Microsoft Exec: Targeting of Americans' Records 'Routine' (apnews.com) 38
Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company. From a report: Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day. "Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American's email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud," said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.
The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.
The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.
It is becoming time (Score:5, Insightful)
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... there is no longer a consent of the governed.
This is why we have a 1st and a 2nd Amendment.
Re: It is becoming time (Score:3, Insightful)
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The military oath of enlistment includes these words:
Biden was talking about a violent overthrow of the government, so yes the military would defend against that, and yes whoever is trying it would need something more than handguns and rifles.
Anyway, Biden and his opinion on gun control isn't relevant to this story about secret warrants. They were happening before he was elected. We, or whomever is conce
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Which is why the fire-arms-control act needs to be over turned!
However I am not so sure. Our 10k ft view of history always imagines some guys march into a capitol secure the place, arrest the current leadship or force them to feel into exile and the next morning the new congress/leader/junta is recognized as the authority. We have a myopic view the centers on our own Revolutions, the French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and some smaller events like Cuba.
That isn't how its worked in most modern confl
Re:It is becoming time (Score:5, Informative)
Biden told us to buy "F15s and maybe some nuclear weapons" [businessinsider.com]. What a thoughtful and caring President.
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Re:It is becoming time [for a solution] (Score:3)
Go ahead. Mod me funny. The idea of a solution has become quite hilarious now. I wish I had one, but I'm sure not expecting to see one appear on Slashdot...
Still don't think y'all realize the scope of the problem, but what should I expect from a typical rushed FP thought.
So... Raise your hand if you've ever experienced stop and frisk.
Happened to me a couple of years ago. So here's how it works. No one is perfect, and after the cop searches through your pockets for a long enough time, he's going to find some
Re:It is becoming time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Trump's legacy. Why aren't you loving it?
It's been a bi-partisan effort since the patriot act under Bush (though arguably back to the formation of the FBI).
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Trump loved freedom of the press and opinions of journalists. No wonder he did everything to stop investigating journalists and political opposition.
Sorry, it's just kind of funny to see how some of the 'conservatives' suddenly found their moral backbone to become skeptical of this shit just as the tables have turned with someone from the other party sitting in the White house.
But trolling as
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"
Trump loved freedom of the press and opinions of journalists. No wonder he did everything to stop investigating journalists and political opposition.
Sorry, it's just kind of funny to see how some of the 'conservatives'...
From that notoriously conservative newspaper, the New York Times [nytimes.com].
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From TFA: Under President Obama, the Justice Department and the FBI have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
How is that like "If someone runs amok and shoots up a school it's the gun manufacturer that is actually to blame for making it that easy.", again?
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The FISA court, which issues most of these, was established in 1978. There was a lot of things to like about Carter's administration, but that certainly wasn't one of them.
What would be really interesting ... (Score:5, Interesting)
is to know why the law enforcement agencies sought this information, ie what "crimes" were being investigated. Murder, theft, fraud, ... might seem reasonable but how many were fishing expeditions, finding out who journalists had been speaking to. Were they looking at journalists who have written stuff about police officers or who had criticized politicians ? These are not answers that Microsoft is likely to know. An in depth investigation of 10% (randomly chosen) should be done.
Re:What would be really interesting ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of the mind at this point it does not matter.
The real problem is the executive DOJ primarily but other executive agencies as well should simply not have subpoena power.
A right to expectation of privacy for third-party held records/effects when that party is holding them as a service should be established extending normal 4/5th amendment protections to those things. If the government wants info they can show some probable cause and get a judge or magistrate to sign off.
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Every concept devised by man can be used for both good and nefarious purposes. Background checks are commonplace these days. If you go missing, pray that you have a Google account with location services turned on because that's a far better tool for finding your cellphone than a cell tower ping. Investigating a journalist? You're assuming that they are objective and fair (they aren't) and you're assuming that they aren't under the paid employ of someone with a political axe to grind which destroys their
Investigating congress is a good thing (Score:1)
That's what oversight is. Let's put them in a glass house. We gotta keep 'em honest somehow.
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Investigating them in secret is not putting them
in a glass house.
It's layering secrets on secrets, which is (bad)^2.
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It's layering secrets on secrets, which is (bad)^2.
Yes it is, but we can't allow them the advantage
Why the fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck do idiots continue using cloud services? Why do many people think it is OK to have to ask permission from a giant corporations cloud servers to open their garage door, or adjust their thermostat, or open their front door or do ANYTHING inside their own home behind their own firewall? It is fucking idiotic and people are getting what they deserve. People need to start INSISTING that connected devices have a 100% local API or management web page that requires no connection to external cloud servers.
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I agree with you. But cloud products are convenient to use, you have to give it to them. A lot of the home-grown stuff is archaic in comparison.
Cloud services are also convenient to develop. Most engineers don't have the opportunity to "do it all" in-house. It's an easy business trade-off to use a third-party service, or a pre-engineered SDK, even when that SDK sends PII and usage analytics about your users to Google, et. al.
The market actually thrives on identifying people. If you want to develop an act
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It entirely depends on the cloud service and what use you put it to. If your company is storing data on AWS for example, no amount of court orders will ever give AWS the ability to hand that data over since their own admins can't get to it (all they see is a block of encrypted data X-many bytes long).
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Why shouldn't I use a cloud hosted email client?
You seem to mistakenly think an email client running in my home, yet never sending a single email to the Internet, is somehow useful to anyone. The entire point of an email client is to send an email.
It's amazing you don't understand that.
Why shouldn't I keep an encrypted copy of my backups hosted at a cloud provider?
I keep a less frequent encrypted backup on an SSD in a safety despot box at a bank too.
You seem to be under the mistaken idea that a backup stor
Remember this is two way (Score:5, Informative)
You might host your own email server, but will still be subject to secret orders.
First, of course, it had been found legal that government can hack into computers, or force manufacturers to include known vulnerabilities. So your server is probably not as secure as you think.
Second, communications are between at least two parties. So if youraccount@yourowndomain is contacted by anyone on Hotmail, the government can collect all those records (plus from all other cloud providers), and have a roughly complete look at your inbox.
Basically, the right to privacy has already been lost...
The US Constitution is mostly shredded now (Score:3)
1. The ever growing limitations on our own personal freedoms. We have more laws than ever. More people in jail per capita than even China.
2. The ever growing powers that the federal government gives to itself in spite the restrictions in the constitution.
3. Our representatives follow their own interests and those of the big money donors. They could care less what's good for the people or what we want.
We the people are lethargic... Our freedoms require us to be prepared to defend them. This can be achieved through non violent means, but Thomas Jefferson spelled it all out:
"The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty...
What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."
- Thomas Jefferson In a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, the son-in-law of John Adams
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1. ...We have more laws than ever. More people in jail per capita than even China.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who want
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https://www.econlib.org/three-... [econlib.org]
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I would say it's been made into swiss cheese, not shredded. The powers that be have been chipping holes in it - I.E. Encroaching upon fundamental rights, when they believe it serves a legitimate state interest.
However, in cases like this they have gotten more and more embolden over time.
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It can be fixed. At the very least, the path to that is a clear path, not a hidden path. What the IMC is trying to do is obvious. They clear out domestic opponents just like they clear out foreign opponents.
Say what you want about the d-bag, but at the very least Trump called them out on it.
Legislatures just need to grow a backbone, and be brave. By the time they are in power they have been compromised. People just need to realize we are being turned against one another, and look to raise the bar on who w
Not that much. (Score:5, Interesting)
300 million Americans. 5% are criminals = 15 million criminals. Getting 3,000 secret warrants = 3/15000 does not seem high to me.
My problem is not the numbers but instead the fact that the secrecy does not EXPIRE.
I am fine with letting the government investigate secretly for a year. Or even five. But that secrecy should have a time limit. After a year or so, they be required to either notify the target about the warrants, or justify to a judge why not. They should be required to prove that a) the case is still open, b) they have made some progress, c) and that revealing the warrant would impair their progress.
Yes this will cost them more money and yes, it may result in law suits if it turns out the original warrant was, uhm, unwarranted. Those are GOOD things. They limit the unwarranted uses of warrants.
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"The number of Americans with a criminal history has risen sharply over the past three decades. Today, nearly one-third of the adult working age population has a criminal record. In fact, so many Americans have a criminal record that counting them all is nearly impossible."
https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
Current Administration (Score:1)
At least we can be certain the current administration is not Abusing this power!
Sarcasm Off!
What we need to progress towards a solution. (Score:2)
As the CEO of one of the very few companies to challenge these secret orders, I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about this issue, how we can make progress towards a solution.
This problem starts with the end of the Cold War. Without the Soviet Union, the US made dramatic cuts to its military and by extension, intelligence budgets throughout the 1990s. In practical terms, this precipitated a massive shift in focus from HUMINT to the more cost effective SIGINT. The emergence of the Internet, and cell phon
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I personally think it's going to go the other way, the vast majority will just assume their data can be hoovered up without notification and think, "That's just the way things are." People are intrinsically lazy.