I hope nobody is truly shocked by this. Outraged? Yes, but shocked no. The US 3 letter agencies have a long history of overreach. Our elected officials are complicit in this all in the false name of "public safety" and "anti-terrorism" when their is little empirical evidence to suggest either mission is being accomplished. Instead, we have agencies profiling Americans on a massive scale that would make Brezhnev of the USSR jealous if he were alive today.
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
474 points (91.0% liked)
Technology
60015 readers
2646 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be Edward Snowden, give up a lucrative future in government work to do the right thing and put the word out, be hunted for the rest of your life by Uncle Sam. The collective response to your sacrifice was a big fat "meh"
Sadly, you would be correct. Edward Snowden sacrificed his life to help us only to be met with nothing in return.
This is an increasingly unpopular opinion on reddit from what I've seen. Glad the sane people switched sites.
It almost seems like it's a propaganda to discredit him and people who act like him or believe in what he said. To move the conversation away from what illegal shit the 3 letter agencies do and what they want to do.
There's even a movie... Noting changed so far irl, it's surreal
All he wanted was to let people know. What people decide to do with the information is up to the people. He achieved his goals, it isn't his problem if people just ignore his message.
Yeah, people are aware now so can make decisions on their own and decide their own risk tolerance.
One thing I find funny though is how people think I don't care if X country has my info it's my home country Y I'm more worried about. But, their country Y is probably hacking country X and retrieving all their info from there with possibly less red flags to get through. So it really comes down to what people choose to share and use than a certain countries publicized spying policies.
If his objective was to inform people, he at least succeeded with me
I do my best to avoid things that were exposed, and it confirms not to trust our "safeguards"
Every time a program like this is pushed through and people say that there are safeguards to prevent abuse, remember this. They claimed there were safeguards here too.
Always frustrates me when I hear about why we're so much different to Russia/China because we have laws and safeguards. They mean shit
Stuff like this always makes me wonder how good the surveillance state actually is. I mean, a bunch of hillbillies planned an insurrection on Facebook for fucks sake.
Well like always the “hillbillies” are probably hand in hand with the insurrectionists.
“Some of those that work forces. Are the same that burn crosses” - RATM
Also,
Zack de la Rocha sometimes changes the lyrics in the second verse from "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses" to "Some of those that burn crosses are the same that hold office" when playing live.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Yup, no doubt.
No, Rage Against the Machine. No Doubt did "Don't Speak".
How Sublime.
I think that's a bit misleading, TBH. The attack was fairly well planned, and far from just a bunch of hillbillies. Yeah, they were a part of it, and part of the plan, but summarizing them as the brains behind the coup attempt is undercutting the risk of it being tried again.
Which just furthers op's main point, really. I mean it was fairly well planned in a fairly overt fashion, why weren't they prepared?
Definitely wasn't saying they were the brains. But the message was communicated to them via Facebook. They actively participated in the conspiracy, which took place on Facebook. My point is, the data was there, and it wasn't acted upon for some reason.
Well that was good for propoganda purposes. Gives them an excuse to get more intrusive.
Youll notice that on Jan 6, none of the people in the Capitol Building had guns, and also note the video of them being waved in, and also note that they weren't immediately forced out.
Jan 6 glows like the sun.
load more comments
(10 replies)
In 2021, for example, the FBI ran more than 3.3 million queries through the Section 702 database, according to a government transparency report.
3.3 million spies of the Patriot Act. It's set to expire this year, but they'll reauthorize it. No one is strong enough to throw the ring into the fire.
Have we learned nothing from Edward Snowden?
Whats with all the goatse inspired article images lately?
Now I can't unsee it.
In other news; water is wet.
I expected more out of the people who do this sort of shit all the time and never face consequences, much less meaningful reforms.
I like how it's suddenly a problem only when they do this to Americans for a change.
FISA stands for "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." By definition, it's only supposed to be used in the surveillance of people foreign to the U.S.A. The FBI's job is domestic law enforcement. It's the FBI's job to investigate crime involving U.S. citizens.
Officially, the NSA does not spy on U.S. citizens. You can believe whatever you want about whether it actually "unofficially" does, but unless you do a lot of business overseas, chances are high that Google and Amazon and Facebook all have collected way more personal information about you than the NSA has.
Even if the NSA does surveil U.S. citizens, it can't use any information it obtains in any legal or political way, or in any otherwise public manner.
If a U.S. citizen has communications with a foreigner, however, it is possible that those communications will be surveilled. The NSA does spy on foreign citizens, just like foreign intelligence agencies spy on U.S. citizens. If you're a U.S. citizen communicating with a foreigner who's being surveilled, then your communications with that person are going to be surveilled as well.
But again, it's not the FBI's job to police international crime -- that's the job of the CIA. As the article describes, this is why it is a bad idea for the FBI to be using FISA intelligence. This is why "it's a problem when they do it to Americans."
Interesting, thanks for this context! Then if I understand correctly FBI spied on a USA citizen but in an international matter. So it's not really relevant that one party was a USA citizen: what is relevant is that since the other party wasn't, so it wasn't FBI's job. Did it get it right?
Think of it another way:
The CIA and NSA will do their things collecting foreign intelligence on largely non-US persons. They store that information in a database somewhere with a big old "foreign" sticker.
The FBI will do their things collecting domestic intelligence on largely US-persons, storing their information in a database with a "domestic" sticker.
Intelligence agencies will share information between each other at times when their jurisdictions cross and for certain interesting mission sets, but it needs to be a deliberate and measured act. The FBI shouldn't be able to just sift through the "foreign" database without any supervision for things that look interesting to them - they need to be granted access to a certain tailored box within the "foreign" database with extraneous information (to them) redacted or removed.
Additionally, there's a whole 'other can of worms on how much information they were able to access. It's one thing to catch an American committing tax fraud from their emails between a foreign bank lets say. What if an FBI agent knows their (ex) spouse has some overseas dealings and they want to snoop or find some dirt? They can't legally use their organic tools to find this information on someone they are connected to without probable cause, but who's to say their "foreign" database accesses account for the US person who isn't the focus of surveillance? They aren't looking for "Spouse, bank fraud," which would probably raise suspicion with supervisors, but rather "foreign banker, any conversations with [email protected]," which the other 3 letter agencies probably don't care about.
Our issue here is that the FBI is using information that they shouldn't have access to. You can argue legitimacy one way or another, but the way these agencies are funded and authorized to operate necessitates this separation. The FBI may have had a valid case for querying and using this information, but only under through the proper channels, which it seems were not used.
Yes, that sounds right, except that I think it really is relevant that one party was a U.S. citizen.
There are strict laws against the U.S. government surveilling U.S. citizens without a warrant. By using FISA information gathered through warrantless foreign surveillance, the FBI appeared to be taking a backdoor around those laws.
I like how when American laws are broken in America it becomes an issue for Americans
Ftfy. Everyone is spying on other countries all of the time; the US is just one of the most capable in that capacity but not different in its aims.
Of course they do. It just baffles me how it's always a sudden outrage when they happen to do to "us" what they normally openly do to "them" which is considered totally fine. Not really specific to FBI and USA, except they are the biggest in this game, as you've mentioned, so we hear mostly about them, and maybe China or Russia.
I wish they could catch all the traitors of the country who raided our capitol. Fucking idiots, all of them deserve jail. I hope they use FISA to find them and the foreign money as well. Most of crooks in the republican party have connections to foreign governments.
Hold on. Let me put on my shocked face
Section 702 should either not be renewed at all, or renewed with restrictions to require a warrant for US person searches. The FBI has shown they cannot handle this power as is.
view more: next ›