DNI Office Asks Why People Trust Facebook More Than the Government 273
Daniel_Stuckey writes "General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Robert S. Litt explained that our expectation of privacy isn't legally recognized by the Supreme Court once we've offered it to a third party. Thus, sifting through third party data doesn't qualify 'on a constitutional level' as invasive to our personal privacy. This he brought to an interesting point about volunteered personal data, and social media habits. Our willingness to give our information to companies and social networking websites is baffling to the ODNI. 'Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?,' he asked."
Executive Power (Score:4, Insightful)
When was the last time Facebook's swat team raided someone's house, taking all posessions and ruining their job/social image?
How many people are in jail for life because of Google's will?
Now granted if a company the size of Facebook decided to target an individual, that person would have a very hard time defending due to the large mismatch in resources. But this kind of this doesn't happen often, because it's not really profitable. On the other hand, targetting alleged law-breaking individuals is part of the government's job and is a regular occurence.
The government is granted a lot of power for the good of society -- power to decide the fate of any citizen or company. In exchange for that power, they are held to a much higher standard and have a responsibility to implement the most stringent safeguards. However inconvenient those safeguards might be, it's the price of maintaining public confidence.
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Seriously? Gee, I don't know... maybe it's because those private parties can't ruin your fucking life like a government can?
Any private party can initiate executive power - just call your local government official.
Just because it's from a private party doesn't mean they have no power over you.
Also, the government is granted power because we DON'T want private parties to have that power.
Re:Executive Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the government is granted power because we DON'T want private parties to have that power.
Exactly. We want a clean distinction between those who are allowed to use force to ruin our lives, and those who are granted other abilities. The government by definition has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence for purposes other than self-defence. Having been given that, we should be very wary every time we consider giving them any additional power.
When we let the government start interfering in those parts of our lives that have previously been dealt with through private means, we are doing exactly what you warn against - we're mixing private and government power.
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I agree. To sum it in two words: Police Powers.
FB doesn't have those do they DNI?
B.T.W. and for what its worth- When signing the Act in 1947 creating the CIA, President Truman refused to create the DNI as it now stands because: "People will not tolerate a Gestapo in America."
Re:Executive Power (Score:5, Interesting)
Just scroll down a few slashdot stories to see some examples of government abuse of power [slashdot.org] and ways it over-reacts with police force against private citizens. Heck, My home state now has a moritorium on the death penalty because we kept sending innocent people to death row.
If the people of the State of Illinois killed innocent people, does that make them all murderers?
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Lethal force? Really? When they decide that safety measure are too expensive and so sacrifice people for profit. See the Ford Pinto, the Bhopal India chemical plant disaster, and the BP Gulf oil spill disaster where killing people was seen as preferable to increasing costs slightly. I call that deadly force.
Re:Executive Power (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe we rely on the *government* to protect us from that?
Does that still work, though? (Score:5, Informative)
A government must be limited in its powers at a constitutional level, because you never know who will be running the show in the future. Limits on things they can legally do that no-one else can are necessary, but they need to be beyond the power of the administration of the day to change without further consent or the protections are meaningless.
For the rest, in theory normal laws should suffice. The government itself should legislate to ensure that, for example, businesses must respect privacy to a reasonable extent, because telling a health insurance company that you've been having lots of discussions with people who have cancer lately could potentially have serious consequences too.
The catch here is that when politicians and lawyers are involved, the distinction between government and non-government authority and restrictions can get blurred, so I am increasingly of the view that basic rights must be protected at a constitutional level against anyone who might infringe them unjustly.
None of it matters anyway if your judicial system declines to enforce the law, of course, but at least this removes any ambiguity regarding whether those fundamental rights are legally protected.
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You do realise that "normal laws" are written, enforced and may be changed by the various branches of government, right? The judicial system is generally defined as one branch of government, and policing is ultimately funded and directed by politicians.
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Government must be limited. But so must be the power of the private sector and corporations.
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No, we evidently do not want the "government" to protect us. I'm willing to take my chances and look out for myself if I need to. Terrorism has never terrorized me in the slightest. Chances are greater that you will be killed in an auto accident then by any terrorist attack. Close the TSA down and put an end to FISA warrants and data collecting from the Internet and other electronic sources. Cut the NSA and CIA budgets forcing them to stop many of the programs they are currently running. Then and only the
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You want to live in a country with no legal system? The judiciary is part of the government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_power [wikipedia.org]
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Maybe we rely on the *government* to protect us from that?
In the immortal words of SGT Mike, "If you have to ask the question, then you are not on the 'need to know' list".
Re:Executive Power (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is that it isn't in Facebook's financial interest to ruin the lives of its users. If every time a Facebook user posted something incriminating, someone at Facebook filed a police report, people would rapidly stop using Facebook.
If you're a DoJ bureaucrat, it's in your financial interest to ruin as many lives as possible. The more criminals there are, the bigger a budget you need to track, arrest, try, and imprison them all.
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Their response? "That would be too much work" [typepad.com]
"The task force staff asked the Congressional Research Service to update the calculation of criminal offenses in the federal code, which was last undertaken in 2008, said task force chairman Representative John Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) "CRS's initial response to our request was that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish this task," Sensenbrenner sa
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The history of the US government shows it's willing to use census data for rounding up citizens into internment camps [wikipedia.org]. The ability of Facebook to ruin your life with its data mining is quite trivial in comparison.
Re:Executive Power (Score:4, Interesting)
And in the age of the "privacy" policy, users have at least a basic idea of what comes of their data shared with a company.
Further, information like call "meta" data is something I may agree to because there is no other way to use the product, ie, the phone company needs that info to bill me accurately. Were there any other way around this I would of course not allow them to collect that information. So to call it sharing is really a reach.
Re:Executive Power (Score:5, Interesting)
I would add that people give their information voluntarily to these third parties, while the government takes it using the threat of violence. People give their information to third parties because the third party offers a service for storing and distributing their information to select friends and acquaintances. The government takes and distributes information to an untold number of alphabet soup agencies for some abstract, unproven and unconstitutional notion of security.
Furthermore, the very definition of sharing information at all requires that you do it with a third party. So does the ODNI suggest that the government be privy to communication between me and my doctor? Lawyer? Wife?! That we're even at the point that government officials are asking these questions is proof that the government has grown too big and powerful for the good of the people.
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." -James Madison
Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.
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Private parties can easily ruin your life, but compared to the government they're still playing in the amateur league.
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Seriously? Gee, I don't know... maybe it's because those private parties can't ruin your fucking life like a government can?
Hello? Your student loans called. Something about ruining your life? I took a message.
When was the last time Facebook's swat team raided someone's house, taking all posessions and ruining their job/social image?
Depends... Ever posted a link to a torrent?
Now granted if a company the size of Facebook decided to target an individual, that person would have a very hard time defending due to the large mismatch in resources. But this kind of this doesn't happen often, because it's not really profitable.
That's adorable. You do realize that they are targetting individuals, right? That's their whole business plan. The more data you volunteer with your name on it, the more valuable your marketing profile becomes, which they sell in aggregate to third parties.
On the other hand, targetting alleged law-breaking individuals is part of the government's job and is a regular occurence.
Yes, amazingly, the government does try to put a priority on investigating, arresting, and charging people who engage in crim
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In the declaration of independence it talks about the government deriving it's "just powers" from the consent of the governed. I doubt that the signers would have considered the powers being discussed as just. I certainly don't.
P.S.: I don't think governmental prosecutions are random. Just unpredicable. Perhaps chaotic.
Oh it's even worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Executive Power (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously? Gee, I don't know... maybe it's because those private parties can't ruin your fucking life like a government can?
I do not think that it is just that. Some years back when Facebook started, one could have an account by providing a VALID ACADEMIC email address ONLY- that, implied that one had to do with a serious social academic tool that allowed to connect with other academics, and not yet another place to post pictures of cats and sandwiches. So many people bited and just gave away their personal information. Of course, Facebook turned a couple of years later, showing its real face and bringing chat to the masses, and it was only then that people started not giving away their real names.
When was the last time Facebook's swat team raided someone's house, taking all posessions and ruining their job/social image?
Indirectly, all the time: do you seriously think that there is no backdoor for the authorities in Facebook?
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I do not think that it is just that
No, it is just THAT in a nutshell. Any contact with government has the potential to really screw you - badly. There are so many rules, regulations and laws that it's impossible to know how many you break on any given day. It's impossible to know what seemingly innocuous actions, words or contacts you have will lead to being punished and it's generally impossible for the average citizen to defend themselves against the sort of absolute power that governments wield with impunity.
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Exactly. The only way this could not be dead-obvious to the most casual observer is if they have spent their entire working life inside the beltway's realitiy distortion field. Oh wait.....
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Hmmmm..... private parties can destroy your credit rating, report you as a disgruntled employee, confuse you with a serial killer, refuse your loans, post sensitive information in places where ID theft can occur, screw up your medical records, deny you insurance, and just generally cause you misery. You can be so marginalized you would wish you were in prison simply because in prison you can't starve and you get at least some medical care. The government can't starve you to death, the private sector doesn't
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report you as a disgruntled employee
Actually if a company gives out information in order to prevent you from gaining work, you can sue them for the lost income! They most certainly will not "report" anything bad about you.
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Good luck with that. How much time do you have and how much money do you have? Five years? Can you wait that long?
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"Private companies are out for profit.. They do not gain anything by targeting you so they will not.."
They do not care about people, they care about markets.
"Government - They want you to pay more tax. If they can connect you with a crime to improve their statistics then perfect..."
If they want taxes, they need to keep me working.
"Everyone has something to hide... Maybe you wrote "In the nights when going home i drive 180km/h on the empty freeway" on FB.. FB does not care about this but the government does
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And look at how many US companies require drug and back ground tests that in the rest of the developed world are reserved for a tiny number of Jobs of national importance.
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I was going to post something similar, essentially:
Private Parties don't have guns that they can (semi-)legally use on my and they don't have prisons.
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Like the Railway police or Pinkertons? The history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency shows how things can swing the other way when business does have police forces.
Prisons are more and more private institutions lobbying the government for more low risk prisoners. They'd happily supply their own prisoners if the government let them and it wouldn't be dangerous people like murderers.
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Which applies to corporations vs the individual as well.
Easy answer (Score:4, Informative)
Because Facebook can't come after you will full force of arms, put you in jail, and otherwise make your life miserable or unlivable by misusing your information.
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Re:Easy answer (Score:4, Insightful)
If they wanted to, they could certainly do the 2nd part. They can't legally blackmail you, but there are plenty of legal things they could do to make your life miserable. For example, they could start websites to name-and-shame people who hold particular unpopular views. As long as they accurately identified the views, that wouldn't be libelous.
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So on the one hand, I have getting named and 'shamed' for an opinion I expressed in public anyway and on the other I have my getting killed in a hail of bullets from SWAT and the FBI before they stick me in jail for life (possibly without a trial). Hmm, which is worse...
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Read up on the history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, bigger then the American Army at one point and only one of the numerous private police forces that existed at one point. Private industry will happily employ people to take you out in a hail of bullets if they can't socialize it as they do now.
Re:Rhetorical question (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy answer is not to respond.
The question is a false premise. It's not the same people giving info to Facebook but not wanting the government to have it. A small group of privacy advocates are arguing on behalf of those who don't understand what giving information away can do.
Lots of people have no problem with government - if they want to read my shopping lists, or listen to me talk to my wife or kids about whatever, let them.
The question is only valid for a small subset of people - and I say first you would have to find them, and then ask them.
Plus, we are not "giving information to Facebook" - we are giving it to our friends, and the fact that Facebook has to have the data is transparent, and largely not understood. I think that explains it much better.
The question was poorly formulated because it was supposed to be a rhetorical "gotcha" that made you think - well when you say it like that, the government can have whatever it wants to have. And so many people fell into the trap of considering it a real question that deserves an answer.
it's published data. (Score:4, Informative)
Really? Huh. Strangely, I was going to guess the easier answer was "OMG I CAN GET VIRTUAL SHINIES FOR MY FAKE FARM OMG OMG". Oh, well. I guess I'm just underestimating Facebook users, and they're all actively making every decision they make on that website specifically to stick it to The Man (for a very restricted, convenient definition of "the man")!
is the data given away for the virtual shinies any good anyhow? in the context of nsa spying it's very different. stuff you share.. I mean PUBLISH on facebook is stuff you CHOOSE TO PUBLISH. I would imagine there would be a pretty big outcry if facebook started selling your private messaging on facebook and if facebook installed sw on your computer to spy all your mailing activities then facebook execs would be facing jail..
what are they going to do with your cat pictures that you wanted intentionally to publish on teh internets anyways? and with the information that you play a public social game of farming chickens and are publicly showing your support for legalization? if your facebook likes were private then the reason for doing facebook likes goes away. the point of clicking like is to show publicly that you "like" that thing.
if the government were doing public polls, heck, then they might be also getting information people want to give to them.
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I don't have a Facebook account yet I'm pretty sure that lots of my info is on there, mostly just from family. If I was younger it would be friends even posting more of my personal info.
I did create a linkedld account once and they regularly ask me for my email password so they can scan my contacts and ho knows what else. The offer seems harmless enough that lots of non-technical people would probably bite.
There has been times in the past where private industry was more powerful then government and it was p
It's opt in? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:It's opt in? (Score:5, Insightful)
FB posters choose (Score:2, Insightful)
what they post, the govt chooses what they snoop. A world of difference.
Neither (Score:5, Insightful)
Have canceled my FB account a long time ago, but still caon't opt out of the government.
Re:Neither (Score:5, Insightful)
Have canceled my FB account a long time ago, but still caon't opt out of the government.
I find this attitude short-sighted and sad. You can influence your government. It's hard work -- you have to get involved, and stay involved -- but the government is ultimately beholden to the will of the people. If you don't like it, work to change it.
Or just throw up your hands in defeat like most people, but then you don't really have any right to complain about the results.
Kudos for dropping Facebook, though. Given their history of constant "oops, did I invade your privacy again? oops, did I quietly add another opt-out feature? oops, is my misleading UI making you choose the wrong things again?", nobody should use or trust Facebook.
Re:Neither (Score:4, Informative)
I find this attitude short-sighted and sad. You can influence your government. It's hard work -- you have to get involved, and stay involved -- but the government is ultimately beholden to the will of the people.
Awww. Come here and let me hug you. You're too sweet!!!
We can vote, but governments are run by money and corporations.
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Awww. Come here and let me hug you. You're too sweet!!!
LOL! :-)
We can vote, but governments are run by money and corporations.
True right now, but we can change that.
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We can vote, but governments are run by money and corporations.
True right now, but we can change that.
I would love to think so, but I doubt it. As long as corporations like Google or Amazon can say "no taxes or else we go to an other place" we have a problem. Or medical companies that "negotiate" ridiculous prices for their medicine.
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Allow me to paraphrase aaaaaaargh! (1150173)
I'm fairly certain that was the tenor of the post. You can't opt out of the government completely - unless you travel on private roads only, and purchase goods and services which did not travel on government roads, and did not get farm subsidies. Nearly impossible.
So here is how the two posts read together -
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Let me guess - you're younger than 30 or so.
Bad guess. I'm far past 30.
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Let's see: you could let your driver's license and passport lapse, your credit cards expire, close your bank accounts, use only cash, keep your cash and birth certificate in a personal safe, cancel your phone lines, cancel your TV (maybe that part isn't so bad), cancel your internet connectivity and only use connections at coffee shops (and even then, use only TOR to surf), have no accounts with Google, Facebook, et al ... am I missing anything?
I think that would go a fair ways towards anonymity, but, frank
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Sure you can. You can opt out of the government any time you want. Renounce your citizenship and move somewhere else. Well, that's backwards, move somewhere else, then renounce your citizenship.
Now, you may not _want_ to do that, but you _can_ do that.
I think you are missing the point. You don't have to leave the country of your birth and remain in exile for the rest of your life to opt out of Facebook. And of course Facebook does not have the power to send armed men to your home to take all your stuff, shoot your dog, and throw you in a cage for the rest of your life. Or even just kill you if you show even the slightest form of resistance, are rude to them in any way, or they are just in the mood for a little fun. The government has a whole army of peop
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Where the heck do you get this information? Oh, that's right, out your *ss. If you move to another country, do not own any property here, and have paid up what you currently owe, you will not owe any taxes at the local, state or federal level. If you are eligible for Social Security, citizen or not, you can collect. You will have to pay federal taxes on that.
Well... duh (Score:2)
every country does that. If you earn money in that country you get taxed.
Because Facebook can't throw you in jail... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or worse. People know Facebook is whoring out your data to sell you (stuff).
The government is out to arrest you, or send a drone down your ass when you're out of the country. There is no good reason for the government to be snooping on you other than to make you out to be a criminal.
It's about who's in control of what's shared. (Score:4, Informative)
When I share something on facebook, it's voluntary.
When you snoop on me confiding something privately to a close friend or family member, it's not voluntary.
Why would that be hard to understand?
More than ability to tax, is the lack of sharing. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Imagine for a moment that you actually are a terrorist, here in a sleeper cell, waiting for direction.
Now imagine that you are the NSA, FBI, or CIA, or other government office. You suspect the terrorist, but don't know for certain if they will act. Do you trust them? Do you add their notations to their file?
A citizen then, a domestic terrorist like McVeigh or the folks in Waco. Still being monitored, but allowed the right to annotate your own file. What good does it do?
Do you think it would stop someon
Simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook doesn't disappear people.
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FB doesn't tax (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook doesn't take money from my paycheck. And if I want to stop using Facebook, I just stop.
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They happily would if the government was powerless. Businesses have a long history of doing the equivalent of taking money out of your paycheck, eg the company store and things could swing back that way.
prison (Score:4, Informative)
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Mostly in the interests of private industry. How many people have suffered to protect outdated business models such as pulp paper when hemp paper was the future? Now with the private prison industry and the associated slave/forced labour etc it is once again business as much as anything encouraging huge prison populations.
Sorry I never opted in (Score:5, Insightful)
I never consented to giving any of my personal data to Facebook. I've never joined. Why is the government using that as an excuse to invade my privacy?
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well, but you posted here.
which gets us to the point.. all information you put on facebook you post there. for other people to view.
the government is arguing in this case that since you don't mind people joining your public rally for gay rights then why are you upset that government posted a guy in your bedroom? it sounds stupid if put that way and it sounds stupid put in the facebook context. what you place as public on facebook is public.. what you put as public on your google+ is public - that doesn't me
Jail (Score:2)
Because Facebook can't throw political protesters in jail.
Volume of data collected (Score:5, Insightful)
People have already posted about the government's power to do harm. Another issue is that the government is able to collect from all sources. Many people (including myself) post limited information associated with each online activity and also have a set of information that is never (intentionally) posted online. This prevents any company from forming a complete and possibly dangerous profile. The government has the ability to combine all of these sets of data and the budget to use very sophisticated data mining. This places people at risk of statistically matching some sort of undesirable (child molester, terrorist, etc) even though they themselves are innocent.
The data is also a very dangerous weapon if the government were to become more authoritarian. We've already seen a number of our constitutional rights weakened in the last decade or two - it is not beyond imagination the they will be weakened much further. If we at some point have a politically unified government there is the concern that it might use this data against political opponents.
If the government firewalled its own data, it would not be so bad. I don't mind the DOD having attack aircraft and tanks, but I would not give my local police department this technology. In the same way, if a federal organization who's only mission were to protect against external threats had full access to data I would not be very concerned, but under the current rules this data is share with local law enforcement.
Really? (Score:2)
When Facebook screws up its data mining, I see a stupidly-placed ad on my wall.
When the US government screws up its data mining, you get a million dead Iraqis.
Predicted response from Robert S. Litt and his ilk: "Iraqis don't vote in our elections... they don't donate to our political campaigns.... I don't get it...?"
Probably because Facebook doesn't deploy guns? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a knock one day at your door. There's a man at the door, he says "You must give me your money, you don't have a choice in the matter, but don't worry, I'm going to give it away in your name."
You wouldn't trust a crackpot like that with your property, why should you place trust when that crackpot is the government?
Besides being completely wrong, it shows how little the government thinks of property rights. The information belongs to your phone providers/Facebook/etc, it's their hard drives, you need a narrowly-scoped warrant to compel them to hand over that information, end of discussion.
But even suppose there were no property rights in this context. Could a regular person, or even a well funded company like Facebook, possibly get away with demanding personal records from other companies? No? Then it's not really public information, is it?
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Why? A few reasons: (Score:4, Informative)
2. You can sue facebook without fear of being turned down due to "national security".
I don't trust either. (Score:3)
I don't trust either but I can walk away from Facebook.
Choice. (Score:3)
I'm not sure I do trust Facebook more than I trust the government, but there's one key difference here: We're giving our data to Facebook voluntarily.
Facebook is like handing the keys of your house over to a relative stranger-- let's say a cleaning service-- knowing there's a possibility that they'll snoop around and go through your stuff. It might be a bad idea, but you want the service being provided. You choose to hand over access by choice, knowing what you're getting into. What the NSA is doing, to extend this analogy, is like someone breaking into your house and snooping around, going through your stuff, and doing it in secret so you never even knew they were in there.
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You're right, but I think my analogy kind of covers that. In my analogy, I'm not giving Facebook the access (in the analogy, the keys to my house) because I want to share my private life with them. I do it because it's unfortunately necessary for me to use the service they offer. That is, if I want to use the house-cleaning service, I need to let them into my house. If I want to use Facebook to share with my friends and family, I have to upload what I'm sharing to Facebook.
And I think it works because
Better question... (Score:5, Informative)
Why does Litt flat out lie? Smith v Maryland, which this claim is based on, does NOT say that. The ruling was based on an expectation of privacy assumed when one voluntarily gives information to a third party. It does not address an expectation of privacy explicitly and contractually promised (e.g. a "privacy policy"), nor does it cover information not offered voluntarily (e.g. incoming caller ID, location information, etc.).
Even more significantly, ignoring the legalities, spying on your citizens is simply the wrong thing to do. Litt, and other defenders of these surveillance programs are confusing ethics and law. The US Government seems not to care what the local laws are when criticizing rights violations in other countries, but use the law to defend rights violations at home.
This is less about trusting Facebook (Score:2)
Pot, kettle (Score:2)
Ok, in this case should be a black hole calling another black hole black. But at least you can avoid one of them (not joining, installing extensions like Disconnect [disconnect.me], etc). And as far i know, facebook don't hack your own servers or the servers of your isps/cellphone companies/hosting companies to track what you do in your own space, or plant backdoors just waiting for the moment they will be useful, or force other, unrelated companies to install spyware for you. And of course, don't have such real life impac
Two simple reasons (Score:2)
1) Facebook can't throw you in prison if they don't like the information you've given them.
2) You can stop giving Facebook your information if you decide you no longer trust them with it.
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Point 2 ignores the larger issue.
People can post about you, and it will be added to the things that Facebook knows about you. You don't have to be the one that does the posting. I believe it has even been reported that you don't even need to have started an account in the first place - facebook will make a "shadow account" to keep track of what it knows about you...
easy answer (Score:2)
Facebook hasn't murdered anyone.
Why does the expectation of privacy disappear? (Score:2)
If I have a conversation on the phone with someone, that's protected, even though the phone call is routed through a third party (the telecoms company). Why is it different on the internet, or on a computer? Consider these situations:
I have a conversation in a room in my house with two other people: There's a third party, depending on how you choose to group the three people. That conversation is private. The conversation isn't encrypted, and it's technically very easy to record, by bug or parabolic mic for
Interesting question. Answer: Freedom (Score:2)
Litt asks a very good question, but it's based on a bias toward the way the law is worded, which is worded that way as a means to for law enforcement to have sensible ways to legally acquire information about people. If you offer "private" data to a third part, legally, it's not private anymore. But that's not how people really think about it. People want to have the freedom to choose who does and does not have access to "private" data. And since this goes contrary to the law, the will of the people rea
I think several early posters nailed it .... (Score:2)
Clearly, the problem is that government has the power to arrest and imprison you. or make financial demands of you that you have no legal recourse to wash away, or even in some cases to legally end your life. A private social media web site like Facebook can do none of this, by comparison.
But that said? I still use FB (often using it as a sounding board to complain about political issues and repost relevant news items for my friends to read). Certainly, there are many personal things I choose not to share
False dichotomy: PRISM (Score:2)
Dragoons... (Score:2)
They're killing Independent George (Score:2)
Because they're killing Independent George [youtube.com]. It's not "just FaceBook." If they were looking at "just FaceBook" it would still be awful, but not terrifying. It's the cross references. It's the JOIN statement.
Select AWFUL_SHIT from FACEBOOK and PHONERECORDS and EMAILS and SEARCH_HISTORY and FINANCIAL_RECORDS and BUTTPORN_FETISHES where SLASHDOT_UID = '321000'
We all have our personal lives, our professional lives, and our private lives, and we establish boundaries between them.
At the office, I keep it about bus
why indeed (Score:2)
Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don't want the Government to have the same information?
Why is it people have sex every day, but when I jump out of the bushes wearing a condom, they cry foul?
Robert S. Litt DNI must engage brain! (Score:2)
Either that or he really, really, really does not have one...which in itself is then an inditement of the Federal Government choice of directors of important agencies.
For God's sake, he had better understand by the time he reads this post that most people are petrified at the thought of having to resist the Feds, whether in a Tax Audit or a SWAT attack on the wrong house.
Lies, lies and more lies (Score:2)
"We do not use our foreign intelligence collection capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies in order to give American companies a competitive advantage."
No you just spy on friendly foreign governments to give American companies a competitive advantage. Nobody gives two shits about the moral difference.
"Thus, sifting through third party data doesnâ(TM)t qualifyâ"on a constitutional levelâ"as invasive to our personal privacy."
The very idea a constitutional protection would
Simple (Score:2)
Facebook isn't being bought off by lobbyists or run by political fanatics with an agenda. They're in it for the money, plain and simple, and that's something the people can understand.
The Big Buffer (Score:2)
We actually see government as a potential ally against big business. Yet we also realize that the government can and does send jack-booted terrorists against some citizens. So far business rarely sends thugs to kill customers although they surely would if we allowed them to. So the government is a huge buffer that aids the citizen. That makes government much like the Mafia or organized crime. The Mafia buffers against a society that has fallen apart and can not provide reasonable pay checks for c
The Government offers nothing of value in return (Score:2)
They are willing to give up their information (valuable) for the opportunity and convenience that the private companies offer. Its a trade they are willing to make. The people no longer value what the government does for them at all. They see lie after lie and the huge monumental expense those lies generate and they refuse to trade with the government on anything. Uncle Sam, nobody trusts or believes you anymore. Nobody.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
private parties won't burst into my house in the middle of the night
Unless they think you have a grow-op worth ripping off or such.