> The United States makes an improper division between surveillance conducted on residents of the United States, and the surveillance that is conducted with almost no restraint upon the rest of the world.
> Treating two sets of innocent targets differently is already a violation of international human rights law.
It was bothering me for quite a while. I'm not an American. So what? I have lesser privacy rights?! Am I lesser human? Is spying okay as long as it's not spying on you?
Biggest problem from my point of view is that the US also happens to be the steward of the Internet. This public screwup represents the perfect opportunity for governments of the world to balkanize the Internet, as in further splintering it in geographic and commercial boundaries. Countries like China now have valid arguments in the eyes of the Chinese for blocking foreign websites and services. And more and more national firewalls will happen, firewalls that will crush freedom of speech and that will end the free trade.
I'm not sure if the age of the free Internet we've been enjoying is coming to an end, but you can bet your ass that governments are trying to end it. And the US government doesn't even seem to comprehend how big their screwup is.
>"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." //
This does not put a geographic limit, so all citizens (I think "the people" here is clearly a reference in context to citizens) should be excluded from having their data seized without warrant. That's got to be hard with USA citizens appearing in most populations and internet data not being clearly from any particular citizen or other person [they'll need an "isCitizen" bit so that all data packets from USA citizens can be dropped before inspection!].
Moreover the 14th Amendment to the USA Constitution appears to extend protections to all "persons", viz:
>"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." //
If the internet is under USA jurisdiction then persons there should be extended the "equal protection of the laws". One such law being that you need a warrant to search their "papers, and effects" [which clearly purposes to protect private correspondences].
Not sure how it works in the USA - to bypass this Federal operations could be considered to be outwith the jurisdiction of any state?? That would seem to require the people involved to not be citizens of the USA though, as they would then fall under the requirements for their State of residence to ensure the protection of the laws extends to people [everywhere].
"People" in the 5th Amendment means "people", not citizens; 5th Amendment protections are not limited to citizens.
But note that it has no explicit warrant requirement; just a reasonableness requirement and a limit on when warrants shall issue. It's read as implicitly requiring warrants in most cases for reasonableness, but there are plenty of exceptions.
For many (all?) situations the federal government considers itself the district of columbia which is not a state and is a federal territory. The Fed is thus not a state but a supra-state entity that operates outside what states would consider acceptable. They routinely trample individual and states rights. It is ironic considering the history of why the U.S. was founded that we have given in to a domestic version of the same tyranny.
This a structural problem; even if the language of the Constitution confers protection on foreign citizens (which I believe it does, to some extent), there are only certain situations in which foreign citizens have standing in U.S. courts.
If they don't reside in the U.S. they basically have no venue to ask for relief. Even if the parent is right that it is a violation of international law, enforcement of international law is essentially voluntary.
All countries should create their own facebooks and invite Americans to join theirs. It's sort of stupid to allow Facebook into any country unless all of its business operations and servers are based in the said country with proper controls. Even then that does not preclude the US government forcing Facebook to turn over data on Non-US citizens to itself.
Facebook is the #1 vector of US government's indiscriminate spying on everybody's else's citizens. Google comes a close second, but you don't generally give Google as many personal details as you give to Facebook. At least not by your own free will.
And that's really the problem that France has, everyone uses American services so America can basically create a dossier on everyone. No one uses French services other than French citizens, and perhaps a few other souls.
Next week's EU data protection "safe harbour" decision may require exactly that: Facebook may no longer be allowed to export personal data from the EU.
Edit: data protection would also have a huge effect on the "peeple" app, discussion of which seems to be banned on HN.
Nobody should be allowed to export personal data from such jurisdictions except for the owners of that data themselves. A U.S.-ian should be allowed to decide to trust their personal data to a company inside E.U. jurisdiction but that company shouldn't be allowed to trade that data anywhere else (especially, back to the U.S.). Of course, that's a complete pipe dream, and I'm just hallucinating.
I imagine that would only apply to sites which store PII[1]. The database should be located under the same jurisdiction (which doesn't mean every country, since some will have treaties to allow exporting to certain places (EU for example)) as the person whose data it is, and the data should not be transferred through other jurisdictions.
Well, pretty much any website stores an email, name and password. Every startup would need to look at all the bilateral treaties between every major country in the world. This is simply impractical.
Already in proposal stage in many places. My current home, Thailand, just announced plans for their own version. I am not amused.
However, hilarity has already ensued. The gov here is so incompetent that they couldn't even make an annoucement without having a bunch of gov websites taken down by a manual DDOS attack yesterday [1]. A few thousand people coordinated via social media to repeatedly visit the gov's ICT website which brought it to a standstill. Yet the gov thinks they can manage a single internet gateway to facilitate surveillance and it won't be ruinous.
The alternative is that Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc build their own Great Firewalls and become countries. I'd prefer that but many people have a strong sentimental attachment to countries based on geography.
Better solution, don't allow governments to spy in the first place.
Facebook and Google don't want to give up data, they are effectively being coerced into handing over data.
> Facebook and Google don't want to give up data, they are effectively being coerced into handing over data.
How do you know this? They get paid for the data and selling it to the government guarantees that they will be allowed to keep collecting it in the future. It's clearly a mutually beneficial agreement.
You misunderstand the word 'choice'. You have a choice to go on sites with Google Analytics, you are not being coerced into using their products. You have a choice to not give out your number to those whom have Android phones, you have a choice not to use Facebook.
You have a lot of choice, you are just choosing not to use the alternatives.
Whereas Google and Apple are being threatened by force to hand over data, they do not have a choice.
On your last point, you want the same people who demand and coerce data from Google and Apple, also be the same people who make the rules for Google and Apple?
> Treating two sets of innocent targets differently is already a violation of international human rights law.
It was bothering me for quite a while. I'm not an American. So what? I have lesser privacy rights?! Am I lesser human? Is spying okay as long as it's not spying on you?