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Gregcdt57 karma

The FBI can use National Security Letters to get non-content (your address, email to/from, the number of the credit card you use to pay for service, and more) when there's a national security risk. If they want content, they need an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the Petraeus case, it's not clear that they used that authority. The did reportedly use criminal authorities.

Gregcdt6 karma

We're launching a project to do that analysis right now. Center for Democracy & Technology will be working with activists from a number of countries to develop "human rights indicators" against which surveillance laws can be measured. Once we have agreed to indicators, we'll start mapping country laws against them. The result can be used by advocates to argue for improvements to their own country's law by pointing out what other countries are doing.

Gregcdt2 karma

FBI needs only a sneaking suspicion as grounds to begin to investigate. In a "preliminary investigation" it needs only a tip or lead that it thinks should be tracked down, including an anonymous one. Under DOJ Guidelines adopted a few years ago, FBI in one of these preliminary investigations can use a pen register or trap and trace device to find who you are emailing, and who emailed you, even at this very early stage. See:https://www.cdt.org/policy/investigative-guidelines-cement-fbi-role-domestic-intelligence-agency-raising-new-privacy-cha

Gregcdt2 karma

It is -- you can see it in the Google, Twitter and other companies' transparency reports. Here's a story about Google's latest:http://www.eweek.com/security/google-reports-government-surveillance-requests-continue-to-rise/. We do need to get a better handle tho on what is happening on a global level in terms of surveillance. We're working with some others to develop standardized reporting models -- a medium or long term project.

Gregcdt2 karma

Good question. Much of your email content is available to law enforcement at a very low standard -- mere relevance -- and without judicial authorization. The prosector simply fills out a subpoena and serves it on your email provider. This applies to any email older than 180 days. For newer email, they need a warrant. However, DOJ, exploiting a quirk in the language used in the statute, says that for any newer email that you actually open, the warrant requirement goes away! Thus, junk mail you ignore is protected, anything so important as to be read is not. The www.vanishingrights.com effort would fix this problem and require warrants for all email. Warrant means probable cause plus judicial authorization -- a high standard.