Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying

Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by dalbasal on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:12AM (#16502705)

I have a very big problem with the use of dragnets to get convictions in court by circumventing people's rights.

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.

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Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by wlesieutre on Friday March 02, 2018 @12:04PM (#16503380)

I think "parallel construction" is the issue at hand, they can illegally search your emails with no cause or warrant, and then pretend they didn't and came by the evidence through other means. They can do this to everyone, and if you're targeted there's very little (nothing?) you can do about it.

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.

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Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by Teever on Friday March 02, 2018 @12:28PM (#16503650)

I've been wondering for quite some time just how much of Bob Mueller's investigation into the President and Russian collusion is a meticulously produced example of parallel construction.

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.

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Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by dsfyu404ed on Friday March 02, 2018 @12:05PM (#16503394)

>Are you saying that a court/prosecutor should not be able to demand someone's emails

Not without a warrant.

>What if they could be used to exonerate?

Then the defense can present the evidence.

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Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by dalbasal on Friday March 02, 2018 @01:31PM (#16504334)

I meant, what if your emails would exonerate me. But, u guess that's sort of covered by warranty. I think it'd be very hard to prevent an internal security (FBI, in the states) and intelligence from accessing the data, but if courts are all you're worried about, I think that's doable. Isn't this the case now? Will a court accept unwarranted evidence?

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Re:Norway Used NSA Technology for Potentially Illegal Spying by nothrabannosir on Friday March 02, 2018 @01:32PM (#16504350)

> What if they could be used to exonerate?

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.

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