You know what we haven't applied to computers yet? The 2nd amendment. I deserve to own and carry zero-days at will and use them in self-defense when I feel threatened
Reminder: this is their #1 most used tool for collecting data. Snowden told us of the existence of this program under the codename PRISM.
This allows them to download the entire contents of your gmail instantly, directly from Google, without a warrant. Or your iCloud Photos and Backups (complete iMessage history) directly from Apple. No warrant required.
First, FISA was created in 1978 to protect Americans from the CIA by forcing them to show probably casuse. Section 702 of FISA is about intercepting any foreigners communications for which they need no warrent.
But the CIA incidentally collects data of U.S citizens during these warrentless wire taps, and that would be the 4th amendment challenge, but so far that is going nowhere.
Close but a lot of this, as Sen Wyden points out, turns on how NSA and DoJ lawyers define terms. So you get situations where bulk collection of communications of Americans to Americans into a data center isn't considered interception until a human looks at it. There's so much we don't know because the policies/legal interpretation and the FISA court rulings on them are secret. Sen Wyden tries to warn but he can only hint at the real dangers and policies
There's also the game that they play where they spoof BGP announcements that cause routing changes for domestic traffic that makes it flow out and then back into the US, making it fair game for collection. Also, our Five Eyes partners aren't prohibited from collecting on US targets, and we all share.
Oh wow, that's crazy because people from the USA are always saying how unique and powerful the Constitution is and how many freedoms the USA has.
It seems almost like the USA is similar to other countries where the state does whatever they like. I bet that can't be true though surely because the USA has so many freedoms? You must be mistaken
The constitution lost its power long ago, and is now a mere fig leaf of legitimacy. Plenty of things ought to be unconstitutional based on a plain reading of the constitution. Civil forfeiture, unlimited gun rights, qualified immunity, FISA courts, various “emergency” powers, deportation of US citizens, etc, etc. The trouble is that a huge portion of Americans don’t really care about any of this, so long as these violations are used to stick it to liberals, all is forgiven.
I find such framing challenging because you are correct, the Constitution lost its power a long time ago, but I would not limit the cause of that lost power to only a rather recent ideological adversary, those you imagine would say “stick it to liberals”.
Unfortunately for everyone but the parasitic ruling class that is plundering America and the world, the changes and damage done to the Constitution in the name of progress have not only been the primary vehicle of that damage from the start, but they have had compounding and exponentially negative effects that are clearly accelerating the impact.
The problem with “progress”, i.e., changes framed as positive, is that it is easy to hijack the innate nature of young people to want to differentiate themselves from their parents as a natural and instinctual process of development/maturity. It allows for malevolent, usually older people, to whisper in the ears of young people things like “don’t you think what your parents do is silly and should be undone?”, not knowing or realizing what their parents do not only protects and preserves, but is also the foundation that allowed everything we have to have been created. It is generally a form of grooming young people to tear down the protective walls holding the Epstein/Biden/Trump Class style super-predators at bay.
I personally am concerned that we are effectively already locked in the dungeon, but we just don’t know it because it has WiFi and is nicely decorated…for the time being.
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.
Americans deep political confusion is really something to behold. How do you both hold the contradictions in your head? Every presidency no matter it's so called political ideology, liberal or conservative, have the same exact policies on mass surveillance? The Patriot act and fisa amendment was bipartisan, Obama voted for the Fisa amendment, Biden voted for the Patriot act.
The young people conservatives fantasize/complain about tend to be left-wing, their ideology has practically zero representation in politics, how do you make those the scapegoats of some confusing grand Jordan Peterson style social psychology argument it makes no sense. And how does republicans tossing civil liberties to "own the libs" mesh with libs slashing the same civil liberties? It's like the spiderman pointing at each other meme.
People don't understand that the way the media makes money is by stoking the "two sides" war.
People are so insanely ideologically charged up, the deepest conviction possible coming right from their lizard brain, all because they are lost in the sauce of an industry that is dependent on showing them random ads as frequently as possible.
It's actually kind of hilarious, and if you're one of these people, take a step back and see what's going on.
Exactly, representatives from both parties need to be forced to add FISA amendments that add privacy protections, most of everybody agrees with that enthusiastically if you explain it to them. Yet people are divided into their respective bullshit partisan trench lines by the two party theater.
> This allows them to download the entire contents of your gmail
Does it though? I believe they did that with PRISM by eavesdropping on the unencrypted data transfers within Google's network itself - without their knowledge. Since that revelation came to light I presume Google have upgraded their security.
No PRISM was the legal sharing of data, that's what op described just downloading all your data from the cloud companies. The thing you are thinking of is codenamed MUSCULAR that is evesdropping on unencrypted communication between yahoo and google data centers outside of the US jurisdiction where PRISM didn't apply (at the time).
Thinking you can reform so it only spies on people outside of the US and is not used against the US is something that has never been historically possible. There's this thing called the "Imperial Boomerang" that is pretty consistent in history. British citizens saw it when the intense surveillance state created to keep tabs on Northern Ireland was eventually brought back to be used against Britain itself
I agree. They were a narrowly focused organization, which served them well IMO. Making political statements outside of that narrow lane hurts their effectiveness.
Participating in a platform where you can PAY to get your tweets to have 10x more reach is fundamentally opposed to the principles the EFF was founded on.
If you wanna be a sucker and participate in such a platform, go ahead. But don't cry when others have more principle than you
I know no one asked you for organizing advice, but it's important to remember that posting is not organizing
Also, you realize you can take action not under the banner of the EFF? And you can post on X about this as much as you want. You going to let weird petty squabbles stop you from seeing the point, which is trying to stop unwarranted mass surveillance? Let us know how many calls you've whipped for this.
Standing up to market manipulation and regulatory capture by platform owners and government coerced speech[1] is excellently aligned with EFF's core mission.[2]
I enthusiastically support their activities and will continue to donate.
The simple act of leaving a private social media website is enough to “alienate” people who would otherwise be supportive? Making membership in a private social media website contribute so heavily to your personal identity seems like more of a reflection on that person than anything else.
They say the typical post on X receives 3M impressions vs. 100M impressions in years past. They're a national organization, those 3M impressions might only be 100k actual people in a country of 400M. They do say that ideology was part of the motivation but it makes sense that they aren't going to invest the time in a platform that reaches a negligible number of people.
It makes sense that they use FOSS decentralized stuff like Mastodon despite the low reach; using Mastodon is an end unto itself. Twitter was just an advertising tool that wasn't working for them.
It's more a matter that managing an X account reads as an endorsement of the platform, and endorsing X is a major brand risk for the EFF. Those 100k people aren't worth it.
If your support was contingent on them being on a specific social media network, a low quality one at that, then your support was more posturing than actual support. Better to know who your real allies are and not rely on all the “I’d help but I forgot my wallet in my other social network” posers.
You’re making a whole lot of assumptions about what I wrote, and what it means. And sensing a lot of hostility. If you’re an activist organization with priorities, such as those stated by the EFF, only speaking to the people in your own political echo chamber hurts your cause.
Imagine being so chronically online that the choice of social media outlet an organization makes is enough to make them 'the other' in your mind. Its the weakest kind of brain rot.
It goes in both directions. Just have a look at blue sky. There’s no monopoly on reason by any political faction despite their own thoughts to the contrary.
It shouldn't be reformed!
It should be eliminated...
Enforce the 4th amendment!!! Properly interpret the 2nd...
You know what we haven't applied to computers yet? The 2nd amendment. I deserve to own and carry zero-days at will and use them in self-defense when I feel threatened
And the 5th, and the 8th, and the 10th (and all the rest but those jump to mind as the most violated).
Reminder: this is their #1 most used tool for collecting data. Snowden told us of the existence of this program under the codename PRISM.
This allows them to download the entire contents of your gmail instantly, directly from Google, without a warrant. Or your iCloud Photos and Backups (complete iMessage history) directly from Apple. No warrant required.
Wait, doesn't the constitution protect people from this?
No.
First, FISA was created in 1978 to protect Americans from the CIA by forcing them to show probably casuse. Section 702 of FISA is about intercepting any foreigners communications for which they need no warrent.
But the CIA incidentally collects data of U.S citizens during these warrentless wire taps, and that would be the 4th amendment challenge, but so far that is going nowhere.
Close but a lot of this, as Sen Wyden points out, turns on how NSA and DoJ lawyers define terms. So you get situations where bulk collection of communications of Americans to Americans into a data center isn't considered interception until a human looks at it. There's so much we don't know because the policies/legal interpretation and the FISA court rulings on them are secret. Sen Wyden tries to warn but he can only hint at the real dangers and policies
An important consideration is that just the graph of who talks to whom can be quite powerful:
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
There's also the game that they play where they spoof BGP announcements that cause routing changes for domestic traffic that makes it flow out and then back into the US, making it fair game for collection. Also, our Five Eyes partners aren't prohibited from collecting on US targets, and we all share.
Doesn't "receiving surveillance data about your citizens that your allies collected for you" also count as spying on your own citizens?
I'm not a lawyer but...
"You spied on me!" -"Relax, sweetheart... Of course I didn't spy on you. I got Mike to spy on you. Hey Mike!"
Unfortunately the lawyers did argue and it's legal. They really dug in to the wording and not the spirit of the law
Oh wow, that's crazy because people from the USA are always saying how unique and powerful the Constitution is and how many freedoms the USA has.
It seems almost like the USA is similar to other countries where the state does whatever they like. I bet that can't be true though surely because the USA has so many freedoms? You must be mistaken
The constitution lost its power long ago, and is now a mere fig leaf of legitimacy. Plenty of things ought to be unconstitutional based on a plain reading of the constitution. Civil forfeiture, unlimited gun rights, qualified immunity, FISA courts, various “emergency” powers, deportation of US citizens, etc, etc. The trouble is that a huge portion of Americans don’t really care about any of this, so long as these violations are used to stick it to liberals, all is forgiven.
I find such framing challenging because you are correct, the Constitution lost its power a long time ago, but I would not limit the cause of that lost power to only a rather recent ideological adversary, those you imagine would say “stick it to liberals”.
Unfortunately for everyone but the parasitic ruling class that is plundering America and the world, the changes and damage done to the Constitution in the name of progress have not only been the primary vehicle of that damage from the start, but they have had compounding and exponentially negative effects that are clearly accelerating the impact.
The problem with “progress”, i.e., changes framed as positive, is that it is easy to hijack the innate nature of young people to want to differentiate themselves from their parents as a natural and instinctual process of development/maturity. It allows for malevolent, usually older people, to whisper in the ears of young people things like “don’t you think what your parents do is silly and should be undone?”, not knowing or realizing what their parents do not only protects and preserves, but is also the foundation that allowed everything we have to have been created. It is generally a form of grooming young people to tear down the protective walls holding the Epstein/Biden/Trump Class style super-predators at bay.
I personally am concerned that we are effectively already locked in the dungeon, but we just don’t know it because it has WiFi and is nicely decorated…for the time being.
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.
― Frank Zappa
Americans deep political confusion is really something to behold. How do you both hold the contradictions in your head? Every presidency no matter it's so called political ideology, liberal or conservative, have the same exact policies on mass surveillance? The Patriot act and fisa amendment was bipartisan, Obama voted for the Fisa amendment, Biden voted for the Patriot act.
The young people conservatives fantasize/complain about tend to be left-wing, their ideology has practically zero representation in politics, how do you make those the scapegoats of some confusing grand Jordan Peterson style social psychology argument it makes no sense. And how does republicans tossing civil liberties to "own the libs" mesh with libs slashing the same civil liberties? It's like the spiderman pointing at each other meme.
People don't understand that the way the media makes money is by stoking the "two sides" war.
People are so insanely ideologically charged up, the deepest conviction possible coming right from their lizard brain, all because they are lost in the sauce of an industry that is dependent on showing them random ads as frequently as possible.
It's actually kind of hilarious, and if you're one of these people, take a step back and see what's going on.
Exactly, representatives from both parties need to be forced to add FISA amendments that add privacy protections, most of everybody agrees with that enthusiastically if you explain it to them. Yet people are divided into their respective bullshit partisan trench lines by the two party theater.
[dead]
> This allows them to download the entire contents of your gmail
Does it though? I believe they did that with PRISM by eavesdropping on the unencrypted data transfers within Google's network itself - without their knowledge. Since that revelation came to light I presume Google have upgraded their security.
No PRISM was the legal sharing of data, that's what op described just downloading all your data from the cloud companies. The thing you are thinking of is codenamed MUSCULAR that is evesdropping on unencrypted communication between yahoo and google data centers outside of the US jurisdiction where PRISM didn't apply (at the time).
I like 702 in theory but I'm not sure I like the FBI having access since they are for domestic policing.
What changes should be made? The probable cause requirement for FBI sounds like a reasonable compromise.
Thinking you can reform so it only spies on people outside of the US and is not used against the US is something that has never been historically possible. There's this thing called the "Imperial Boomerang" that is pretty consistent in history. British citizens saw it when the intense surveillance state created to keep tabs on Northern Ireland was eventually brought back to be used against Britain itself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
[dead]
Might have more people who care if they were still on X. EFF is a lost cause.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Are you taking action or would you if you could?
I agree. They were a narrowly focused organization, which served them well IMO. Making political statements outside of that narrow lane hurts their effectiveness.
Participating in a platform where you can PAY to get your tweets to have 10x more reach is fundamentally opposed to the principles the EFF was founded on.
If you wanna be a sucker and participate in such a platform, go ahead. But don't cry when others have more principle than you
I know no one asked you for organizing advice, but it's important to remember that posting is not organizing
Also, you realize you can take action not under the banner of the EFF? And you can post on X about this as much as you want. You going to let weird petty squabbles stop you from seeing the point, which is trying to stop unwarranted mass surveillance? Let us know how many calls you've whipped for this.
The point is that by making a “politically correct” statement outside their core mission, they alienate potential allies.
So yes, petty squabbles do get in the way, and it applies no matter which political direction you look.
And making the "politically incorrect" statement of hanging out with Nazis wouldn't alienate potential allies?
[flagged]
Adapting my reply to a comment:
By leaving X, EFF has made a “politically correct” statement outside their core mission, which alienates potential allies.
Standing up to market manipulation and regulatory capture by platform owners and government coerced speech[1] is excellently aligned with EFF's core mission.[2]
I enthusiastically support their activities and will continue to donate.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/ad-firms-settle-... https://www.eff.org/about
The simple act of leaving a private social media website is enough to “alienate” people who would otherwise be supportive? Making membership in a private social media website contribute so heavily to your personal identity seems like more of a reflection on that person than anything else.
(FWIW, I have never had a Twitter or X account)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x
They say the typical post on X receives 3M impressions vs. 100M impressions in years past. They're a national organization, those 3M impressions might only be 100k actual people in a country of 400M. They do say that ideology was part of the motivation but it makes sense that they aren't going to invest the time in a platform that reaches a negligible number of people.
It makes sense that they use FOSS decentralized stuff like Mastodon despite the low reach; using Mastodon is an end unto itself. Twitter was just an advertising tool that wasn't working for them.
Thanks for one of the few rationale responses. However, maybe I’m naive, but how much more work is it to manage one more social media account?
It's more a matter that managing an X account reads as an endorsement of the platform, and endorsing X is a major brand risk for the EFF. Those 100k people aren't worth it.
[flagged]
If your support was contingent on them being on a specific social media network, a low quality one at that, then your support was more posturing than actual support. Better to know who your real allies are and not rely on all the “I’d help but I forgot my wallet in my other social network” posers.
Nah, they just finally decided to stop hanging out at the fascist playground. Seems like you like it there though
You’re making a whole lot of assumptions about what I wrote, and what it means. And sensing a lot of hostility. If you’re an activist organization with priorities, such as those stated by the EFF, only speaking to the people in your own political echo chamber hurts your cause.
[flagged]
Imagine being so chronically online that the choice of social media outlet an organization makes is enough to make them 'the other' in your mind. Its the weakest kind of brain rot.
It goes in both directions. Just have a look at blue sky. There’s no monopoly on reason by any political faction despite their own thoughts to the contrary.