His lawyer is a genius and a hero. A genius because when he doesn't get the records (and be wont), it will appear the prosecution has something to hide. He wins either way.
And a hero, because this makes clear the exact problem with these databases. Once they exist, there are endless uses for that each -seem- reasonable. This request illustrates that slippery slope in a way that makes even the NSA nervous.
From this perspective, "if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to fear" isn't half daft; fear is not in the activities themselves, but, rather in the State's asymmetric access to recorded public history: they get to selectively choose what part of this history is presented during prosecution, while its Citizens are forbidden access and a chance for an equitable defence.
If there's a world where all these interactions are truly not subject to privacy protections... why not remove the illusion privacy entirely and have it a publicly accessible dragnet? Or, at least, provide full access to the dragnet machine to public defenders.
Agree. I do not mind surveillance so far it is applied to all - bar none, and all the data is available to everyone. When police and judge label me sinner, I should be able to see how saintly they have been and only those who never sinned can throw stone at me.
Except that that isnt and has never been how the law is actually applied.
Federal laws are so numerous and complicated that even the federal government cannot NUMBER them. they literally can't even count them all. You and everyone else in this country is guilty of many of them.
but hey, if they decide to go after you for some reason, and bring you up on federal charges, please let me know how it goes in court accusing the judge and the prosecutor of "must have done something wrong too"
> Federal laws are so numerous and complicated that even the federal government cannot NUMBER them. they literally can't even count them all.
This is just a meaningless thing to say. The reason for the difficulty in answering is because the question ("how many laws are there") is flawed because it implies a static number. Some rules are temporary (e.g.: a safety zone around a small area for X hours while underwater explosives are used for dredging from June Y-Z). They receive temporary CFR citations that start with T and they expire when they are no longer in effect.
The number changes, it's not "uncountable" -- this meme needs to die.
Oh by the way, these are also by and large submitted to the Federal Register for people to have a chance to read and submit comments and request public meetings.
> Oh by the way, these are also by and large submitted to the Federal Register for people to have a chance to read and submit comments and request public meetings.
How realistic is it for a normal person, with a full-time job, perhaps a family, to keep track of every relevant Federal Register submission which may affect them?
Should they be keeping track of all newly-passed (and rescinded) laws, as well?
--
On a separate note, I wonder what the result would be of a legal system in which all laws have a mandatory expiry, and must be re-ratified/voted on to remain applicable. The period would have to be long, but not too long (somewhere 10-20 years maybe?) so as not to backlog, but even that might be a benefit in keeping the number of laws from growing too fast.
The biggest problems I can imagine is prosecution of subsequently expired laws, and how legal precedent could work, when it might have been made based on a wording different to the current.
> Should they be keeping track of all newly-passed (and rescinded) laws, as well?
Largely, no, because it would be a spectacular waste of their time. Why? Because the regulations are usually microscopically focused on class of actors that (a) know they exist, and (b) have a vested interest in staying current.
Moxie Marlinspike's example of the undersized lobster rule is especially telling in how it goes against the very point he was attempting to make. On the enforcement side, this particular regulation likely affects fewer than 10,000 people in the entire country -- that is, people fishing commercially for lobsters. The public interest it serves is that fisheries are subject to the tragedy of the commons[1], and must be regulated to preserve these public goods. It's basically the equivalent of that little tag on your mattress that says "ILLEGAL TO RESELL" -- people joke about getting arrested for this. No, it's targeted at the vanishingly small number of people that sell mattresses commercially.
EDIT: Also, just a note -- laws are passed by Congress. Regulations are promulgated by agencies that have been delegated some task or authority from Congress ("we don't have time to draft/debate/vote on every little piece of trivia regarding airplane part advisories or what plants are on the invasive species list or what next year's technical specifications for automobile safety are -- FAA, USDA, NTSB, you guys have the experts and scientists, so here's your authority, now go and figure out the details and make it happen")
I understood the point he was making to be that under a strict interpretation of the law/regulation in question, there is no flexibility around whether you have it because you're intentionally harvesting undersize stock, or whether it was thrown at you from a passing car as you walk home. If the act of possession is illegal, then the rest of the circumstances are irrelevant.
Of course, any reasonable court would/should dismiss this, even in the unlikely instance that someone would decide to prosecute, but the problem is that is a dangerous thing to rely on. And if it were recorded by not prosecuted, it's now a liability that can be used against you for other reasons, until the statute of limitations applies.
If the law prohibited selling, or possession in a commercial context (large lobstering boat, etc), it would be reasonable. The damage to lobster stocks is likely[1] due to the large commercial concerns, rather than individuals catching small numbers for personal consumption.
Likewise for the 'it's targeted at the vanishingly small number [...]'. If the law isn't specifically targeted at them, why not? One good reason would be the creation of loopholes that allow it to be broken without penalty, but if the alternative is allowing perfectly normal activities to bear the possibility of prosecution, subject to the whims of the legal system, I think I'd be in favour of being precise.
I don't think GP was arguing that it would make for an actual legal defense, but instead that when the same light is shone on everyone's activities, it becomes much harder to single out individuals.
Trying to make a mindmap of what has transpired and implications:
* monitoring the world
- better PR (how to spin news to the masses)
- better data for elections (get out to vote campains, donations) - this way they improve their elections machine
- better metrics for governmental activities and social development - this is what I hope it will be used for
* manipulation
- bubbling - presenting slanted/targeted results in searches and feeds - requires deal with FB and Google - in this way they can promote the opinions they want and actively downplay the activist movement
* propaganda
- using analytics they can target write articles in the media to influence public opinion
* blacklisting
- we've seen this in China and US, with The Great Firewall and No-fly List, it will probably become much more pervasive
- they can blacklist persons but also websites and specific messages in social networks
* targetting people
- they can auto-identify activists for any political orientation, networks of people, the social influencers
* blackmailing
- they know our most private interests and they can use that for blackmail when a person has been auto-identified or in any other situation
* wildcard - what will happen in the future with this information
- it could fall in the hands of Republicans
- similarly, other countries could make use of such datasets
- various companies could use the info for their own benefit (for example Google could use the data in many ways that would scare the people)
* slippery slope
- use of surveillance data in civil and crimilal lawsuits -> imposing a reign of terror on population
* the basic questions
- who has access?
- what data has been collected?
- how are they using it, and what machine learning tools are they applying on it?
- who is going to get such data in the future and how are they going to use it?
This is what's happening in China now. They've had the great firewall for 10 years - what's happening since then has been further development of ways to manage what people think. So they allow weibo, etc. to work, and are figuring out how to control the message.
By controlling a few birds at the right moment, you can control where the whole flock goes, and it still thinks it's free.
Sounds very Illuminati to me. (Oh yeah. I went there.)
I don't think it's that easy, though. China seems, at least to me, as a very divided nation. They can't keep it up forever, I mean - something's gotta give at some point.
It "gives" quite frequently, and between the size of the system, and some policies therein, it can absorb a significant amount of "give". There are actually hundreds of protests each day. State media control is of course the largest reason you don't hear about them often, but far from the only factor.
When discussing China from a Western perspective, and not simply using "culture and history" as a catch-all/cop-out for differences, I would say two points need to be kept closely in mind: Scale and Paranoia.
No Western country operates at "China Scale". Entire societal functions operate less efficiently, or break down entirely, when you reach a certain size. You often hear bewildered statements, wondering "Why China does X instead of Y?", where X is an unsustainable notion for them. Sort of like how on HN we talk about "Facebook Scale" or "Twitter Scale" to emphasize sets of problems that most other companies don't have, and likely never will.
But size lends something else: Momentum. Things will continue forward tomorrow in a manner similar to today, if only because it would take a huge exertion of effort to change it. And in this case, 500 protests per day with a few dozen people each is not a huge exertion of effort relative to the population.
As for paranoia, I'm sure some of China's leaders agree with your "They can't keep it up forever" statement (at a national level--local is a different matter). They worry about this regularly and it colors much of what they do. Does a US Senator wake up in the morning and ask themselves "Is today the day that everyone decides democracy is a terrible idea? Is today the day it all crashes down?" Of course not. But many of China's leaders worry for their system.
Of course that paranoia is probably of a different flavor now than 20 years ago. China's economic success and continued upward trajectory has to help some leaders sleep easier at night.
As for the Illuminati: Please don't go there. It never helps.
I can't think of an instance of an economy "collapsing under its own weight." China might run into issues with currency manipulation, but aside from that they will be most stable so long as they keep growing at a fast clip. The problems will start to appear when growth slows or stalls, and people no longer see their lives or children's lives getting better (e.g. the Arab Spring)
There's the signs of an early housing crisis (i.e lots of apartments being built, but nobody's buying). Entires cities stands empty, without occupation. That seems a bit like an economy that's heaving trouble maintaining itself.
Ah so you're saying the government pumping up economic growth artificially won't be able to continue indefinitely. I'd agree: organic economic growth can't cause economic collapse (unless there are serious infrastructure issues) but artificial growth certainly can.
Reading the case I am trying to understand why he needs them? The prosecutor is attempting, with the help of the FBI, to put these guys in the area of the robbery with cell phone records.
They don't have his records, hence they must be operating only on the testimony of the person they have already jailed which should be suspect regardless.
So why should the prosecution get a free pass, if they are using cell phone records to prosecute the the other men but don't have any to tie Brown to the area they should be able to just assume his guilt. Its not like Brown lost the records. Apparently he is being prosecuted for not having a phone they could trace.
>So why should the prosecution get a free pass, if they are using cell phone records to prosecute the the other men but don't have any to tie Brown to the area they should be able to just assume his guilt.
Welcome to America where you are not allowed on a jury if you even hint that police officers are human and therefore capable of error or dishonesty.
That's not completely true. I was on a jury once, about two years ago, and during the voir dire I admitted to having been arrested before, but pointed out that the charges were later dropped. Now, if you get arrested, but they drop the charges when you go to court, that implies that somebody in the system - possibly a cop - made a mistake. But the prosecutor didn't bounce me, and I wound up jury foreman.
That was actually a really interesting experience. I've been meaning to write it up, but haven't taken the time to do it yet. I wish I'd done it sooner when the details were more fresh in my mind, but I think I still should at some point.
I think a lot people who are for surveillance assume those records may help them one day. Yea they have nothing to hide, but they have nothing to protect them in return.
There's no need to alter the data, they can just leverage something small against you, to go after someone else in your social circle. And so on, and so forth.
But nothing is known about how long the NSA keeps records. So couldn't the NSA just shrug off the request saying that they don't have the record and not reveal any more details on their retention policy under the pretext that revealing anything more is a national security risk?
If the prosecutor is smart, they'll simply file a FOIA request and when the NSA replies that it doesn't have the requested records, they'll simply enter the NSA's response into evidence.
And a hero, because this makes clear the exact problem with these databases. Once they exist, there are endless uses for that each -seem- reasonable. This request illustrates that slippery slope in a way that makes even the NSA nervous.