FBI Can Demand Consumer Data Without A Warrant

lcpiper said:

Is it not a fair statement to claim that the founding fathers believed that abuse and even tyranny were par for the course for any government and that is why they built the protections that judicial mechanisms so that we would maintain the ability to correct things when they start going wrong?

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Fair statement.

The idea that giving a morphing congress authority over people from institutional inception until the end of time would be tyranny in my book. The idea that people that will be born hundreds of years after the constitution give their consent to be governed to a system put in place before their birth.

Scribbles on parchment, but I can see their intent, however illegitimate it is today.

Ur_Mom said:

Yet, you have the government trying to force back doors into encryption methods. Luckily, my state representatives are huge on privacy of citizens (Jeff Merkley & Ron Wyden).
If people can't be forced to incriminate yourself, we'll find a way to do it for you.".

There was a recent poll showing 19% of people trust the US government right now. That's low. Right now, they should be doing things to increase trust, not erode it even further. I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, as it technically is legit and legal, but I disagree with the laws that you're defending. As do a lot of American citizens. Whether it's for the safety and security of the country is debatable both ways. I think most people on this forum see the opposite side of what you're on.

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Unfortunately the majority is fickle and easily able to be manipulated. I couldn't say how many people will quote a facebook meme as a source of information to bias their opinion off of. You do have to have a degree of distrust of the government or problems are more likely to occur and not be caught. The government itself doesn't 'trust' itself thus the need for the check and balances system to exist.

I would personally say government and presidential approval ratings to be more reflective of media actions and less on government actions as many will poise up against the government because of what they read on facebook instead of digging for information.

I don't really trust anyone, but so far the USA has kept me from having to speak german, or japanese or russian, so I can't complain too much.

True freedom isn't possible, when we used to have that cannibalism and incest and murder thrive. People must be governed because of our animal nature.

Think of the other side of things too, your family member was murdered. There was not enough significant evidence in the court to convict the person you are very sure did it. His phone was suspected to have the motive and pre-planning information on it, but there was no way it could be accessed. Derp?

Flip it the other way, you are a major suspect in that murder, your alibi is on your phone encrypted, you quickly allow the unlock to provide evidence to the courtroom of your innocence. So should this door only swing one way?

aardvark sandwich said:

Fair statement.

The idea that giving a morphing congress authority over people from institutional inception until the end of time would be tyranny in my book. The idea that people that will be born hundreds of years after the constitution give their consent to be governed to a system put in place before their birth.

Scribbles on parchment, but I can see their intent, however illegitimate it is today.

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This seems like some anarchist fallacious argument ... our Constitution was built to be changed and it has been updated 27 times since its inception ... there has even been talk of creating a whole new Constitution at times (although I think that would be an unmitigated disaster) ... within certain reasonable limits a person is even able to live almost free of government interaction (if they choose) like many separatist groups choose to do ... if the majority of Americans wanted to substantially change something about the government it can be done (and has been done) ... we actually have a reasonably good balance in our Constitution that protects the minority from the Tyranny of the Majority as well as usually protecting the Majority from the Tyranny of the Minority (and I use Minority in the quantitative sense, not the ethnic one)

lcpiper said:

Z, a prisoner of war isn't a criminal, he's an enemy. A prisoner of war stays a captor until the war is over because he is an enemy. You don't try them, you don't convict them, you just hold them so they can't do additional harm. We held German and Japanese prisoners during WW2, we held Germans in WW1, We held Iraqi's during the first Gulf War and Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean war. We kept them until the conflict was over. It's not law enforcement it's warfare. Don't get them confused.

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lcpiper said:

Z, a prisoner of war isn't a criminal, he's an enemy. A prisoner of war stays a captor until the war is over because he is an enemy. You don't try them, you don't convict them, you just hold them so they can't do additional harm. We held German and Japanese prisoners during WW2, we held Germans in WW1, We held Iraqi's during the first Gulf War and Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean war. We kept them until the conflict was over. It's not law enforcement it's warfare. Don't get them confused.

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OK cool. So now we legitimize terrorists as warriors. great.


Truth is, this distinction no longer works. It was dubious even to begin with but today it completely falls apart. It sort of worked back in the day when there were front lines, uniforms, soldiers operating under a honor code and a code of conduct, etc. That simply is no longer the case.

When you declare war on something as nebulous as in the "War on Terror" where the theater is "everywhere", including the homeland, the duration is "forever" and the enemy could be anyone with a cooking appliance, this distiction completely falls apart.

You could supect anyone of being an enemy, pick them up, and without due process hold them until the end of the war, which is forever.

I don't think it is all that difficult to see why this would be a bad idea.

Think this is just some snowball crazy theory of what COULD happen? Think again. Things like this are happening all the time.

Ask Joe Lipari who in his frustration after visiting the Apple store posted a quote from Fight Club in a "friends only" post on facebook (the one about the AR-15), only to wake up with a SWAT team with fingers on their triggers at his door, being arrested, charged with terrorism charges, and spent years goign to court at great expense of both money and time.

Or maybe ask the guy who was a hired driver in Afghanistan, and had no idea who he was driving, and found himself picked up, whisked to CIA black-out sites god knows where, and then spent over a decade in Guantanamo.

What we are doing right now is in no way near just, and it is very very dangerous.

When it comes to our civil liberties we ALL need to be taking the Admiral Farragut approach, damning the torpedoes and charging full speed ahead.

As I have said before. Living in a free society is not without its risks, and we can not let fear lead us down the road to a police state.

As Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death"!

Ur_Mom said:

Yet, you have the government trying to force back doors into encryption methods. Luckily, my state representatives are huge on privacy of citizens (Jeff Merkley & Ron Wyden).
If people can't be forced to incriminate yourself, we'll find a way to do it for you.".

There was a recent poll showing 19% of people trust the US government right now. That's low. Right now, they should be doing things to increase trust, not erode it even further. I don't disagree with a lot of what you say, as it technically is legit and legal, but I disagree with the laws that you're defending. As do a lot of American citizens. Whether it's for the safety and security of the country is debatable both ways. I think most people on this forum see the opposite side of what you're on.

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Here is my point and you make it perfectly.

This statement;
"Yet, you have the government trying to force back doors into encryption methods."

You are saying "backdoors" and the media is saying "backdoors" but the government is not asking for backdoors. They are asking for an engineered method for providers to be able to provide un-encrypted data when required by lawful warrant.

Now the government keeps coming back to this because in the end, they are going to have it one way or the other, I believe this. If Apple and others won't work with them then they will force it on them and frankly I would rather have it the first way then the second.

I know some of you guys are holding out thinking that Apple and others will be able to hold them off on this encryption issue but it is my opinion that they will not succeed. It is also my opinion that the result will be some more terribly drafted laws that only work to screw it all up and make things worse.

The government is making a concerted open offer of cooperation with business to develop a method of satisfying the governments needs while protecting an individual's right to privacy. Business should accept this and not fight it because if they refuse to be a part of creating a solution then a solution will be crafted for them.

How would you guys like it if the government decided to emulate other developed countries who require their citizens to use their version of our Social Security number when creating any kind of on-line account. As an example, in Korea, any user account must have the users National ID Number as part of the account. Korea isn't alone in this, in many countries there is no online anonymity.

We are only small steps from exactly this at any given time. The argument that such a thing would suppress free speech is just as strong as the argument that you can't hide who you are anymore anyway so a fictitious name is no protection at all.

Mislabeling what the government is asking for won't change anything in the end. It misrepresents the government's position and rallies popular support behind an unreasonable position.

If you think the government is just going to accept Apple's stance on encryption then I think you are fooling yourself.

lcpiper said:

You are saying "backdoors" and the media is saying "backdoors" but the government is not asking for backdoors. They are asking for an engineered method for providers to be able to provide un-encrypted data when required by lawful warrant.

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Ok (as someone mentioned above), probably the wrong word for it.

There should be no way to decrypt the data unless the user does it. Apple should not have that ability. If they do, then the encryption is worthless. Users that really need encryption will find some elsewhere that can't be decrypted by anyone other than those allowed.

And, if the government recommends something and nothing is done - forcing them to do it isn't going to go over too well (and it's a fucked up idea, too). Of course, a lot of privacy things are forced and most people just go along with it or bitch for 24 hours before finding another issue to become an activist on...

kbrickley said:

This seems like some anarchist fallacious argument ... our Constitution was built to be changed and it has been updated 27 times since its inception ... there has even been talk of creating a whole new Constitution at times (although I think that would be an unmitigated disaster) ... within certain reasonable limits a person is even able to live almost free of government interaction (if they choose) like many separatist groups choose to do ... if the majority of Americans wanted to substantially change something about the government it can be done (and has been done) ... we actually have a reasonably good balance in our Constitution that protects the minority from the Tyranny of the Majority as well as usually protecting the Majority from the Tyranny of the Minority (and I use Minority in the quantitative sense, not the ethnic one)

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arguing that it is not so bad is not the same thing as legitimate.

the constitution claims to grant power to people that were not born when it was created.

there are no time limits to the people calling themselves congress.

Zarathustra[H];1042004432 said:

OK cool. So now we legitimize terrorists as warriors. great.


Truth is, this distinction no longer works. It was dubious even to begin with but today it completely falls apart. It sort of worked back in the day when there were front lines, uniforms, soldiers operating under a honor code and a code of conduct, etc. That simply is no longer the case.

When you declare war on something as nebulous as in the "War on Terror" where the theater is "everywhere", including the homeland, the duration is "forever" and the enemy could be anyone with a cooking appliance, this distiction completely falls apart.

You could supect anyone of being an enemy, pick them up, and without due process hold them until the end of the war, which is forever.

I don't think it is all that difficult to see why this would be a bad idea.

Think this is just some snowball crazy theory of what COULD happen? Think again. Things like this are happening all the time.

Ask Joe Lipari who in his frustration after visiting the Apple store posted a quote from Fight Club in a "friends only" post on facebook (the one about the AR-15), only to wake up with a SWAT team with fingers on their triggers at his door, being arrested, charged with terrorism charges, and spent years goign to court at great expense of both money and time.

Or maybe ask the guy who was a hired driver in Afghanistan, and had no idea who he was driving, and found himself picked up, whisked to CIA black-out sites god knows where, and then spent over a decade in Guantanamo.

What we are doing right now is in no way near just, and it is very very dangerous.

When it comes to our civil liberties we ALL need to be taking the Admiral Farragut approach, damning the torpedoes and charging full speed ahead.

As I have said before. Living in a free society is not without its risks, and we can not let fear lead us down the road to a police state.

As Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death"!

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You make compelling points Z.

My first thought is to look into each of these examples and see how they must be being misrepresented because I can't see anyone doing something like this to someone knowing that these people were not reasonably suspect of serious crimes.

But I also must stop and eat lunch. I'll leave you with this for the moment. I completely understand your position given that you have no reason to doubt these happenings.

I also understand the Prisoner of War stance with one exception. Regardless of uniforms, national boundaries, etc, no matter how amorphous the threat. Any individual who takes up arms or knowingly aids others who would kill as a terrorist kills is subject to incarceration for as long as is necessary to ensure that they no longer remain a threat to others.

I also think the War on Terror was a mistake. I think using troops as cops is a mistake, hell I know it is. I was a soldier and I know what a soldier is and what a soldier is supposed to be doing and it's not playing cop or "mister helping hand" except in cases of humanitarian natural disaster cases.

I gota go eat.

aardvark sandwich said:

arguing that it is not so bad is not the same thing as legitimate.

the constitution claims to grant power to people that were not born when it was created.

there are no time limits to the people calling themselves congress.

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This is an impossible argument though ... what you are proposing is anarchy (the government is reinvented every time there is an election or generational shift) ... a government of that nature would only work for an individual or a very very small self contained community ... the USA's government has withstood 226 years with our Constitution (one of the oldest on the planet) ... business and industry need some framework to do business in (they cannot revamp every 2 years because a new Congress changes all the rules) ... the measure of a good Constitutional government is its ability to adapt to change and ours seems to have done that better than most

I'm saying there is no legitimate form of involuntary government.

I would not keep reinventing government, I would ignore whatever government people would try to force upon me, as I ignore this current government.

aardvark sandwich said:

I'm saying there is no legitimate form of involuntary government.

I would not keep reinventing government, I would ignore whatever government people would try to force upon me, as I ignore this current government.

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We'll just have to agree to disagree on this ... an anarchist can live their lifestyle in the USA because we have a government that protects their ability to do so ... however, anarchists could never provide enough stability to keep 400 million Americans safe and gainfully employed ... the John Galt approach can work on the small scale but is not suited for the global multinational world we currently inhabit ... enjoy Atlantis as much as I enjoy Gotham and Metropolis and we can both agree that we would not want to live in Oceania

The difference is I simply don't care about scale.

I don't approach any of this from the notion that we have to keep any 'system' running.
If the wheels fall off, I don't care.

aardvark sandwich said:

The difference is I simply don't care about scale.

I don't approach any of this from the notion that we have to keep any 'system' running.
If the wheels fall off, I don't care.

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As I said, we'll agree to disagree ... I support any system that allows capitalism on the scale needed for humanity to become a space faring race ... we need to establish a permanent presence through our solar system since that is the only way to insure our survival as a species (which should be the ultimate goal of any species) ... the trillions needed to make that transition generally demand some form of sophisticated government

If you are not reading this in Martian, thank an Earthling!

This is one od the reasons why I run my own backup servers and administrate them myself. You can't subpoena a third party for encryption keys or records they don't have. File size restrictions, etc. are other reasons. I don't need to deal with arbitrary 2gb limits for my .tc files.

Alright, I'm back again, Just catching up.

I just filed aardvark sandwich into his on special folder like the one I keep for CUG. A folder that's titled, "Don't be so quick to take this guy serious."

I don't mean that as an insult Aardvark, it's just that you and I are so far apart we won't ever be able to relate. But that's ok, we don't have to to have a good life

Hey Z, on this guy Joe Lipari, I couldn't find much from good sources. It's mostly info that get's bent out of shape in different ways from blog sites and such. He made a really stupid comment, but he was also charged with some other things, not just the terroristic threat charges. Different sites either omit it or list it as a Disorderly Conduct charge or just some unspecific thing like they are trying to play it down.

Anyway the charges were dropped and he wasn't locked up in shackles. He posted bail and went on his way until he had to go in and meet with prosecutors, etc, while they played some extended plea bargain games. I'm sure it sucked but it wasn't a living hell or anything like that unless you see something I don't.

Other then that, this wiki page looks strange, more like it was written to serve his career. Just things like how they make a point of saying he was an expert marksman and a disabled vet but doesn't say anything about his deploying overseas. It's just a suspicion but I think someone is trying to make his service sound special instead of blah. Ask another soldier, saying that you attended classes "...at Troy State University, Bergen County Community College, Santa Monica College, The Connecticut School of Broadcasting, The New York Film Academy, The School of Visual Arts and received camera training at Panavision in Hollywood", all before he left the service, which was only a two year stretch because of a blown out knee. It just makes it sound like he was never really a soldier you know, soldiers go to the field, live on FOBs and perform combat operations during war time. They don't have time normally to pursue an acting career in this fashion.

Anyway, got something blowing up here, gota run.

P.S. Don't take my comments as trying to disparage his character and claim that it makes him culpable and a criminal. It just looks odd and it doesn't have any real bearing on his arrest at all right?

lcpiper said:

Alright, I'm back again, Just catching up.

I just filed aardvark sandwich into his on special folder like the one I keep for CUG. A folder that's titled, "Don't be so quick to take this guy serious."

I don't mean that as an insult Aardvark, it's just that you and I are so far apart we won't ever be able to relate. But that's ok, we don't have to to have a good life

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My ideas are not orthodox. No argument there, and I won't hold it against you.

This is what I love about anarchism. No one can actually refute the basic fundamental truths behind it. You can't delegate a right you never had.
All that can be argued is that alternate scenarios offer different outcomes. It's kind of like saying we're going to go on believing in the tooth fairy because a world without a tooth fairy would be sad.

Hopefully Donald Trump will take over the U.S. President in place of Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton is a straight up proven pathological liar who relies on cronyism and shady dealings. Whereas Donald Trump earned his money the honest way by taking over near-bankrupt businesses and turning them around to make a great fortune.

aardvark sandwich said:

My ideas are not orthodox. No argument there, and I won't hold it against you.

This is what I love about anarchism. No one can actually refute the basic fundamental truths behind it. You can't delegate a right you never had.
All that can be argued is that alternate scenarios offer different outcomes. It's kind of like saying we're going to go on believing in the tooth fairy because a world without a tooth fairy would be sad.

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Actually, if an Anarchist candidate was guaranteeing 100K salaries with decent 401K benefits I would be all over that ... but I don't want to return to Little House on the Prairie (and that is what most Anarchist proposals seem like) ... my wife and I live 10,000 miles apart so I do depend on technology to stay in touch (until she decides to come here or I can get enough money to go there)

bitcoin is a pretty good example of anarcho-capitalist technology in action.

the hashing power of the bitcoin network surpasses the world's top 500 supercomputers combined.
no nation state has the computer power to bring it down.