I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in court by circumventing people's rights.
I don't see the need banning dragnets as a realistic option.
We need is a much stronger interpretation of fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.
FWIW a metadata dragnet/haystack can be used to search for parallel construction needles the same way it's used to search for terrorist or insider trading needles, all three are just varying types people working together to get something done in secret. I'm not sure how to make incentives align so that actually works out in practice but it's technically feasible.
I don't think this is true - sigint is not admissable in the UK (or US afaik).
> The unit of the DEA that distributes the information [from NSA] is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
> "Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."
Which is aka "parallel construction".
Also, there's a great history of SOD online at the DEA Museum.[1]
0) http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...
1) https://www.deamuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/042215-...
This is doable, I think. It's kind of the case now, and all it would take is a momentary parliamentary majority to enshrine it. But, it's honestly hard to see a consistent legal/theoretical justification for it, if all the data is sitting on a government server.
Are you saying that a court/prosecutor should not be able to demand someone's emails? What if they could be used to exonerate?
Somehow, I just think that once these datasets exist (they do) we will eventually get used to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
>In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against Americans that are based on NSA warrantless surveillance. The use of illegally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.
I'm not saying Trump and his people are innocent or that there's no Russian involvement, I just think it's highly unlikely that the set of evidence that we will see in these cases was obtained or produced with the publicized methods.
Not without a warrant.
>What if they could be used to exonerate?
Then the defense can present the evidence.
As far as I understand the justice system (which, luckily, is not very well), the prosecution is not out to prove your innocence. It goes contrary to all their incentives, both the police and the actual prosecutor. All advice I've ever heard defense lawyers give on this topic points in the same direction: don't count on police or the prosecutor to seek the truth.
I may be wrong, of course. Thankfully, I haven't had the pleasure of finding this out for myself.
Now that everything is collected it causes problems with the amount of data which causes quality data to drown in the amount. You basically don't get to pick up anything of worth before it's too late.
This again (the perceived lack of finding "terrorists") is used to argue for more budgets and "tools". Some say this is on purpose and I wouldn't disagree.
My 2 cents.
I'm not making a normative statement. I'm saying that [1] (for example), Russia will not deny itself a tool that China pocesses and [2] when it comes to dragnets, I have very little confidence in mechanisms to separate citizens from foreigners. Even if I'm wrong and it is possible to regulate dragnets in this way, you are then spied on by everyone but your own government (which is better than nothing, but not exactly inspiring).
They’re, well… indiscriminate. Since intelligence operates in secret, I think it’s fairly disingenuous to consider their use governed by guidelines about who can be spied on. You don’t even know who the person is, until you’ve already spied. All oversight will be conducted in secrecy, and we already know that in the US, the NSA they made a mockery of the concept.
We could ban the dragnets entirely, but I can’t see many militaries agreeing to handicap themselves relative to adversaries who will continue to use them. The very best a Norwegian could hope for at a long shot is that Norway won't spy on them, but Norway's allies will and share the intelligence. Also, every other country in the world (and private companies) will be spying on them.
I think this may be a lost fight.