The price that we pay (in terms of liberty) for that service has expanded exponentially over recent years, driven not so much by changes in the law, or by changes in the modus operandii of the security services, but rather by changes in the way that we all use technology. ![]() The security services fill a useful role both in winning wars and in combating terrorism. This is a difficult debate partly because there are no hard, easy to distinguish lines between what is acceptable and what is excessive, and partly because our concerns have more to do with the (abstract) potential for abuse, rather than any egregious abuses that may already exist. So please do tens of thousands of good, honest PIs worldwide a favor and find a different whipping boy for your hypotheticals in the future. And most of us would at least think about calling the police as well. Were you to approach 99% of my industry with a task list as in your third paragraph, we’d throw you out on your ear. It saddens me to see you perpetuating those prejudices, too. We take enough stick from the media over the actions of a very small minority as it is and that’s on top of the grossly uninformed view of our practices promulgated by the entertainment industry. In fact we’re very careful to play within the rules as regards both the law and standards of professional ethics–and we’re very quick to disassociate ourselves from colleagues who won’t do likewise. This sort of priciple should be obvious to anyone of moderate intelligence and soul.Īs a professional I’ve got to take exception to your characterization of private detectives, Bruce. They have a legal obligation to keep it secure and use it solely for the purposes agreed to. The data collectors are responsibe to the data subjects for privacy. Meta data does not become a saleable/tradeable asset. It is “the phone company’s data” in that they need it to run the business. In the case of call meta data, the data is necessary for the phone system to work. Without the phone company knowing the calling number, the call can not be billed.Įuropeans have a concept of data privacy in which data is made available to another party only for purposes for which the data subject agrees to. Without the phone company being aware of the called number, the call can not be made. In order tp place a phone call, one has to dial a number. “ the judge said that, since the customer had used the phone service, any metadata about his calls was not subject to an expectation of privacy under the 4th Amendment, because he had sent the data away, and it now was the phone company’s data.” ![]() Tags: Edward Snowden, Google, NSA, privacy, surveillance Metadata equals surveillance it’s that simple.ĮDITED TO ADD (10/12): According to Snowden, the administration is partially basing its bulk collection of metadata on an interpretation by the FISC of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.ĮDITED TO ADD (10/28): this post has been translated into Portuguese. When Google does it, they do the same thing. When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they put everyone under surveillance. When the government collects metadata on people, the government puts them under surveillance. ![]() The result would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked at, what he purchased-how he spent his day. Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result would be the details of that person’s communications. Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone. I have a more compact argument: metadata equals surveillance. Lots and lots of people effectively demolished that trivialization, but the arguments are generally subtle and hard to convey quickly and simply. Back in June, when the contents of Edward Snowden’s cache of NSA documents were just starting to be revealed and we learned about the NSA collecting phone metadata of every American, many people-including President Obama-discounted the seriousness of the NSA’s actions by saying that it’s just metadata.
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