Ars Technica - EFF: Feds can’t get around Fourth Amendment via automated data capture
OAKLAND, Calif.—A federal judge spent over four hours on Friday questioning lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and from the Department of Justice in an ongoing digital surveillance-related lawsuit that has dragged on for more than six years.
That July 2014 motion asks the court to find that the government is "violating the Fourth Amendment by their ongoing seizures and searches of plaintiffs’ Internet communications." The motion specifically doesn’t deal with allegations of past government wrongdoing, nor other issues in the broader case.
Richard Wiebe, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, countered: "The government can't circumvent the Fourth Amendment simply by automating its searches and seizures."
"If suddenly our homes were being searched by drones, that wouldn't be permissible under the Fourth Amendment?" he added later.
"What really matters is not what the government gains but what the plaintiffs lose: they lose privacy and control of their communications. That's really what we're talking about. The Fourth Amendment protects us all against mass surveillance of our papers."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @05:31AM
I used to know a guy from East Germany. He was always very serious, so I don't think he was bullshitting me, but there's always the possibility he was just yanking my chain. Anyway he told me that after the wall came down, and he got access to his intelligence files, they had pages and pages of info just about his genitalia. Like sketches, and measurements, and descriptions, and stuff like that from various informants. He said he was just an average person. He wasn't involved with anything political, and just worked in a warehouse most of his adult life. He also said his penis and scrotum were quite average (sorry, he never showed me so I can't confirm or deny this), so he was very surprised that they push so much emphasis on surveilling his groin. He just couldn't understand it. Why focus so much on one man's genitals?
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday December 23 2014, @05:53AM
Maybe he should spend more time with his pants up? And stop hanging out in the men's bathroom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @06:04AM
Dummy. He was hitting on you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Tuesday December 23 2014, @07:08AM
The East German Stasi was truly evil as an organization, not like the NSA and CIA in a certain perverse way. A good movie to watch to get a feel at how oppressive the system was, go rent or buy the German film "The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)". Make sure to listen to the director's commentary (in English). It's pretty insightful about that insidious system.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday December 23 2014, @10:38AM
Do you have any first-hand sources to back the credibility of that movie? I grew up in west Germany, with all the typical western values, and live now in the Eastern part of Germany for some years. There are not too many colleagues I discussed these topics with, ut with those I do they feel that current surveillance supersedes anything the Stasi had.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @11:25AM
Sure it is way more pervasive. Even a former stasi officer has said that what the NSA has accomplished would have been a "dream come true" for the stasi. [businessinsider.com] But, so far, it is of a different nature. It took a couple of decades for the stasi to get really ruthless. If the NSA gets to keep it up for a couple of more decades, "scope creep" will have them doing similar bad shit.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 23 2014, @12:58PM
It's only different in how it's *currently* being used. Remember that this information will always be there after it's been collected.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Tuesday December 23 2014, @08:29PM
No, but what is described in that movie is similar to what has been reported both in the news media and in scholarly historical research which I have read. The vast size of the Stasi archives now open to researchers and those who wish to research what was collected on them says something about the pervasive nature of Stasi surveillance. But, having said all that, I agree with you that the NSA and other U.S. federal government surveillance is worse in some ways than what the Stasi ever did. The NSA is illegally reading my unencrypted e-mails as a matter of course (and is legally reading yours because you are in Germany!) but no one is steaming open the envelopes containing letters I'm send. In fact, the most secure communication method I have is through the U.S. Postal Service.
Incidentally, I do write letters that are regularly read by the government before they are passed to the recipient. I write people in state and federal prisons. But no one should have an expectation of privacy when it comes to communication to people in those places for obvious reasons. It's very much like the Stasi regime. You just learn to not write anything that will raise the ire or hackles of the prison authorities... unless you intend to do that which I have done on occasion when they overreact.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.