NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data

Violating Americans’ privacy "not just unethical but illegal," senator says.

See full article...

 

[Wolfie0827]

For those who are suggesting that selling this data be illegal, I agree, and also feel that laws against collection should also be present. Belt and suspenders, if you will.

Unfortunately without whistle blowers or some other transparency mechanism we can actually trust, it's almost impossible not to collect some of this information just in the course of doing business over the internet.

Coarse location data can be gleaned from the source ip address in your web server logs, for example.

It's a tricky problem from a technical standpoint. Though that shouldn't stop us from pushing for these laws anyway.

Simple solution, Business can collect information to work with consumers/customer, but can not sell the information even if "anonymized" to anyone. The information has to remain in house only and only be released for specified individuals under a warrant!

 

[Hemlocke]

"According to Moultrie, DNI Haines decides what information sources are "relevant and appropriate" to aid intelligence agencies.

Moultrie should be polishing up his resume after saying some dumb shit like that. Haines is an unelected bureaucrat, same as Moultrie. SES might be the execs who run the show, but they are all supposed to answer to us, the people, and the US Constitution is all he needs to cite. The Under Secretary has obviously forgotten who pays him.

 

[rick9004]

NSA may in the future not be able to collect this data but rest assured that today there are 1000s of companies that hoover up data for just about anything.... medical, purchases, financial, insurance, etc.

 

[Ragnarredbeard]

. . . and not a single person will go to jail for doing it.

 

[Meettitan]

Not being allowed to collect data yourself but being allowed to buy/trade it from others seems like a colossal loophole and perhaps a gift to the government contractor industry.

I wonder how this applies for things like mercenaries: if a band of private military contractors commits a war crime on their own initiative, is the company or their employer responsible?

I'm sure if anything goes wrong you're immediately terminated from your position. Like roofers who tell their employees, "Don't fall. You'll be fired before you hit the ground."

 

[kkeane]

Simple solution, Business can collect information to work with consumers/customer, but can not sell the information even if "anonymized" to anyone. The information has to remain in house only and only be released for specified individuals under a warrant!

There is a problematic corollary here: businesses also can't outsource this data processing. That's not really realistic in today's cloud and SaaS world.

For instance, companies like Workday, ADP etc. would still have access to employee data of millions of Americans. Vigilant will still have access to the whereabouts of almost every car through license plate readers in millions of parking lots.

 

[VividVerism]

I'm sure if anything goes wrong you're immediately terminated from your position. Like roofers who tell their employees, "Don't fall. You'll be fired before you hit the ground."

Those rogue engineers roofers intelligence analysts!

 

[Meettitan]

Those rogue engineers roofers intelligence analysts!

These are American agencies/firms. Rogue engineers only exist in Europe. Duh.