Government surveillance

Little peepers everywhere

America’s laws governing digital and mobile surveillance are an unholy mess

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Readers' comments



And then there were the countless times during the Bush/Cheney administration where they couldn't be bothered to walk across the street to get the warrant rubber stamped by the FISA Court.


This is not a comment, but it is driving me nuts that I cannot think of the name of the actor with the cigarette in his mouth in the photo in the "Little peepers everywhere" article. Help?!!


Over the last 300 years or so Continental European laws have evolved around the concept of respecting the individual’s dignity and honor. Indeed it is written into the Constitutions of France, Germany and elsewhere specifically spelling out the rights of the privacy of the individual. Privacy is not just a purview of the wealthy and ennobled classes as is the case here in the US.

Google and Facebook are breaking the laws in many countries around the world with their business models, and flaunting their getting away with it. Eventually this will end. A PERSON HAS “THE RIGHT TO BE FORGOTTEN” on the internet! One has the right to not have their name show up in Google or Facebook or any other search engine queries or social networks.

A person also has the right to control what and how any information shows up about them in any search engine query. Along with the growth of the internet there has been an erosion of people’s personal boundaries. This is not healthy. Good boundaries make for good neighbors as the saying goes, and good neighbors make for a strong and stable democracy and economy.

I would suggest considering the consequences of a kind of 'Scarlet Letter Effect'. Ref Nathanial Hawthorne's classic "The Scarlet Letter". One of its key themes very presciently deals with the modern day re: things pertaining to the internet and privacy.


A problem the Economist missed is that the playing field is uneven in criminal cases. The prosecution and law enforcement can easily get all sorts of cell phone and internet data, but requests from defense counsel trying to substantiate an alibi, pursue a third-party culprit theory, or just test the prosecution data are routinely ignored by providers with little sanction by the Courts. To the extent this data is available, it should be available to both sides and not permit trial by ambush.

Ron Courtney - Austin Texas

I have absolutely no problem with the government doing this. I have nothing to hide, and am pretty sure that anything they saw of mine would bore them to death. Even the porn. (Well, unless they like chubby redheads.) But if I was a terrorist planning a major attack . . . I would be very much in favor the ACLU's efforts.

You have nothing to hide, so you have no problem with the government putting cameras and microphones in your house and bedroom then, right? Reporting your car's whereabouts to a centralized database 24/7? So long as you have nothing to hide, no intrusion of privacy or curtailment of liberty is too much!

Yes you do. There are things you do that you don't want people to know about. For example: You don't want your prudish boss to know about what porn you look at. Do you want to have a career? Or are you happy in a dead-end job?

If someone is recording then someone can use your behaviour against you. This is how the less salubrious governments of the world smear their opponents. "He must be dodgy because of what he does... see!"

Just the same, wait until your ISP has its records leaked by Anonymous. Then try to explain how you've nothing to hide. In church.

Everyone keeps secrets. Privacy is essential to our civilisation.

James AntiBr

Surveillance in this day and age is not a bad thing if the purpose
is just and for security purposes (i.e. preventing criminals and
terrorists from attacking London's Olympis, etc.)

When surveillance is a bad thing?

When it is done to put a portion of the population under foot
for economic and political reasons (other than the obvious
anarchists and people that are keen in overthrowning the
government and or the American way of life).

When surveillance laws start to look like Brazil's treatment of
its people, then there is reason to be worry. If it becomes like
1984 and Big Brother conducting a police state experiment on
the masses, then it is time to really worry.

There are more foreign agents hidden in America than ever before,
and their spying is costing America dearly. They and terrorists are
the ones that surveillance should pick up right away. The everyday
lives of ordinary citizens should be glossed over unless they are
connected with the enemies of America.

If America develops many Vladimir Herzog cases (regardless of the political
spectrum), then it is time to move to Canada and or Australia.

As always, F* Brazil!


It's rather unsettling that such copious amounts of data can be obtained via a simple request. Attach "National Security" onto any letter, and it will open doors for you. Nice. I'm sure all the excessive data about who eats lunch where will help us track down the few and far in between. I wonder if the peepers were able to foresee Aurora, Colo.? I hope the peepers hit diseconomies of scale soon, if they haven't already.

Unqualified Critic in reply to PW23

Of course that information wasn't used to stop appauling crimes. You can't make $$$ on that kind of information that way. The information is gathered and sold to whom it may benefit. In the future candidates for public office will be veted by which porn sites they visited ;)


You do realize that the GCHQ, CSE here in Canada and the Australian operations all are working on reading "everything" which goes threw the pipes. My bet is instead of using Moore's Law to massive parallel like at LANL, the NSA has quantum computing which means it can crack any encryption. Combine with the birds that the NRO has and it was 20 years ago that they could look at a license plate of a car, if telescopes have gotten better lenses and optics, so have the birds.
My wife who works for a telecom here in Canada had a co-worker as part of her team who was a former NSA employee or contractor, he said that a lot of the "Jason Bourne" films are based on real life. As long as you have some guys who think they are above the law like Ollie North you have a major problem.

phact in reply to jude22

Impossible to crack any encryption! Fear inducing hype from nation states that are mostly technologically incompetent. Would cost too much and only the US could approach (keyword is approach) such a cost.
Essentially and philosophically it would require that computing power of God or in other words the supreme prime and it would turn humans into automata and create life.


One point about Twitter: while the posts are default public, there do exist levels of privacy. There are directed messages which are private communications among users and there are accounts that are totally private, that is, can only be followed given the account owner's consent. So, yes, there can be a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding those cases.


Why are people upset about the government looking at our emails or Tweets when the suppliers of these services already review, store, and analyze them and then sell the results to their paying customers?

People today provide lots of personal and behavioral data directly and indirectly to Yahoo, Google, Amazon, their employer, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and think nothing about it. These "services" know what you are saying, what you are buying, and whom you are communicating with. They can easily determine your politics, religion, economic status, social viewpoints, family details including childrens' names and schools, and much more.

So why do you fear the FBI tracing communications containing terrorist-related topics like "bomb construction" and "how to make sarin gas?" What about the "customers" who can already buy a report identifying a particular group (ex. Jews) and their addresses from any number of commercial internet services?

Anything you post on the internet is public knowledge and you give it away for free to strangers. So don't do it.

Have a nice day!

P.S. I already know how you will react because of the analysis I purchased from Google . . .

time featherstorm

eventually the president will get caught looking at porn or sending a text message to his mistress and then the opposition party will need to set these laws straight to kick him out of office and all of our rights can be protected again.

MySetDancer in reply to time featherstorm

When personal tax filings of political opponents were found in President Clinton's private residence, it was ignored by his supporters. Clinton was clearly acting in bad faith and we all know what he was doing with those files. Yes, you really do even if you won't admit it. Shame on the people who provided it and shame on Clinton.

Oh come on. That was small potatoes for Slick Willie. My favorite was transferring sensitive technology decisions from DOD to Commerce, which allowed him to sell the Chinese our most advanced supercomputer and missile guidance systems (enabling them to fast-forward their nuclear programs 20+ years), and then coincidentally raking in massive amounts of campaign contributions from a horde of shady Chinese sources. Benedict Arnold was SUCH a lightweight.


American - government or not - snoopers need to learn some more advanced techniques from their Turkish counterparts. Raw data about people’s private life may not be useful enough. The data have to be processed and modified to maximize its return. In this way, one can create criminals from rivals and decriminalize criminal friends.

The irony of the Erdogan regime is that while he is busy manufacturing charges against the military, supposedly to prevent them from seizing power and reintroducing a dictatorship, he is taking a cue from Putin and gradually transforming Turkey back to a form of soft fascism.

Cricket Diane C Phillips

Also not addressed in the article but an interesting question is whether any laws govern what the private contractors do - including the however many 100,000 plus agents employed by them in the US. I forgot the number, Wash Post did an article about the vast industry that makes up the real surveillance and spy networks of contracted agency companies for the last twenty years or so. Those companies don't have to get court orders to tap phones or bug someone's house or company offices - they're hired to produce the information. Do any laws apply to what they do?


An important point this article misses: are the service providers able to charge the governments for providing all this information? Their systems have to be specially designed, teams of employees are devoted to handling the requests. Or are these costs just added to what customers are charged?

An academic distinction; whether the taxpayer pays, via the government, or the phone customer pays, via higher rates, we the people are going to foot the bill. I'm hoping it's via the customer, as marketplace competition will then keep the added cost as low as possible.


Anyone who believes that America is the land of the free should be careful; the NSA and DEA know what you are smoking and might already be on their way.

It is truly sad that we couldn't count on our government to use a massive tragedy as an opportunity for a power grab. I guess we'll have to wait for some high profile abuse (I doubt we'll be waiting long) for reasonable limits to be put on governmental snooping powers.



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