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Comment by delusional

5 days ago

Again, I'm no expert, but I do believe the law would be what would stop you. It could be poorly written, but then we should just rewrite it.

7 comments

delusional

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rockskon  4 days ago

I don't quite understand your position. The intelligence community has shown time and again that they are happy to be innovative (and secretive) with interpretations of the law that enable them access to vast swaths of U.S. persons data without a warrant.

This is recent history, too. With the NSA interpreting the addition of the word "relevant" in Section 215 of the Patriot Act to mean "indefinite bulk collection of records on every U.S. citizen".

Where do you get your confidence from? The confidence that there will be robust public debate before an encroachment on the exploitation of data already collected on a country's citizens?

Do you believe this sort of bulk seizure and screening of the data of a country's citizens to be limited to the U.S.?

shakna  5 days ago

Police, in many countries, have already been found to violate the laws protecting surveillance systems that already exist.

If a warrant doesn't stop them today, why do you think it will tomorrow?

  • delusional  5 days ago

    I don't believe in "police" as a transnational group. I don't believe that the actions of police in some other country carries any information about the culture of police in mine.

    If police use these systems outside of their intended and legally mandated forms, that must be dealt with. We do need effective police though. We do that with robust surveillance infrastructure for police queries in the database, possible even with a mandatory log of queries as part of discovery.

    I don't have to "think" it will stop them, I can utilize the levers of democracy to check them.