“Late last month, we reported on new federal efforts to gain an expanded ability to conduct ‘remote access’ searches under a warrant against a target computer whose location is unknown or outside of a given judicial district,” Cyrus Farivar reports for Ars Technica. “The government’s proposed revisions to criminal rules will be discussed at an upcoming Department of Justice (DOJ) meeting later this month in New Orleans.”
“Federal agents have been known to use such tactics in past and ongoing cases: a Colorado federal magistrate judge approved sending malware to a suspect’s known e-mail address in 2012,” Farivar reports. “But similar techniques have been rejected by other judges on Fourth Amendment grounds. If this rule revision were to be approved, it would standardize and expand federal agents’ ability to survey a suspect and to exfiltrate data from a target computer regardless of where it is.”
“On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a 21-page memorandum with comments and recommendation to the DOJ,” Farivar reports. “Specifically, the ACLU fears “jurisdictional overreach,” which under the new rules would allow a magistrate judge in any district to impose a ‘remote access search warrant’ in any other district… The ACLU also raised the troubling implications of granting the power of a single warrant to conduct vast digital searches… The organization applied similar logic to the use of zero-day exploits.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
The U.S government should print the Constitution on its toilet paper since it’s been figuratively wiping its collective ass with it for quite some time already. Plus, then there’d at least be the off chance that somebody in the government might actually read it.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]
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Obama’s NSA proposals fall far short of real change – January 17, 2014
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The NSA, Apple’s iPhone and a whole lot of bad reporting – January 8, 2014
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Ex-NSA chief calls for Obama to reject commission’s recommendations to rein in NSA surveillance – December 30, 2013
How the U.S. NSA remotely bugs your Apple iPhone – December 30, 2013
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The Constitution was such a quaint document the used to mean something. But not anymore.
Reminder: If you read the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, you’ll immediately notice that:
There is no such thing as a ‘legal’ warrant for mass surveillance. Doesn’t exist. Never will exist. “The government’s proposed revisions to criminal rules” are themselves in fact CRIMINAL; Or should I point out, treasonous.
Impeachments all ’round.
There is also no ‘separation of Church and State’.
Yeah, we’ve debated that one ad nauseam around here.
And the answer is…..it is only in the Constitution if you want to see it there, just like ‘right to privacy’ covers abortions.
My point is, it doesn’t matter if there is no such thing as a ‘legal warrant for mass surveillance’, if it is argued to the lower depths of knowledge successfully as my other two examples, it will be seen as written plain as day, screamed as ‘necessary’ by the ‘messes’ (intentional misspell) and herald by the media, signed into law by leftist, and rewarded with re-elections.
“Get used to disappointment…”
I rather think the word ‘leftist’ was superfluous to your otherwise excellent argument.
It was in regard to the two examples given and holds true for the current regime’s domestic surveillance.
I also believe most people, left and right, want to see a return to less government intrusion via the Patriot Act being allowed to sunset, but it serves the ‘left’ politically to keep it active.
I really hate that, because I was raised believing liberals were ultimately searching for freedom from Big Brother.
Boy was I wrong….
The presumption that any Democrat is a ‘leftist’ is a wrong one. The parties have significantly realigned over the last 30-40 years as the Republican Party has continued it’s never ending march to the extreme right wing. Many former mainstream Republicans now find themselves voting Democratic out of lack of another viable option.
The power structure of the Democratic Party in most states and certainly in Washington is center-right with but minimal lip service to those you would call ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’. The large influx of former Republicans has pulled the Democratic Party to the right even as the Republican Party has moved ever farther to the right.
Finally there is a lot of common ground between the libertarian factions of the Republican Party and the progressive/liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In foreign policy, civil liberties, and many other non-economic areas the concerns are similar and the desired policy changes are as well.
Actually, the Republican Party still stands for most of the same things it did 30 years ago. Name something ‘new’ or further right they stand for now.
The Democratic Party has pushed further and further to the left and closer to socialism by expanding the power and size of government.
I have no idea how you got that so backwards, other than many liberals see their view as ‘center’ and thus never understand why the Right see the media as part of the problem.
I agree with your third paragraph.
Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and others would not be welcome in today’s GOP.
Read David Stockman’s books and you will see a good representation of what has changed. He was a Republican Congressman hand picked by Reagan to be the Budget Director. When the numbers did not add up on the Reagan policy, he left. He was not the problem.
Name something they would vote for. Abortion? Nationalized health? Gutting the military? Voter ID?
Why would Republicans not vote for them?
Those three are no different than Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Bob Dole.
You forgot Richard Nixon, who was more moderate than any of them.
What does Stockman have to do with it?
Read his books and find out.
He didn’t leave the GOP- it left him.
Read the book and then what?
Have you read it?
That line about the party leaving him is a Zel Miller line.
How ironic. Zel was a Democrat.
Does Stockman say that he is now a Democrat? Does he support ObamaCare because the numbers ‘add up’?
Look, Darwin, there are three branches of Republicans.
Stockman is from the blue blood (Rockefeller) pro-business wing.
Nothing wrong with that. They just lost power after 1980 and have resented it ever since.
There is also the religious right, as in the Moral Majority and Jerry Falwell. Again, they have their place.
Then there is the wing I represent, the fiscal and Constitutional wing, made a player by the likes of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and most importantly Bill Buckley, jr. These folks also have an alignment with Libertarians and the Tea Party and are the ‘loudmouths’ of the party (it used to be the religious wing that did most of the yelling).
Now, you can be a part of one, two or all three wings, even if you feel a calling mainly to one (I am Christian and pro business, but think those can take care of themselves).
I’m glad you think I can learn something from Stockman’s book. It gives me a chance to tell you that is about as likely as you explaining trig to a professor just because you think you figured out one problem.
It also tells me something about the state of perception from the left when they think Ike is not acceptable to the right anymore yet JFK speaks what is on the mind of young Liberals? Really? Think about that, and what you said about Gerald Ford.
The Republican Party stays pretty consistent with its ideals.
Ike, Teddy, Jerry and even Abe would still be welcomed.
The Democratic Party shifts like a fat man in a circus mirror, trying to figure out which position makes him look the best (and at what angle and light….).
Good luck with this. I hope you treat it as a learning experience.
If you have a Constitution and a Government who does not follow The Constitution and it’s Amendments, then you have no Constitution.
Take up arms and fix it.
You really do not think that will settle anything in this day and time do you?
From back when CNN used to cover the news…
The government has tanks, planes, missiles, drones and lots of troops. Your firearm will not carry the day.
I can’t sleep at night unless the government is in bed with me. I can’t wait until their hand’s up through my neck and into my head and they start animating me. And while I’m at it, why must my cats always leave a hard tile or wood floor to throw up on a nice clean carpet or rug. I wish the government would regulate my cats.
Really, I just wish the men in slacks would offer me the blue or red pill …I’d take the red so I could fall down the government hole and end up eating white bowl government mush every meal in the government hovercraft. omg, that would be the life ..they would take care of me and love me and be nice to me and give me a face lift when I get old and start to look like a cabbage patch doll. oh, thank you god for bringing government into every aspect of my life and letting me live off peter in exchange for my dignity and life ambitions and personal creativity and self-respect and worth and replacing whatever chances I might have had to bring inventions into the world to better the lives of others with endless subsidies. Being cradled by the feds …who could ask for more. All they want is my vote in november ..that’s not too much to ask.
don’t flatter yourself, they don’t need your vote in November…digital voting is as fixed as the Constitution is ignored.
Cats, unlike men, cannot be regulated.
I have three ..and that being the case, I may have to replace their brains with something from Apple. I think I’ll rename them siri one, siri two and siri three. Instead of throwing up furrballs, they’ll launch maps, tell me what theater is showing rocky 17 (he’s paraplegic, fights with a joy stick), lets me know as soon as I become financially independent ..if it’s raining ..stuff like that ..and they all have attenuated meows. hahahahahahhahaahahahahah !!!!!!!!