private
and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything
we do is observable and recordable.
[...]
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from
us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive
eye into our personal, private lives.
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus
privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny,
whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under
constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny.
Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus
privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of
a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even
when we have nothing to hide.
Schmidt's remarks:
http://gawker.com/5419271/google-ceo-secrets-are-for-filthy-people
My essay on the value of privacy:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-114.html
See also Daniel Solove's "'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other
Misunderstandings of Privacy."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
G M:
Ok, that's a non-answer.
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