Dear Android Users: Google Is Tracking You Even If You Disable Location Services

Slowly but surely, Americans have been conditioned to give up any expectations of privacy in the name of public safety and/or for simple technological conveniences.  However, there remains, even today, a tiny sliver of the population that would prefer to not have their every movement tracked no matter how antiquated that makes them look. Be that as it may, per a recent discovery from Quartz, those old-school folks better hope they haven"t been using an Android device for the past 11 months.

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

 

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.

 

Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals’ locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy.

 

Quartz observed the data collection occur and contacted Google, which confirmed the practice.

Of course, the company that has been collecting your location data for nearly a year now without your knowledge, would like for you to know that you shouldn"t worry too much about your privacy because they can assure you the data was never "used or stored" and was only collected to help "improve the speed and performance of message delivery"....

The cell tower addresses have been included in information sent to the system Google uses to manage push notifications and messages on Android phones for the past 11 months, according to a Google spokesperson. They were never used or stored, the spokesperson said, and the company is now taking steps to end the practice after being contacted by Quartz. By the end of November, the company said, Android phones will no longer send cell-tower location data to Google, at least as part of this particular service, which consumers cannot disable.

 

“In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery,” the Google spokesperson said in an email. “However, we never incorporated Cell ID into our network sync system, so that data was immediately discarded, and we updated it to no longer request Cell ID.”

...you know, because wireless carriers haven"t quite figured out yet how to efficiently route data streams through network nodes just yet...

It is not clear how cell-tower addresses, transmitted as a data string that identifies a specific cell tower, could have been used to improve message delivery. But the privacy implications of the covert location-sharing practice are plain. While information about a single cell tower can only offer an approximation of where a mobile device actually is, multiple towers can be used to triangulate its location to within about a quarter-mile radius, or to a more exact pinpoint in urban areas, where cell towers are closer together.

 

The practice is troubling for people who’d prefer they weren’t tracked, especially for those such as law-enforcement officials or victims of domestic abuse who turn off location services thinking they’re fully concealing their whereabouts. Although the data sent to Google is encrypted, it could potentially be sent to a third party if the phone had been compromised with spyware or other methods of hacking. Each phone has a unique ID number, with which the location data can be associated.

 

“It has pretty concerning implications,” said Bill Budington, a software engineer who works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for digital privacy. “You can kind of envision any number of circumstances where that could be extremely sensitive information that puts a person at risk.”

 

"It is really a mystery as to why this is not optional,” said Matthew Hickey, a security expert and researcher at Hacker House, a security firm based in London. “It seems quite intrusive for Google to be collecting such information that is only relevant to carrier networks when there are no SIM card or enabled services.”

Of course, if their excuse for this gross invasion of privacy is even remotely true, then we look forward Google"s follow-up report to Android users detailing precisely how much faster their text messages are now than before...we won"t hold our breath.

Thanksgiving Travel: Trump"s Holiday Gift Is More Invasive Airport Security

Authored by James Bovard, op-ed via USAToday.com,

Federal groping-on-steroids is not making flying safer. TSA is a farce and a menace, and should be privatized...

On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump derided the Transportation Security Administration as a “total disaster.” But his administration is making TSA more intrusive and abusive while its 42,000 screeners remain as incompetent as ever. 

New TSA screening guidelines will likely make Thanksgiving travel a disaster for legions of Americans  - and the worst is yet to come.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, TSA announced more "comprehensive" pat-down procedures which the Denver airport suggested might involve “more intimate contact than before.” TSA preemptively notified local police to expect potential complaints, and plenty of travelers are howling: 

*Jenna McFarlane, a 56-year old teacher and graphic designer, was traveling out of Charlotte, N.C., in April when a TSA agent repeatedly told her “to spread my legs wider” and proceeded to “touch my vagina four times with the side of her hand,” as she complained to TSA afterwards. She was selected for a vigorous patdown after an unreliable TSA test gave a false explosive alert for her carry-on baggage.

 

*Hollywood reporter and author Sharon Waxman complained this summer about an aggressive female TSA agent who “placed both hands around my legs and slowly - very slowly - rubbed up and down. The touching went all the way up to my groin. My private parts were touched by the edge of her hand, twice.” The TSA agent rested her hands on Waxman’s chest much longer than necessary to check for weapons. Waxman groused: “The TSA screening felt like nothing less than physical assault. If anyone other than a government officer had done anything of the kind, I would have reported it as a crime.”

 

*David Stavropolous complained that a TSA agent doing a search at Chicago O’Hare  airport jammed his hand into Stavropolous" groin so hard that it caused bleeding and will require surgery to correct, according to Chicago"s NBC station and his lawsuit against TSA.

But there is a ray of hope: TSA’s screeners may soon lose the legal immunity that has shielded all their abuses. Federal judge James Cacheris okayed a lawsuit by Captain James Linlor, an airline pilot, who complained that a TSA agent at Washington Dulles International Airport “rammed his hands into (his) genitals ... and subsequently laughed.”

TSA asked the court to dismiss Linlor’s case because, instead of suing, he could have phoned in his complaint to the TSA Contact Center. TSA also insisted that its screener deserved legal immunity even if he did pummel Linlor’s private parts. The judge scoffed at the government’s inference that “a reasonable federal officer would be surprised to learn that gratuitously striking an individual in the groin while searching them violates the Fourth Amendment.” The case is proceeding.

Federal groping-on-steroids is not making flying safer. In June, KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported that a TSA Headquarters Evaluation Team succeeded 95% of the time in smuggling weapons and mock bombs past airport screeners. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general notified Congress that TSA screeners and equipment had recently failed to detect mock threats "in the ballpark" of 80% of the time, ABC News reported this month. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., declared that TSA is “broken badly.”

TSA has never bothered examining whether its tactics actually protect the public. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in September that “TSA does not measure deterrence (impact) for any of its aviation security countermeasures.”  Instead, the agency imposes burden after burden upon American travelers based on hunches.

Other Trump policies could soon blight millions of Americans’ travel plans. Starting Jan. 22, TSA may reject drivers’ licenses from many states that fail to comply with the REAL ID Act of 2005 (formerly one of the Tea Party’s most hated edicts). Travelers without passports from New York, Michigan, Illinois and other states could be barred from flying domestically, according to information on a DHS website.

Previous TSA intrusion - even its strip-search scanners - are chump change compared to the agency’s next anti-privacy bombshell. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned Nov. 9 that TSA plans to use facial recognition systems to track travelers through airports after extracting far more biometric data from them. Such a regime could also easily be deployed in public places throughout the nation. If that happens, the feds could quickly identify every person who shows up to #Resist.

If Donald Trump had to pass through a typical TSA gauntlet twice a week, the agency would not survive his Twitter onslaught. For 16 years, Washington bureaucrats and political appointees have promised to reform TSA so that it will cease being a farce and a menace. After too many failed fixes, it is time to follow the lead of Canada and European nations and privatize airport security.

How Sex Traffickers Are Fighting for Your Rights

Via The Daily Bell

If you support free speech, you support sex trafficking. At least that’s what politicians hope the public will think.

Clever politicians seem to be learning. If they want to censor the web and destroy free speech, they need to pick the right targets for their legislation. Of course, in reality, the legislation will end up affecting all of us.

Their efforts really amount to holding websites accountable for what their users post. They are shining a light on Backpage, a website much like Craigslist where users post ads. The website lets users post based on location for things like buying and selling items, job listings, and community events.

The legal issues come from Backpage failing to stop the use of its website for sex trafficking. Ads appear in adult and dating sections which facilitate prostitution.

But why should a website be held accountable for what users post? Is Facebook held accountable for drug deals arranged through its messenger? Should Twitter be held responsible when a riot is organized with the platform?

But politicians aren’t talking about the potential for their legislation to affect sectors other than sex trafficking. They use emotional pleas. And this could mean more Americans are willing to stomach legislation that would seriously threaten any website that allows users to post. Hosts would be liable for user content.

That means anyone who has a website would be at serious risk of legal trouble if any piece of their business lets users post. Websites like Facebook who can hire countless employees to police the content might not care. But what about small websites? What about message boards, and comments sections?

Trade groups representing Google, Facebook and other Internet giants warn of a “devastating impact” on the tech industry if the 1996 Communications Decency Act is tinkered with in the way lawmakers envision to hold Backpage and others liable for criminal material on their pages.

They project “mass removals of legitimate content” by social media and other firms scrambling to shield themselves from a deluge of lawsuits from trial lawyers and prosecutors. The ACLU joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups in warning lawmakers that if they pass the law, every one of the millions of social media postings placed online daily becomes a potential liability for the company hosting it.

But in true politician fashion, the response highlights only the “good” the legislation will do, ignoring the potential to curb free speech online.

“The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law, but it was never intended to protect sex traffickers,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)…

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said the site would have been shut down long ago if not for the immunity. “We would have been able to stop the abuse and in some cases the death of some of these young people who got caught up in these sex trafficking rings,” Becerra said.

Prostitution might be the world’s oldest profession. But politicians think they can finally stamp it out if only they had the power to censor shut down websites!

A quarter of the members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. Maybe they have the best intentions.

Or maybe they simply want more power to censor websites and the free speech of their users.

User created content will suffer if this bill passes. That puts things like communication, organization, and protest at risk.

Free speech is becoming a problem for the government, and they are taking the incremental approach to limiting it. That is why they talk so much about curbing hate speech and fake news. They want Americans to be onboard to limit neo-Nazis and ads for prostitution. But like most laws, it will only limit freedom.

If You Care About Privacy, You Should Change Your Twitter Settings Right Now

Authoired by Sarah Cronin via TheAntiMedia.org,

Since Wednesday, Twitter has been sending out emails and notifications to its over 300 million monthly users to inform them of changes to their privacy policy.

The new policy, which goes into effect on June 18, includes changes to data collection, data sharing, and digital advertising. The policy is being run on an ‘opt-out’ basis, meaning that if users do not actively change their settings, these policies will automatically be applied to their accounts.

While Twitter hailed the new policy in their mass email sent out Sunday as one that “dovetails with our heartbeat as a company — a commitment to protecting and defending your privacy,” groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are not so enthusiastic.

“Contrary to the inviting ‘Sounds good’ button to accept the new policy and get to tweeting, the changes Twitter has made around user tracking and data personalization do not sound good for user privacy,” EFF researcher Gennie Gebhart writes.

EFF, along with Life Hacker and CNET, are encouraging users to customize their privacy settings now before the new changes are automatically enabled in June.

With the new policy, Twitter will be keeping logs for users’ web histories for 30 days instead of 10, a move that Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, says expands the pool of people it can track and allows Twitter to make more comprehensive profiles of users.

Interestingly, this change will not apply to E.U. member countries because Europe’s restrictive privacy laws prohibit it.

Twitter also discontinued support for the Do Not Track browser option, which previously allowed users to protect against targeted advertising.

The reason for the change, says TopTechNews.com writer Barbara Ortutay, is therefore clearly not about privacy, but money.

“Targeted ads that are tailored to your whims and tastes are more lucrative than generic ones,” Ortutay writes.

Whether for privacy or profit, the changes are coming. Fortunately, it’s up to users to change their settings and decide how much they want to share.

CNET offers this simple how-to: “Open Settings and go to Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety > Personalization and data. At the top of this page is an option to disable all personalization and data settings; on the Twitter website, click the Disable all.”

EFF notes that users can also review, edit, and/or remove data collected on them in the past by accessing the “Your Twitter data” option also located in settings.

Germany Passes Bill To Fine FaceBook, Twitter Up To $50MM For "Fake News"

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has apparently decided she"s not willing to take the chance of becoming the latest politician to fall victim to the same "Russian hacking" and "fake news" campaigns which "undoubtedly" caused the downfall of America"s liberal darling, Hillary Clinton (forget those pay-for-play scandals, federal record retention violations and willful non-compliance with Congressional subpeonas...total non-factors in the 2016 election). 

And since they can"t really control the actions of those pesky "Russian hackers," Germany"s cabinet has instead decided to pass legislation that would impose serious fines of up to 50 million Euros on any social networks that fail to swiftly remove content that could be deemed "hateful" or "fake news."  Per Yahoo News:

Germany"s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a new bill that punishes social networking sites if they fail to swiftly remove illegal content such as hate speech or defamatory fake news.

Chancellor Angela Merkel"s Cabinet agreed on rules that would impose fines of up to 50 million euros (53.4 million dollars) on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said that the companies offering such online platforms are responsible for removing hateful content. He said the new bill would not restrict the freedom of expression, but intervene only when criminal hatred or intentionally false news are posted.

Of course, all of this begs the question of exactly how German officials define "fake news" as the lines between what is pure "fact" versus "opinion" often grow very blurred in politics.  Moreover, politicians themselves are often the biggest purveyors of "fake news"...so if someone quotes the erroneous comments of a German politician on FaceBook is the social network then liable?  All questions that would have seemed silly just a year ago...

Nevertheless, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas is convinced that "verbal radicalization" of snowflakes over twitter and Facebook is often a precursor to "physical violence."

Social networks need to ensure that obviously criminal content — as defined by German law — will be deleted within 24 hours and other illegal content after seven days.

"Just like on the streets, there is also no room for criminal incitement on social networks," Maas said.

"The internet affects the culture of debate and the atmosphere in our society. Verbal radicalization is often a preliminary stage to physical violence," he added.

But nevermind the actual "radicalization" occurring in migrant communities throughout Europe at the moment...that is also just "fake news."

As we noted last week, Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) recently introduced a similar piece of legislation in California, the so-called "California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act" or AB 1104 for short, that would have effectively made it a crime to be wrong on the Internet.  The text of the bill implicated anyone who writes, publishes or even shares news stories that could be false, if those news stories are later found to have had an impact on an election.  From the bill:

This bill would modify the definition of the terms “political cyberfraud” and “political Web site” to include Internet Web sites that urge or appear to urge the support or opposition of candidates for public office. The bill would also make it unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on a Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on a Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on any issue submitted to voters at an election or on any candidate for election to public office.

And even though author Ed Chau described AB 1104 as "an important step forward in the fight against "fake news" and deceptive campaign tactics", the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights advocacy group, said the bill was “so obviously unconstitutional, we had to double check that it was real.”

Memo to California Assemblymember Ed Chau: you can’t fight fake news with a bad law.

On Tuesday, the California Assembly’s Committee on Privacy and Consumer Affairs, which Chau chairs, will consider A.B. 1104—a censorship bill so obviously unconstitutional, we had to double check that it was real.

This bill will fuel a chaotic free-for-all of mudslinging with candidates and others being accused of crimes at the slightest hint of hyperbole, exaggeration, poetic license, or common error. While those accusations may not ultimately hold up, politically motivated prosecutions—or the threat of such—may harm democracy more than if the issue had just been left alone. Furthermore, A.B. 1104 makes no exception for satire and parody, leaving The Onion and Saturday Night Live open to accusations of illegal content. Nor does it exempt news organizations who quote deceptive statements made by politicians in their online reporting—even if their reporting is meant to debunk those claims. And what of everyday citizens who are duped by misleading materials: if 1,000 Californians retweet an incorrect statement by a presidential candidate, have they all broken the law?

At a time when political leaders are promoting “alternative facts” and branding unflattering reporting as “fake news,” we don’t think it’s a good idea to give the government more power to punish speech.

But, unlike in Germany, California actually realized how idiotic their bill was before passing it into law...

California Senator Forced To Pull Bill Banning "Fake News" After Realizing It's Idiotic

California is known far and wide for it"s wacky regulations.  In fact, just last fall we wrote about SB 1383, a very significant piece of legislation signed into law by Jerry Brown which requires a 40% reduction in methane gas emissions from cow flatulence by 2030 (no, really...you can take a look here: "Here Are Some Of The Ridiculous New State Laws That Will Take Effect January 1st - Happy New Year!")

But a recent piece of legislation introduced by California Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park), "The California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act or AB 1104 for short, gives the "cow fart" bill a run for its money in terms of its complete idiocy.  The bill, filed Wednesday in the Assembly’s Committee on Privacy and Consumer Affairs, would have effectively made it a crime to be wrong on the Internet.

The text of the bill implicated anyone who writes, publishes or even shares news stories that could be false, if those news stories are later found to have had an impact on an election.  From the bill:

This bill would modify the definition of the terms “political cyberfraud” and “political Web site” to include Internet Web sites that urge or appear to urge the support or opposition of candidates for public office. The bill would also make it unlawful for a person to knowingly and willingly make, publish or circulate on a Web site, or cause to be made, published, or circulated in any writing posted on a Web site, a false or deceptive statement designed to influence the vote on any issue submitted to voters at an election or on any candidate for election to public office.

And even though author Ed Chau described AB 1104 as "an important step forward in the fight against "fake news" and deceptive campaign tactics", the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights advocacy group, said the bill was “so obviously unconstitutional, we had to double check that it was real.”

Memo to California Assemblymember Ed Chau: you can’t fight fake news with a bad law.

On Tuesday, the California Assembly’s Committee on Privacy and Consumer Affairs, which Chau chairs, will consider A.B. 1104—a censorship bill so obviously unconstitutional, we had to double check that it was real.

This bill will fuel a chaotic free-for-all of mudslinging with candidates and others being accused of crimes at the slightest hint of hyperbole, exaggeration, poetic license, or common error. While those accusations may not ultimately hold up, politically motivated prosecutions—or the threat of such—may harm democracy more than if the issue had just been left alone. Furthermore, A.B. 1104 makes no exception for satire and parody, leaving The Onion and Saturday Night Live open to accusations of illegal content. Nor does it exempt news organizations who quote deceptive statements made by politicians in their online reporting—even if their reporting is meant to debunk those claims. And what of everyday citizens who are duped by misleading materials: if 1,000 Californians retweet an incorrect statement by a presidential candidate, have they all broken the law?

At a time when political leaders are promoting “alternative facts” and branding unflattering reporting as “fake news,” we don’t think it’s a good idea to give the government more power to punish speech.

As of right now it looks as if the legislation has been pulled after Chau just cancelled a hearing originally scheduled for Monday.  Presumably Chau got a little pushback from mainstream media outlets after they realized his bill would effectively ban them, and their fake "Russian hacking" narratives from California.

Here is the full text of the bill for your reading pleasure: 

Facial Recognition Tech Could Ensnare Millions Of Innocent Americans For Crimes They Didn’t Commit

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

It’s often the case that new technologies arrive on the scene faster than our society and its legal code can keep up. Sometimes this can be a good thing. For instance, 3D printing allows people to print out unregulated gun parts, thus allowing gun owners to circumvent the onerous laws of our government, which has struggled to come up with new laws to restrict the technology.

When technology advances at a breakneck pace however, it can also be quite dangerous for our liberties. This is especially true in regards to privacy. If a new technology makes it easy for the government to track us, you can bet that the government is going to take its sweet time updating the legal code in a way that will protect us from surveillance.

That certainly seems to be the case with facial recognition software. During a recent Congressional Oversight Committee hearing, members of both political parties sounded the alarm on the FBI’s use of the technology, and read the written testimony of Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Jennifer Lynch:

Lynch detailed the stunning scope of the FBI’s photo collection. In addition to collecting criminal and civil mug shots, the agency currently has “memorandums of understanding” with 16 states that mean every driver’s license photo from those states is accessible to the agency—without the drivers’ consent. The FBI also has access to photos from the U.S. State Department’s passport and visa records.

Lynch argued that “Americans should not be forced to submit to criminal face recognition searches merely because they want to drive a car. They shouldn’t have to worry their data will be misused by unethical government officials with unchecked access to face recognition databases. And they shouldn’t have to fear that their every move will be tracked if face recognition is linked to the networks of surveillance cameras that blanket many cities.”

“But without meaningful legal protections, this is where we may be headed,” Lynch stated. “Without laws in place, it could be relatively easy for the government and private companies to amass databases of images of all Americans and use those databases to identify and track people in real time as they move from place to place throughout their daily lives.”

All told, law enforcement agencies around the country have access to 400 million photos in facial recognition databases, which are connected to roughly 50% of American adults. Most of these people have never committed a crime, and obviously haven’t given any consent to this.

At first glance it may sound harmless to be in one of these databases. Movies and TV shows make it sound like this technology can help law enforcement swiftly and precisely nab suspects. So what do you have to fear if you haven’t committed a crime? It turns out that in real life, facial recognition is far from perfect.

Internal FBI documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center indicate that the FBI’s own database, called the Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System, or NGI-IPS, had an acceptable margin of error of 20 percent — that is, a 1-in-5 chance of “recognizing” the wrong person.

And research published in the October 2015 issue of the scientific journal PLOS ONE by researchers at the universities of Sydney and New South Wales in Australia found that the humans who interpret such data build in an extra error margin approaching 30 percent.

If we ever allow our government to roll out facial recognition cameras on a wider scale, lots of innocent people are going to be hurt. Whether by mistake or by malice, it will become shockingly easy for law enforcement to identify ordinary people as criminals. The surveillance control grid will not only be inescapable, it will be unwieldy and rife with abuse.

It’s often said that you should never trade freedom for safety. In this case, we wouldn’t receive any kind of safety.

Do ‘National Security Letters’ Violate the 1st Amendment?

(ANTIMEDIA) San Francisco, CA — The question is at the heart of an ongoing court battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigations and two communications service providers represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF is representing CREDO Mobile and Cloudflare in their efforts to defend themselves against the use of the controversial national security letters (NSL). Both companies were legally bound to secrecy for years under the provisions of the NSL, itself a creation of the 2001 PATRIOT Act.

NSLs are a tool used by the U.S. government to force telecommunications companies to give customer information without the use of a warrant from a judge. They are supposed to be issued by the FBI to gather information from companies when that information is related to national security investigations. This information can include customer names, addresses, phone and internet records, and banking and credit statements. The most contentious part of the tool is the use of gag orders. When a credit reporting agency, telecom company, bank, or travel firm receives the letters requesting customer information, they are legally gagged and cannot alert anyone to the government’s invasion of customer privacy. Not the customer. Not their families. Even if the individual seeks help from a lawyer, the lawyer is also gagged from discussing the case. All of this is done without the approval of a judge.

EFF has been fighting to expose the full extent and use of NSLs but has had a difficult time doing so because the federal government has criminalized speaking about the tool. In 2013, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ruled that the NSLs violated the First Amendment by removing the recipient’s ability to speak about the letter. On Wednesday, EFF appeared in the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco to ask the court to uphold the 2013 ruling and find that the gags are unconstitutional and should be overturned. Only days before Wednesday’s hearing, the FBI allowed CREDO and Cloudflare to reveal they are actually fighting a total of five NSLs.

We"re revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.

EFF has previously reported that over 300,000 NSLs have been issued in the past 10 years. Former President Obama’s Intelligence Review Group reported that 60 NSLs were issued every day during his presidency. Despite these facts, the vast majority of the American public is completely oblivious to the existence of these surveillance tools. The public did learn a small amount regarding the NSLs in June 2016, when Yahoo published three NSLs.

“Yahoo has always maintained a strong commitment to protecting our users’ safety, security and privacy,” the company said in an announcement of the disclosure. “The release of these documents and information regarding NSLs today is consistent with our commitment to share as much information as we legally can regarding government data requests. We believe there is value in making these documents available to the public to promote an informed discussion about the legal authorities available to law enforcement. Each NSL included a nondisclosure provision that prevented Yahoo from previously notifying its users or the public of their existence.”

The NSLs are so wrought with potential for abuse that EFF describes them as “one of the most frightening and invasive” facets of the PATRIOT Act. They represent yet another tool for the government to violate and invade individuals’ privacy and thus, their freedom. What will it take to put an end to such a policy when the public is barely even aware it exists?

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo / Image: Tom Murphy