That's not much of a warrant that respects the 4th amendment.
So far, no evidence has been produced to support your assertion. In fact, all evidence in the leaked documents, official statements, etc. suggest the exact opposite: warrants are served that allow investigators to make specific searches, with oversight processes to try to reduce the number of US citizens' data included in the search.
In other words: prove your claim. Cite something other than a Reddit or HN comment from a tinfoil hat-fitting specialist.
In his own words: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/07/transcript-what-oba...
On a side note it's fascinating how the government has taken the 'digital piracy' logic of "I didn't steal it, the guy I copied it from still has their copy!" and re-arranged that to apply to digital data on a person. I'm not sure whether to cringe or be impressed...
Even if they were going to copy your work that would be a "search" as some government agent would have to copy that paperwork.
Things are different now, so that's one of the things we as a society need to figure out is how much the 4th Amendment is different to match.
Is it, though? The widespread Verizon metadata gathering is what I'm most concerned with right now. It, too, was whistleblown by Snowden.
> the US Supreme Court has already ruled on the legality
I understand this program to be ruled unconstitutional by the Foreign International Surveillance Court, albeit with the findings suppressed by the justice department for "national security" reasons.
I thought this was the stuff Senators Wyden and Udall were briefed on and aghast about, but unable to explain to the American people.
Do you understand this differently?
Which leads me to an important aside: how much of the outrage being vented here comes from people who don't even know that these are two different programs? Take everything you read here with a huge block of salt.
Edward Snowden's rationale for leaking this info is that people never realized that collection of metadata of phone records and PRISM and other programs had gone so far. Maybe SCOTUS ruled on some of this, but the public never realized the implications, largely because it's all protected by top secret classification.
I used the Verizon story in my comment because those implicated in PRISM said in their carefully crafted PR messages that their warrants were for specific subjects and unlike Verizon's vast dragnet. Anyhow, as other have pointed out, it's not hard to draft a specific warrant for the narrow group of 'every US user 13 years or older' which is what I'd presume PRISM involved. Also, the slides leaked for the PRISM stories showed that PRISM was the improvement on older collection techniques of essentially splicing Internet backbone cables.
Agreed on taking replies here with a grain of salt.
Again, though...that program is legal. It's not even a controversial point (unlike with PRISM). From what I know of it, the rationale for the supreme court decision that says mass collection of metadata is legal is fairly well established, has a long judicial precedent, etc.
Yes, Snowden's rationale seems to be forthright. He's bothered by the implications of surveillance on this kind of scale. And I get it -- hell, I even agree. But most of the commentary I've been seeing on HN is just embarrassingly uninformed (or misinformed).
"it's not hard to draft a specific warrant for the narrow group of 'every US user 13 years or older' which is what I'd presume PRISM involved."
All of the public information about PRISM has explicitly said that information can only be obtained when one party to the conversation is a foreign national. I've read nothing to suggest that broad warrants of the sort you describe are any more legal than before.
Granted, IANAL, but I have worked as an engineer in In-Q-Tel funded companies, text analysis, and search. Nothing I'm saying is any reflection or representation of anyone I've worked for and is only my ill-informed, zany, personal opinion.
Can you really get a warrant that broad? I assumed PRISM still entailed warrants issued on a user-by-user basis.
You need a lawyer to translate anything our leaders (biz, gov or other) say. It's all form with very little substance. If you thought you heard something definitive you almost certainly misunderstood.
Nobody (here) knows. This conversation is more heat than light in part because people are spouting all sorts of uninformed nonsense just to perpetuate their theatrical sense of outrage.
What I've read so far suggests that there's some sort of FISA-related oversight of the "reports" generated by PRISM. It sounds like analysts can do queries based on certain rules that are designed to include only conversations with foreign participants, but to get detailed information they need to go through a FISA court.
Honestly, though...you can't tell much of anything from the documents that have been leaked. Most of the details you see people discussing here are speculation, or worse.
The government position is that it isn't a search until they subject the data to analysis. Nor is it a seizure when you still have your data. Thus they draw a line between collecting data (making sure they have it) and actually searching it. Therefore broad data collection does not violate the 4th so long as they always get specific warrants before actually searching that data.
Why have no accountability and no transparency if they were not going to violate our privacy? I'm flipping the "If you have nothing to hide" bit on them.
But even if there were oversight, the main issue is the potential for abuse. Having all that data in the hands of an entity that can imprison you is a pretty frightening idea. Sure, maybe they're following the rules now, but in desperate times, people can behave immorally and radically. Do not trust other human beings, even if they are under the umbrella of "government". Look at what evil humans have done in the last century alone and you'll agree that we should limit the potential for abuse as much as possible.
The rest of your argument is about reality as civil libertarians see it, and not how the government sees it. (Because, after all, they think that the briefing that Congress gets and the oversight of the FISA court is sufficient protection.)
First, "unreasonable" is a key word. Is the copying of data without any noticeable inconvenience to the citizen considered unreasonable? Another key word would be "seized", is copying considered seizing? Seizing is legally defined as the removal of property, one might argue that no seizure was ever made during this wiretapping.
Second, the Bill of Rights was written over 200 years ago. During that time PHYSICAL searches and property seizures were the primary concern. Nobody could even fathom the concept of the Internet or the role it would play in today's society.
This reminds me of the copyright talks but obviously when it's citizens doing it, copying is stealing but when it's NSA, copying is not an issue because it does not remove anything ...
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...
I don't understand exactly what happens when a law is found unconstitutional. I can't imagine an analyst at the NSA would be retroactively charged with a crime, would they?
Personally, I think that anyone against this should show a civil disobedience by refusing to pay taxes.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...
I'd happily agree what the NSA did was just as wrong as, say, making it to easy to get mortgages. But the law and morality don't always agree.