rt4mn

yeah... a lot of ink has been spilled over there should be a Warrent requirement for the FBI but imo the data broker loophole is the bigger issue. NSA buys netflow data in bulk for petes sake.

Section 702 is expiring at the end of the month but whether or not it gets re-authorized by a bill called RISSA is likely going to the floor of the house NEXT WEEK. IF you care about privacy and surveillance, contact your house member and say you want real surveillance and fisa and 702 reform, and that they should only vote for RISSA if three good amendments from the judiciary committee pass, and three bad ammendments from the intellegence committee fail.

The good judiciary ammendments would: requiring fbi obtain a warrant before querying 702 data, close data broker loophole, prohibit restarting "abouts" collection. All good things.

Intel committee ammendments are really bad. expands the definition of Foreign Intelligence Information to include counternarcotics, Unnecessarily expands suspicionless vetting of immigrants, including people allready in in the United States, and Includes one of the biggest expansions of surveillance in recent history, or what Rep. Lofgren calls "Patriot Act 2.0," by expanding the categories of businesses that can be subject to a *gagged directive* under Section 702

This has been an incredibly annoying issue to track and mobilize around because things are moving quickly and behind the scenes but just raising the issue helps. Even if you think your house rep sucks on everything else, its worthwhile to reach out on this issue. Its hard to know where people stand when folks from trump-land and the squad are both calling for reform.

> Risky Biz (and really anything Patrick Gray touches) is awesome. Would recommend.

Patrick Gray is a good interviewer and news source but he is also a big booster of the American surveillance apparatus, and has spoken against such reasonable reforms as requiring the the FBI get a bloody warrant when it searches for Americans data in the 702 database (data that is collected specifically for foreign intel purposes and thus subject to less constitutional scrutiny). He recently defended the NSA's acquisition of netflow data because the NSA needs it to do its work. as if constitutional privacy rights should give way to a spy agencies priorities.

He is just way to trusting of these agencies abilities to police themselves. I swear his quote when they talked about nsa getting netflow data was something along the lines of "if people only knew how many meetings they had to have before they would understand". Those are both examples I am pulling from memory so don't take them as gospel. And of course, no source of news / commentary is unbiased.

I listen to and enjoy the risky buiz podcast. And institutional trust is a legitimate aspect of security, especially in infosec. I just wish he was more skeptical of western law enforcement and intelligence agencies (he is already more then skeptical of non-western law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which is fine, I just wish he did not give the five eyes countries a pass because we are "the good guys"). He recently interviewed people at NSA headquarters for petes sake.

This is probably going to be a bit of a mini rant, been thinking bout this for a while (10 years in fact).

> Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. They are effectively compelled to self-regulation.

This is the fundamental idea of the Panopticon, and you see it baked into parts of the modern surveillance State as well. But outside of some workplace and carceral contexts i don't think its actually the direction we are headed. The spooks want the power to actually use the data surveillance gives them, they are not really interested in social control as far as I can tell. At least not yet.

True, most of the data hoovered up by the "Intelligence community" is almost never actually looked at with human eyes, but they are actively trying to work towards building a system whereby all that data is still analyzed and used, or quickly searched with just the right keywords.

The panopticon is useful for illustrating one of the many side dangers of surveillance (namely that it instills fear and stifles expression) but it does not cut to the core issue: Mass surveillance drastically upsets the power balance between the government and the governed.

I really hope this eventually leads to a situation where an adversary cant forcibly de-link you from your signal account by taking control of your phone number or intercepting an sms.

For a lot of people, signal is not simply a User-User "texting" type application, but much more akin to slack or discord or matrix.

Many, Many reporters put their signal number in twitter bio seeking tips. Many activists (including me) use signal group chats to organize volenteers and staff, and publicly share room links. In other words, we have to either share our number publicly or buy a burner phone number if we want people to interact with us on signal.

I mean, I dont agree with the person you are replying to, but signal absolutely is a social network. Its a network you use to communicate socially.

You can argue its not social media, but I think the stories feature definitely puts it on the social media spectrum to some degree.

First Draft of UN Cybercrime Convention Drops Troubling Provisions, But Dangerous And Open-Ended Cross Border Surveillance Powers Are Back on the Table