Thanks so much for the WT update. That's another thing inquiring (and concerned) minds have been wondering about.

Is now an oxymoronic phrase, is it not?

I've been surprised by the lack of pushback on this from the business sector.

Your vote on the FISA bill raises serious concern over your commitment to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. In an era that has seen the erosion of many of the rights of our citizenry; you have effectively subverted the law in order to grant immunity to criminals that have committed over 30 federal felonies. You took an oath sir. I am amazed that anyone needs remind you of that fact. Your job is to protect us from criminals not legitimize their crimes. There can be no excuse for this. The words “accessory after the fact” spring to mind.

Celebrate democracy by showing us that no man is above the law. Show your commitment to the American people by pushing to prosecute these criminals.

Represent us.

Please.

To those reading this please contact your representatives and loudly protest this miscarriage.

Well, yeah, that's that whole "mission creep" issue, which covers not only using the data for blurring-the-lines more general "law enforcement" while end-running the 4th Amendment, but also extends potentially to domestic "opposition research" and political surveillance more broadly. Absent effective independent regulation, oversight, and review, we'll get exactly those things.

There was a time when business was upset when NSA did not want any encryption used that it could not crack. That was a truly twilight zone type of thing. NSA seemed to be saying "We can put up all the antennas we want and get most of the rf communication in the world. We can get foreign governments to give us the phones lines at their borders. Therefore, you cannot use any encryption we cannot crack, because we have a right to that information."

Just as I was getting ready to mournfully acknowledge your loss to these threads [prompted by the conflation of wiretapping and data mining], you appear! Thank Dog you showed up!

They are, of course, independent but related processes. People truly do not understand the process of gathering, archiving, and sorting data. Nor do they understand the idea of a relational database. Nor do they understand the process of mining that database for associations. They don't understand algorithms - although they've maybe heard that Google uses them. Worse, perhaps, you're somehow elite if you do understand, and therefore are subject to all of the scorn afforded to being elite.

Most importantly of all, people do not understand what minimization means, or why they should care about it. Toss on top the ability of a program to refine itself through repetition or iteration, and folks put their fingers in their ears and howl La-La-La-La until you stop trying to explain it. This last is the most difficult for me to describe because I barely understand the process itself. The closest analogy I can find is the refinement process a user must go through to tune voice recognition software to their individual voice. But, by the time you mention that, you've back into relatively benign territory, and folks anxieties drop to zero.

The Feds knock; a business is lost story is a perfect example of a system run amuck. Yeah, talk about a loaded gun in the hands of a two-year old. People just can't seem to connect the dots.

I really hope you'll keep commenting here - even if infrequently. I've missed you terribly in these threads. You have so much to offer.

Yes it does. Thanks. I guess I just can't get my mind around the data-mining that is possible if you are as smart and knowledgeable as ondelette. I also think even with all the screening skill capable through computers that out of the haystack you could find a new target that is not linked to any known target or from a suspect location/IP address. I also think that when you have to translate foreign language phone calls, you are talking about a humongous task that has to be reduced to known targets through other means and it is not feasable, at least time and money wise, that you can find a new target from a haystack, unless the target is an idiot.

Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches

U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 7, 2008; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763_pf.html

At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm.

[...]

If the government's position on searches of electronic files is upheld, new risks will confront anyone who crosses the border with a laptop or other device, said Mark Rasch, a technology security expert with FTI Consulting and a former federal prosecutor. "Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded," he said. "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line."

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there was a real danger in posting. I meant that I still can't handle some of the late night arguing, that's just me personally.

Good to see you. The blog has been the worse for your absence.

Shooter, yes, it is about data mining. Your comments make clear that you have no idea what is in the new law, you have no idea what the Senate voted to immunize, and that you have no idea what the hell you're talking about when you get on the subject of data mining.

Thank you for the agreement that this is about data-mining rather than actual eavesdropping. It's certainly possible that I have been mislead by Mr. Kris et.al. or just not comprehended some arcane jargon that was the key to all of this, and I'll stipulate that I'm not an engineer, and know little to nothing about data-mining.

However all that just reinforces my point, that Glenn and others are using language to scare the bejeesus out of people, rather than being informative.

The comments of Russ Feingold make it abundantly clear you have company on not having the slightest idea what was immunized.

And Glenn has said exactly the same thing. Regardless, the fearmongering that this is "eviscerating", "gutting", and destroying the fourth amendment, continues. Personally, I think this is abusive.

I was among a group of people who proved that no matter what regulation you created to prohibit personal identifiers and require aggregate data only be saved, personal targeting can be done from the aggregate data, and the personal identifiers re-acquired.

Isn't that the point? Why scan data, if something that flags activity can't be tracked? More importantly, if someone or something is flagged in the US, isn't a warrant required to examine things further like actual listening?

Even the people who store your medical records are service providers. Where is the clause in the new law that requires all your medical records to remain in the U.S.? Because there is a clause that says that your doctor and all the recipients of the data have to be in the U.S. for it to remain U.S. data. How many times have you clicked on an agreement that allows them to send your information to others. Have you read every click license you were ever presented with?

Again, you make my point. Who in their right mind expects privacy online or on a telephone? As you say people are wailing, that some calls are beyond FISA while clamoring to entrust their personal medical data to anyone and everyone.

The crap that you wrote about tapping in London is officially a thing of the past, the new law does not require any particular location for the tap. It doesn't even require one party to be in London, the person tapping just has to think they are there.

Quite so, which brings us all the way around to the fact that technology has bypassed traditional concepts of place, and jurisdiction. Assume conversation "A" between NY and London. Saying it's not legal to listen in NY while admitting no jurisdiction over listening in London, is pretty useless. Especially if all of it physically occurs in Pomona. But putting a real tap on a London phone is totally different. I agree that all this is band-aids and that a totally revamped way of viewing communication overseas is needed. But once again, you and I aren't scaring people to death, or making them physically ill by way of reckless hyperbole.

It makes no difference if you really have al Qaeda on the speed dial, only that the government "reasonably believes" you have someone the government "reasonably believes" is al Qaeda on your speed dial. And once they start tapping you, your friends have al Qaeda on their speed dials too.

BUT, actual wiretapping, listening to US phones in the US still requires a warrant, yes? It is this exact lack of making distinctions about what is legal, and what isn't, that I have a real problem with. Running around yelling that the Constitution is corrupted, and that the fourth is gone, and run for the hills by some, is just heinous manipulation that has to stop.