'Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act' Would Ban Clearview and Warrantless Location Data Purchases (vice.com) 83
A sweeping proposed piece of legislation with support from both Democrats and Republicans will ban law enforcement agencies from buying data from controversial firm Clearview AI, as well as force agencies to obtain a warrant before sourcing location data from brokers. From a report: The news presents significant action against two of the main avenues of law enforcement surveillance uncovered in recent years: the widespread proliferation of facial recognition technology using images scraped from social media, and the warrantless supply chain of location data from ordinary smartphone apps, through middlemen, and eventually to agencies. "The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act is, in my view, a critically important bill that will prevent agencies from circumventing core constitutional protections by purchasing access to data they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain," Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Motherboard in a phone call. The ACLU and a host of civil, digital, and race activism groups have endorsed the bill, according to the office of Senator Ron Wyden, which has spearheaded the legislation. "I think it is a clear and good step for Congress to take, and I hope that the bill moves forward quickly,' Ruane added.
Not a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
This bill is DOA. It antagonizes both every single law enforcement agency in the US and all the companies large and small that sell them this data at a tidy profit. Not going to happen (and, though I am not a betting man, I'd bet quite a bit on that).
Alternatively, the bill will pass in a form sufficiently watered down to make its authors look good while not, actually, impeding any data purchases.
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Re: Not a chance (Score:2)
Don't worry. The biggest enemy of the American people is their self-opposing mindset that they argue for every day to make sure it is a self-fulfilling prophecy..
Things like this start in people's minds.
And the thugs managed to train America's minds so well, they... well, this clip (the first bit) fits perfectly:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Nevermind (Score:2)
Ah, goddammit! This version of the clip lacks exactly the sentence I was posting this for!
"If you try to destroy him, to save them... They'll destroy you, to save him... Ahh, it's beautiful man... You have to admire the opponent's elegance... Check."
I Pity Inanimate Objects Because They Cannot Move (Score:1)
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I'm not sure if this covers publicly available data, it seems to concern data brokers. But I think you're correct in that it's " treating the symptom instead of the disease." If data brokers are permitted to collect, store and sell this kinds of data and law enforcement isn't able to access them it creates an additional market where justice can be bought and sold.
Re:This seems wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't necessarily need to accept being in the panopticon, but we damn better well acknowledge it. Every time we don't try to protect our own privacy, but then we complain that it was "violated", it just encourages us to repeat the mistake later instead of learning about it and thinking up ways to be less public.
And until we do that, we're going to remain in the panopticon. It can't be wished away; we need to work for it.
Every time someone complains about the guards in the panopticon "getting caught" paying attention to what we're doing in our cells (where we're in full view by them), I think of the complainer as being pro-panopticon. If you want to do something about the guards, you won't accomplish anything by trying to persuade the guards to close their eyes. You win by blocking their (and everyone else's) view.
The guards aren't the problem; the panopticon is. We need to quit letting people distract us by bitching about the guards. Fix the panopticon and the guards will cease to matter.
Along those lines, I guess I don't see a huge problem with limiting what databases the government should be allowed to buy, but it's a dumb non-solution. The right thing to do is to make it impossible to build the databases in the first place. And if we can't avoid leaking that information (and we think about it again, and are still sure we can't avoid leaking the information), then let it go. Cope.
Even with super-strong 4th amendment protections, if you're leaking info, then you don't have privacy and the consequences are much wider than merely the criminal justice system. The government is only one of your potential adversaries. They're important, but you're not going to really gain privacy just by working on them.
Re:This seems wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
At best you might hope to instill so much paranoia into people so that they stop contributing their data voluntarily or carelessly, but you can't erase the want to have that data. It's just too valuable that you can't expect someone to cheat. Even if you could ban it, the data collection just moves offshore like manufacturing that was too polluting to stand up to laws meant to curb it.
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If you don't want people to know stuff about you, then don't post it online. Don't use services that collect data on you and sell it. There are alternatives available and they are good!
We're not talking about things VOLUNTARILY posted online, we're talking about shithead companies that are going out of their way to track peoples' whereabouts and selling that information to the highest bidder, includging law enforcement types that are using those 'services' to do an end-run around otherwise needing a warrant signed by a judge.
I and others don't use so-called 'social media' and some of us don't use smartphones either because we know these things violate our privacy by design and therefore
Not dead [Re:This seems wrong.] (Score:2)
ALL Americans have the right to vote! ALL OF THEM!
Any other answer is unacceptable!
What about the dead ones? They seem to have been voting a lot.
Nope; that's a myth.
There was a list posted on twitter purportedly of voters with the same name and birthdate of a person listed on a death certificate... however, this was independently checked and every single case was one where the person who voted happened to be somebody with the same name, but not the same person. This is known as the "false positive" problem.
see: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08... [cnn.com]
For example: "Exaggerated or unfounded allegations of fraud by dead voters include the following:
In
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What about the dead ones? They seem to have been voting a lot.
If you are going to post such a blanket statement you may want to provide some kind of proof for that statement. I know that it is a nice Republican talking point that dead people are voting for the Democrats (I guess once they die Republicans stop voting or switch to vote Democrat).
Just as it was intended. An who should have that privilege you might ask. Well people that actually contribute to the country. People that pay taxes; service in the form of military service; and a few others come to mind. Citizens with a vested interest in a well run government.
So everyone has a right to vote since everyone has a "vested interest in a well run government".
People who don't get the privilege of a vote. People that break the law and have yet to finished their time. People on welfare or some other social program that pays their way from the public dole. NOT including social security. Non-citizens, and mentally retarded. If you can't comprehend what you are voting for then you can't vote
Why "NOT including social security"? You do realize that social security is also "welfare or some other social program that pays...
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Re: This seems wrong. (Score:3)
Police can see you in public, but they're not allowed to follow you around and record all your activities just because. Same principle applies here. Aggregate public images become a private profile. If it were really public information, then any police department could publish the data for other departments to use. Something tells me the data vendors very much view this aggregate data as private information.
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Ah, so the ubiquitous presence of cameras is basically giving the police a way to work around existing laws that prevent them from trailing people whenever they are in public. And so, police effectively are following people around and recording all their activities,just without being physically present.
I wasn't thinking of it that way when I wrote my post. I am trying to decide how I feel about that. On the one hand, when looking for evidence of a crime or proof of innocence, the ability to spool through
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Think of it this way:
There are laws against stalking.
Within private property, it's much less a thing - it's reasonable for a store to record the goings-on within the store, for theft-prevention. For a short while. Still, AirBNB people can't record the goings-on within rented out properties.
Outside, recording the public way is _much_ more questionable. Ring doorbells, recording everyone that walks by? Recording your neighbors on the public way twice every day? That's... that's kind of fucked up.
Recording eve
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I agree with your post but Google can show that street view is a pretty nice to have feature for their maps service. Being able to pull up a street view of a commercial business you are planning on going to is really nice.
Still, these companies are effectively stalking everyone all the time. There is a lot of grey area here.
Hopefully this bill becomes law but as the first poster said, it probably won't but if it does it will have loop holes that won't stop any data from being bought.
If it was up to me, I wo
Re: This seems wrong. (Score:2)
Banning outdoor recording would essentially ban all common field reporting on the news.
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They buy from brokers who had access to things not "public".
I acknowledge your broader point, that any information not dispensed conditionally is "in the wild" and no longer "mine". Information can only be controlled by contamination control, not proclamations. Moral or not, I have imaginary control over my imaginary property. Such as my license plate, when in public.
But buying LPR data from brokers who tracked your license plate within private properties is different than observing me in free spaces.
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I think there should be a clear line between making something public and third parties aggregating all the public things. Including things like mugshots (people who are often innocent and never proven guilty) and voter registration data. There are degrees of publicity and this crosses a privacy boundary.
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How does banning LE from buying this information, help the problem? The proposed legislation does not address the national security risk or even claim to. The Chinese government would still be allowed to have their mole. The only thing it would change, is that your state or national government wouldn't be allowed to have the mole. But it'd remain fair game to anyone else: you, me, or the PRC.
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Well this is just a start. Hopefully this bill becomes a law. Then we can maybe shift the goal post and make it illegal for any entity that wants to do business with the USA from collecting this data. It's overreach on our part and we can't really enforce it outside of our boundaries to well, but it's still worth implementing anyway.
You could stop voting for (Score:4, Insightful)
You might have to give up some other issues though. It's a question of priorities. Oh, and voting in your primary elections so you're not choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Re:Not a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
It antagonizes both every single law enforcement agency in the US..
Good, I say. They need some antagonizing done to them.
Let me tell you all a little story.
Where I live there's two rivers and 32 miles of paved parkway trail that follows one of the rivers, connecting regional parks.
Lots of wildlife along there. Most prevalent are wild turkeys. Lots of turkeys.
When there were many fewer turkeys, they were more shy, more apt to get out of the way of humans.
Last few years the turkey population has exploded. They're everywhere now -- and they're getting a sense of entitlement. They don't get out of the way, they just stand there in their numbers and stare at you. They're even on the public streets now, in peoples' yards. They'll stand in the middle of the street, the males' tailfans displayed, and just stare at you. You have to actively, physically go shoo them out of the way, and they talk back to you the whole time as if saying "Hey human, what's your problem? This is OUR place now, what do you think you're doing?", too comfortable with humans and too many of them to take us seriously like they used to; they don't know their place anymore.
It seems to me that police in this country have become like the turkeys. They've gotten too comfortable, they have too much power, they like the power they have and want more, and most importantly they apparently have forgotten what "To Protect and Serve" is supposed to mean.
It's not a new phenomenon, from what I've seen, there's historical precedent for police getting too powerful and going from serving the public to being thugs with badges and guns, pushing around the people they're supposed to protect. They go from being 'The Police' to being 'The Secret Police', if you take my meaning.
So again I say 'Good!'. Let them be 'antagonized' all they want over this, I think it, and more, needs to go through, law enforcement in general needs serious reform across the board. These turkeys need to be put back into their proper place in our society, be reminded that 'To Protect and Serve' is their mandate.
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Okay but what do we do when we're overrun with feral cats
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Turkey vs feral house cat is not a difficult fight for a turkey.
They fight off feral dogs.
Even a wild bobcat has to sneak up on them. Once they see the bobcat, the bobcat just leaves.
It takes a cougar-sized cat to attack a turkey from the front, and cougar still don't want to take that much risk to their eyes unless they're starving.
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If you are going to bring facts to this discussion then I can't argue with you. :)
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However, there's quite a few wild turkeys in the area of my stepmother's property (NW Arkansas)
And my dad's dogs have exploded a couple of them.
I use the word "exploded", because that's what it looks like when you find the spot where it happened.
Decreasing density of feathers expanding radially from ground zero.
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I dunno. You ever run into a wild turkey and startle it? I have, and I wouldn't voluntarily do it again. That's one fuck of a big bird moving at very high speed.
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In the case of the Law Enforcement types, it's not so much that they like the power as that "the kind of people who become LEO's do so because of the power"....
Unfortunately, the kind of people we want for LEO's are exactly the kind that want nothing to do with law enforcement....
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I could see the bill passing, but it's not even going to touch the *extremely* large "follow your spouse to see if they are cheating" market.
Then it will pass easily (Score:2)
Law enforcement budgets are nowhere near as large as what you think they are. The FBI's entire budget is under $10B for an agency with 30 some thousand employees and probably easily 5k contractors. ICE's investigative arm, HSI, which is the second largest federal agency in terms of sworn officers (slightly over half the size of the FBI), has a published budget of
Re: Not a chance (Score:1)
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It antagonizes both every single law enforcement agency in the US...
Oh, so they would have to go back to using the investigative tools and skills of 10 years ago before all this shit was widely available? Or just get a judge to sign a court order first, much like when they want to perform telephonic or GPS tracker surveillance.
I don't see it as a huge problem if they aren't conducting a fishing expedition which would otherwise be illegal.
Instead of requiring a warrant for data brokers (Score:5, Insightful)
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you mean the Privacy Act of 1974?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] that protects against federal authorities from disclosing your data to unauthorized parties and not much more afaik. The exemptions are just to wide.
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Re:Instead of requiring a warrant for data brokers (Score:5, Informative)
How about a law that data on you can not be compiled or shared between parties unless you consent, positively, defaults to not consented, and can not be mandatory for service (unless thatâ(TM)s the companys primary function)?
Sounds a lot like the the EU GDPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Instead of requiring a warrant for data broker (Score:2)
Re:Instead of requiring a warrant for data brokers (Score:4)
This works but I would add to it that no company that you do not directly does business with should be allowed to compile any data on you at all. If I buy something at best buy there is no reason for walmart to know.
Re: Instead of requiring a warrant for data broker (Score:2)
This doesn't go far enough (Score:2)
Re: This doesn't go far enough (Score:2)
"federal agencies like ICE and CBP still seem to think they donâ(TM)t need legal process to access location data on millions of people in the United States as long as they can buy it on the open market."
My jaw dropped when I read that. So the cops 12 year old can buy it not the cop? My faith drops in US government daily.
court precident? (Score:2)
Law is a good idea, but shouldn't this be just the common reading of the 4A?
I'm too lazy to look it up, but has anyone ever challenged a conviction in which the police used purchased location data up through the appeals court process?
Is it just that through all the EULA and contract processes we have somehow consented to the data sales?
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Of course not. This is just a large-scale and high-tech version of asking your neighbors what they've seen you doing.
Your activities in public are not covered by the Fourth Amendment, so if we want this kind of legal protection, it requires new law.
Bill only goes halfway... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article...The bill bans agencies from purchasing data that has been obtained illicitly or through terms of services violations. Clearview's database of images is constructed by the company scraping social media sites. Google, Twitter, and Facebook have all sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview.
So, the bill stops government agencies from buying this data. Well, not a bad start. -But-, the bill doesn't make illegal the collection of data or the selling of it to other private brokers. Since it doesn't do that, it's only a matter of time before the FBI figures out a loophole.
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Ban mass surveillance databases.
Just blanketly do this. Then you have to address databases aggregated in situ out of individually "justified" (for trivially overbroad reasons) warrants
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More than just Clearview (Score:5, Informative)
A sweeping proposal by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) would ban the sale of Americans’ personal data to “unfriendly” foreign companies and governments, expanding protections for the vast stores of sensitive information that detail every corner of modern life.
The draft bill, which Wyden began circulating to lawmakers for discussion Thursday, would join a set of federal privacy proposals that would also restrict the sale of Americans’ personal information to U.S. companies, intelligence agencies and the police.
The move could disrupt the multibillion-dollar data-broker economy that seeks to monetize the digital footprints Americans leave behind every day — cellphone locations, browsing histories and credit card purchases that are gathered, bundled and sold for marketing and intelligence purposes without government regulation or oversight and without most people being aware of what information is being shared.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
I don't support this (Score:1)
I support restrictions on LEAs ability to collect untargeted data by any means yet supporting this formulation specifically has a number of problems.
Carve outs for specific modalities reduces pressures against wider problem of warrantless surveillance and accomplishes very little in the end. They will just pursuit the same thing using a different means.
It also reduces pressure against "big data" cyber stalking firms continuous mass stalking of entire populations.
Further I don't agree with artificially li
Re:I don't support this (Score:4, Insightful)
They should not have any less access to the commons as anyone else.
If they had no more power than anyone else will access to the commons, this would be true.
But the Fourth Amendment exists precisely because they have more power, and thus a greatly increased potential for abuse. Allowing the LEAs an end-run around the 4th Amendment simply because they have the money to pay for access is no different than watering down the 4th itself.
The potential for increased abuse is dangerous and the only effective remedy is to limit their access to materials that could be used for abuse.
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They're paying for it with our money, which is even worse.
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The potential for increased abuse is dangerous and the only effective remedy is to limit their access to materials that could be used for abuse.
This is accomplished with a warrant requirement, right? A half hour delay in some jurisdictions ... others, less than that.
Judges cover their asses, and nobody wants to be the one who declines a warrant only for something to happen.
So they don’t decline them. It’s risk-free to issue them.
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If you require the need for a warrant, then you have to be actually pushing real police work or at least real enough that you are gonna put the effort into getting the warrant. I get that the officer goes bass fishing every Saturday with the judge so the answer is yes to any warrant but do you want a paper trail or are you also saying that the warrant isn't being recorded?
So yeah, make them get a warrant just for the paper trail. It's better then no warrant.
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If they had no more power than anyone else will access to the commons, this would be true.
But the Fourth Amendment exists precisely because they have more power, and thus a greatly increased potential for abuse. Allowing the LEAs an end-run around the 4th Amendment simply because they have the money to pay for access is no different than watering down the 4th itself.
This selectively neglects portions of my commentary and ignores the fact 4th amendment applies to private property not what is commercially available for sale whether you agree with what is available or not.
Here is what I also said:
"I support restrictions on LEAs ability to collect untargeted data by any means yet supporting this formulation specifically has a number of problems."
This means I support restrictions on all untargeted warrant free collection regardless of modality. This is MORE restrictive not
Will these changes prevent... (Score:1)
we got bamboozled years ago (Score:2)
then their looked at it and said "why are you giving away information".
You can sell them a "no list" for $4 per month.
Now the nightmare was sent upon us.
look up "cole directory"
for $1200 a year you get everything.
Address
Names
Age Group
Politic affiliation
Household income
Race and Religion
EVERYTHING ! !
Time to stop this train wreck of grabbing "personal information".
This Bill is Awesome (Score:2)
Do you people have any idea how hard it is for law enforcement to get a warrant?
I mean, the cops have to file a form, 98% of which are accepted, with the other 2% accepted after minor administrative technicalities are corrected.
Even though they are trivial to procure, “Warrant” satisfies the masses.
Another victory for freedom!
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Warrant is just so there is a paper trail created. It's better then no paper trail being created after all.
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That ship sailed with parallel construction. The paper trail is an outright lie.
Disallow Collecting (Score:3)
If it gets collected, it will get sold to someone. We need systems that don't technologically allow collecting and a legal ban on collecting.
What's the catch? (Score:2)
While you are at it... (Score:2)
There are a few other small issues like...
* ) "Parallel construction" or illegally obtained evidence by "random searches"
* ) Secret FICA courts
* ) Secret lists (no-fly, etc)
* ) The great tendency to break civilian private communications (encryption back-doors)
* ) Asset forfeiture that prevents defendants to pay for their defense
those are the things that immediate come to mind. I am pretty sure there are other programs that erode 4th and 6th amendment protections and the bill of rights.