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Privacy Government Security The Courts United States

ACLU To Feds: Your 'Hacking Presents a Unique Threat To Individual Privacy' (arstechnica.com) 67

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with Privacy International, a similar organization based in the United Kingdom, have now sued 11 federal agencies, demanding records about how those agencies engage in what is often called "lawful hacking." From a report: The activist groups filed Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and nine others. None responded in a substantive way. "Law enforcement use of hacking presents a unique threat to individual privacy," the ACLU argues in its lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in New York state. "Hacking can be used to obtain volumes of personal information about individuals that would never previously have been available to law enforcement."
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ACLU To Feds: Your 'Hacking Presents a Unique Threat To Individual Privacy'

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    *crickets*

    • by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Friday December 21, 2018 @04:20PM (#57843464) Homepage Journal

      They're still big advocates of free speech. As long as it's not hate speech or speech that hurts someone's feelings.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        As long as it's not hate speech or speech that hurts someone's feelings.

        Bullcrap. From their own website [aclu.org]: The First Amendment to the Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content.

        Next time take a few seconds to check your facts before posting ignorant garbage.

        • "The First Amendment to the Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content." = A website Lorem-slogan, IS NOT their actual policy or history, and certainly not the truth of the Constitutional protections.

          You're conflating their website with the legal specifics. That's not going to prove anything. If you need to test this, go shout bomb threats in an airport and find out.

          No one will defend you on 1st Amendment grounds from the FAA fine and/or imprisonment, because your oversimple underst

        • OK, I'm curious. When was the last time the ACLU defended free speech by conservatives? (Not Nazis, they are not conservatives - I mean center conservatives, as in don't want to bake a cake guys)

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • In America, in the last 2 years, we have learned that there is no way information cannot be used in a non-partizan way.
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/id... [theatlantic.com]

    When someone stands accused of sexual assault in criminal court, does the ACLU believe in the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard merely because that is what the Constitution requires, or because it is better to leave some guilty people unpunished than to punish many innocents? “The old-school ACLU knew there was no contradiction between defending due process and ‘supporting survivors,’” David French writes [nationalreview.com]. “Indeed, it was through

  • I read the summary of this article and read the previous summary and...

    The US and the rest of the "free world" (such as it is) is bitching and moaning about APT10, a so-called hacking collective. Whilst the "free world" goes on hacking sprees against their own citizens (five-eyes, etc).

    It's not about catching criminals (the ACLU is falling into the semantics trap). It's about "instant dossiers" on people who might upset "the system" - i.e., the incumbent powers that be. Everyone has skeletons, and withou

  • Permission of the target that is. For one thing, all reasonable standards of evidence go out the window. That invites planting evidence. And since the feds are in no way morally superior to other people (if anything, they are significantly less moral), it will happen and in many cases the victim will not be able to mount an effective defense. The second problem is that people that need to fear being hacked in this way (and everybody not perfectly boring needs to) will self-censor. That is the death of civil

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Thats why the GCHQ never got in the legal system, never let on what they did in Ireland, with the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch.
      When nobody understands what is collected and how, then groups been watched look inwards for informats.

      All the US gov had to do was keep using parallel construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and random "adware" and "malware".
      Make the user click a link, open an unexpected document from a "friends" email and click on something.
      Make a browser connect in an unex

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