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          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            1 year ago

            AFAIK, the Patriot Act does not forbid closing backdoors. I know there are export restrictions on certain types of encryption (not sure if that’s part of it, or a separate law), but it doesn’t prevent me or a company from encrypting data at rest or in transit, or preventing law enforcement from extracting data without a warrant.

            It violates a ton of individual freedoms, but requiring backdoors is not one of them. It does pressure agencies to find or create backdoors, but it doesn’t obligate companies to create them AFAIK.

            Unless I’m missing something, in which case please let me know. It was a big bill, and it has been largely reauthorized and somewhat amended since original passage.

            • Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social
              1·
              1 year ago

              They don’t need backdoors because privacy is not a right for USA citizens. If they want to check your activity the can do it in any moment without issues

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                0·
                1 year ago

                Privacy is a right in some meanings of the word, such as the fourth amendment that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. For example, the police cannot enter your house without a warrant except for a few very specific circumstances, such as:

                • someone is likely to be actively physically harming someone, or about to physically harm someone
                • you’re likely to destroy evidence (they can only bring you outside, they cannot search the house for said evidence)
                • if you invite them in, and making an emergency call is one such example (e.g. someone is having a heart attack and they come to assist medical personnel)

                And this isn’t just real property, but anything that could be considered private property. They cannot search your phone without a warrant or permission, they cannot search your person without at least detaining you (which requires reasonable suspicion, and I think they can only look for weapons unless they arrest you), etc.

                So there absolutely is a right to privacy in the US.

                That said, there are circumstances where you have no expectation of privacy, such as:

                • in a public place
                • clearly visible from a private place (e.g. you’re in a driveway)

                The Internet is essentially treated as a public place (as it should), so the way to maintain privacy is to encrypt your traffic end to end. However, the other end of that traffic can always choose to disclose the data they have to authorities, so someone like Meta or Microsoft could decide to hand over access to data to law enforcement willingly. If the company doesn’t offer it willingly, law enforcement needs to get a warrant, just like any other search of private property, and until then, they can only sniff packets that they have access to (i.e. transfers to another service that has granted access).

                When people talk about privacy in the US, they’re not talking about restrictions on government, because those laws are already in place and well established with legal precedent. What they’re talking about is an obligation for certain types of online services to not disclose personal information and to dispose of it at the client’s request. This goes under the assumption that you still own content you have submitted, which gets into IP law and, at the current time, terms of use at each entity.

                In summary, the US recognizes a negative right to privacy, but it does not recognize or enforce a positive right to privacy. So we have two solutions to solve the problem of privacy, both of which have downsides that I’m not going to get into here:

                • pass a law requiring enforcement of a positive right to privacy (something like the GDPR in Europe)
                • empower individuals to take ownership of their data so the negative right to privacy applies as expected - lemmy is a step toward that, though the copying of user submitted content is problematic (Matrix is closer with encrypted rooms)

                Perhaps we need a bit of both, but to say the US has no right to privacy completely misrepresents the situation.

                • Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  For example, the police cannot enter your house without a warrant

                  The patriot act fixed that

                  The law is extremely controversial due to its authorization of indefinite detention without trial of immigrants, and due to the permission given to law enforcement to search property and records without a warrant, consent, or knowledge.

                  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                    2·
                    1 year ago

                    Here’s an article about it from the ACLU:

                    The Patriot Act increases the governments surveillance powers in four areas:

                    1. Records searches. It expands the government’s ability to look at records on an individual’s activity being held by a third parties. (Section 215)
                    2. Secret searches. It expands the government’s ability to search private property without notice to the owner. (Section 213)
                    3. Intelligence searches. It expands a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that had been created for the collection of foreign intelligence information (Section 218).
                    4. “Trap and trace” searches. It expands another Fourth Amendment exception for spying that collects “addressing” information about the origin and destination of communications, as opposed to the content (Section 214).

                    From reading the text of the law myself

                    1. This must go through a judge; the requirements are lessened, but it does need to be justified (i.e. they can’t just storm your house); the difference with a regular warrant is that they don’t need to serve the warrant first, they can go ahead and force entry if needed
                    2. Again, this requires a warrant, see #1
                    3. This is just a broadening if the language (legally changes text from “the purpose” to “a significant purpose”); still problematic, but the requirement to get a warrant stays in force
                    4. Yes, this broadens the type of data they can collect, but again, they still need a warrant, but this allows them to collect more than just the data they need for the immediate investigation

                    It’s absolutely problematic, and I disagreed with it from the day I heard it introduced, but it doesn’t constutute elimination of the right to privacy that exists with the first amendment. It also only applies to federal authorities, so your local and state authorities (i.e. the ones average citizens are more likely to interact with) are still bound.

                    I absolutely hate the Patriot Act and everything related to it (esp. all the NSA nonsense) and think we should repeal anything related to the law and instead pass more strict limitations on governments.