What is this, 1986?
How about an encrypted TOR connection for voice, video, and e-mail deliveries between me and anyone to whom I care to keep private my communication details?
My feeling is that if you depend on your phone company to use these records only for billing, you are living a very Pollyannaish life.
The ship has sailed. It sailed the moment phone companies stopped using mechanical relays – maybe even before that. Don’t like that? Don’t use phones.
I think you’re responding to two different things I said here, but damned if I can figure out where the split is.
Maybe they’re warming us up for a scandal that will force Obama out of office.
A whistleblower revealed today that President Obama has millions of dollars of unreported income sitting in several offshore accounts…
I doubt Hillary has anything to do with it, but if I was going to draw up a list of entities that you should never ever piss off, the CIA and the IRS would be #1 & #2, respectively.
Well, WTF can they use those metadata records for, other than reselling them? (In which case, the NSA could just buy them like anyone else, and it’s hardly a shocker when the NSA buys a file that anyone else with the $$ can also buy. But if that’s the case, you’d expect that someone would have mentioned this, in all the reams of discussion around this disclosure.) Absent reselling the info, how are they going to make use of who called whom, and when, and for how long?
Back before pretty much everyone went to unlimited service plans, they might’ve tried to sell you a service plan tailored around your usage, but even that just uses minutes per area code per month. That’s hardly what we’re talking about here.
And the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act and the Telecommunications Act of 1996? Doesn’t the fact that these acts limit what the telephone company can do with your phone records mean you should, and do, have a privacy interest in those records? I completely understand that the government is exempted from them, but I’m not buying that we don’t have any privacy interest in our phone records when there is legislation specifically saying we do.
If I have to bet on you, or the NSA code-crackers, I’m betting on the NSA code-crackers.
False dilemma. I am not the designer of the encryption schemes I mention.
You would do well to educate yourself. While I grant that it’s possible NSA has some super-secret quantum computers for which decrypting 4096-bit key ciphers is child’s play, the best understanding in the cryptography world is that at present, those ciphers are not crackable.
If you wish to contend otherwise in a debate, you need to provide more solid information than a blind trust in the NSA – a very blind trust, since even the NSA does not claim to be able to break such schemes.
No. Because:
Your argument seems to be that you’re outraged that the law allows the government to look at your phone records because the law allows you a privacy interest in them (that excludes the government).
Uh huh.
If you’re on notice that the law permits the government to look at your phone records, you don’t have any reason to think that your phone records are private. That’s one of those res ipsa thingies.
Results here.
And even this question, with MILLIONS capitalized to emphasize its scariness, failed to work: 52% said acceptable; only 41% said “unacceptable.”
Well, that’s actually part of my point. You’re relying on the expertise of others. TOR may be secure today, but that won’t last indefinitely, nor will you be the first to know when it’s breached.
You aren’t exactly the best person to say this, based on recent experience. Not to mention, while it’s been nearly two decades since I last taught my abstract algebra students how to construct their own public key cryptosystems, I at least have some background in the field. So when you spout stuff like
It may be true, but it’s just something you read somewhere, and I am confident that you don’t know shit about it, really.
And “at present” are two very important words, as increased computing power has made formerly way-beyond-secure RSA public key cryptosystems crackable. The same is almost certainly true over time for any other means of cryptography.
Sure, counselor, whatever you say. 
a) that the NSA publicly overstates what it can do in the way of breaking codes,
b) that the NSA lets the public know exactly which coding systems it can crack; or
c) that the NSA publicly understates its code-breaking capability.
My undergraduate degree is in computer science, and I am well aware of the current state of the field in cryptography.
Right now, my reliance on being able to encrypt something that the NSA cannot crack is well-founded. True, or false?
And it’s easy to do with open-source products – GnuPG, for instance. True, or false?
If it should develop in the future that this is no longer true, then I will adjust my expectations accordingly.
Ah, I miss these little bits of bullshit from you.
Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t miss it.
Let’s check once again, your post that I responded to:
and my response
Now a regular person, let’s say one who isn’t a complete ass, would conclude that while I recognize the government has the power to obtain your phone records, that doesn’t mean you have no privacy interest in your phone records from almost everyone else in the world. Your comment was a clear attempt to pretend that a person has no reason to believe the phone company can’t do whatever they want with phone records. I simply corrected you.
So according to Brickerlogic, since the law permits the government to search my house, I have no reason to think that my house is private.
Interesting position. Completely wrong, but interesting. I don’t think this Brickerlogic thing is going to catch on too much.
No, it’s yet another instance of Bricker being wrong and then trying to cover it by misrepresenting what another poster says thingie.
Clear to whom?
“Use those records only for billing,” is a simple statement. I suggest you read it again, perhaps concentrating real hard.
It does NOT mean that I believe the phone company can do “whatever they want.” It means that the records will not be used only for billing. You can tell, because that’s what the words say.
Now, Hamlet, I know of your aversion to the plain text of the law and of your fondness for the penumbras and emanations that let you find all sorts of fantastic and magical fairy creatures hiding in between the written words. But, Hamlet, as tempting as it obviously is to extend that approach to the rest of the world, I must regretfully inform you that no such penumbras may be found in my posts. When I write, “…if you depend on your phone company to use these records only for billing…” I mean: “…if you depend on your phone company to use these records only for billing…”
I do NOT mean the phone company may do whatever they want, or whatever other psilocybin-fueled fucked-up fantasy you wish to craft.
You are so damn cute I want to shrink you, put you in my pocket.
Of course, Bricker, I get it now. When you said “only for billing” you didn’t actually mean “everything but billing” (which is kinda what “only” means, but let’s not let that get in your way), you meant "these things that I didn’t mean by saying “only for billing”.
Crystal clear, Bricker. I can’t wait until you try to convince people that when you say you’re using your computer only for the SDMB in fact means that you’re using it for a wide variety of other things, just not the ones you didn’t actually mean when your statement is contradicted.
But, all snarking aside, we can agree. If you think your phone company is legally restricted from using your phone records for a great number of things that aren’t “only for billing”, you’re right. And Pollyanish, apparently.
Bricker, I think it is interesting you bring up TOR. Because Jacob Appelbaum is one of the best people I can think of to break it down as to why this stuff should bother you.
As for me, just the idea that people may begin to fear to speak their minds and share their ideas fully because they see that the government can and will collect data on them is enough for me to dislike it. I don’t want people to edit themselves when they have controversial or cutting edge ideas that might just change the world in some ways.
Well, then: your post is your cite, my post is my cite, and there we are.
To be clear: my claim is that I can encrypt messages that the NSA cannot decrypt, and I can do it with open-source products.
If you disagree, then I’ll bring cites.
Who are you to call the tune? I’m still waiting for a reply to most of what I said in post #100, rather than this digression that is really neither here nor there, which is I guess why you want to get into this set of weeds.
Fighting the security state is fruitless, which is why all you’ll see is a meta-snarkiness in the commentary. I mean what’cha gonna do about it, vote? :dubious:
I dunno, do you think multi-billion dollar agencies staffed by thousands of people is for stopping some dudes with pipe bombs? Maybe a side benefit. Knowledge is power, afterall.
This seems to boil down to, “I trust the phone company (and all it’s employees) not to break the law.” Good for you. An endearing, if somewhat dewey-eyed, quality.
Do you think that someone didn’t go through Mitt Romney’s phone records looking for just those kinds of things? Really? They illegally snooped on his IRS file but left his phone records alone, did they?
Point being: your parade-of-future-horror scenario happens now.
This answers the remaining points from your post 100.