GeoffM

No. If half the stuff being delivered is junk (and supposedly it's a lot more than half), then it stands to reason that the mailman would not need to stop at every house, every day if junk wasn't delivered. So in every street he saves a few minutes by not stopping, reaching into his box, pulling out the right bundle, opening the mailbox (which might need keys - they do around here). By the end of his/her workday those minutes have added up and he could have delivered to another few streets. In a whole area you're talking about saving a few mailmen per day. It all adds up.

Steve_

No idea, but having watched a bit of the congressional hearing, the NSA is talking crap, imo.

The point that isn't being made strongly enough about the FISC warrant that he dug out is that it is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The relevant Acts, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the USA PATRIOT Act say quite plainly that US persons (which means US citizens, nationals and LPRs) cannot be targeted, nor can anyone in the US and moreover it must be done in a way that is consistent with the fourth amendment.

So how on Earth is getting all the metadata from Verizon consistent with that? The argument is that foreigners call them and they call foreigners, okay, but that's consistent with the fourth amendment? The fact that EVERY TELEPHONE USER in the United States has all of their metadata handed over to the NSA because a foreigner might call them or they might call a foreigner seems like overreach to me.

I think this is where their argument falls apart because it's obvious from what Snowden has released that the NSA pays lip service to identifying "US persons", they use a 51% confidence level and assume everything that is coming from abroad is foreign even though it could be from a US citizen.

So they're saying it's legal and authorized by Congress, don't worry about it... I don't think it is legal, they've taken the statute and pushed it to the absolute maximum boundary possible and if it gets out of FISC and into a regular court, I don't think a court will agree that it's legal. Which is what the ACLU is trying to do right now.

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/laws/pl110261.pdf

RoadWarriorFromLP

Not really the case at all.

This stuff produces a lot of extra revenue for relatively little work, since it's often generic and is presorted, i.e. less labor-intensive than normal mail.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Phone records are not protected under the Fourth Amendment.

And given the Supreme Court case that made that determination, records of internet usage aren't private, either.

Pulaski

I agree, but more so. If the bulk mail rate was abolished, so that the full rate was collected for all mail, it would choke off most of the junk mail, then cut the delivery to one day per week, saving 83% of the salary cost and 83% of the gas too. .... Collecting full rate would mean that revenue would fall a lot less than costs.

RoadWarriorFromLP

I agree. If the post office stops behaving like a post office, then it won't have the costs associated with a post office.

But if the business model is predicated on going to the houses in your neighborhood five or six days a week, as it is right now, then it makes perfect sense to run more throughput through the system.

GeoffM

You appear to have missed the point. Earlier you said that the delivery is the same no matter how many items are to be delivered which we know is not true. Now you've switched track and say that it's presorted - which, much is, I agree - but is irrelevant when you're in the van stopping at mailboxes and potentially skipping others.

MMcD

Hello.....Moderator.....Moderator (anyone out there....?)

I see that a new thread has just been opened called "Eliminating Junk Mail"
As this thread was meant to be about "The NSA" wouldn't it be appropriate to move all the posts about the USPS junk mail deliveries - which seem to have co-opted this thread - to the new one?

Pulaski

Sorry.

Steve_

Fair enough, I've read the case law now but it's not just records of internet usage, it's the entire e-mail. They're actually intercepting the entire communication as it passes over the internet through the routers and housing it in a data warehouse in Utah. And it doesn't alter the fact the law is designed to target people outside the US, so just on the basis of what the Act says, they could be found to not be in compliance with it.

And I've got to say that caselaw is from 1975, the Supreme Court couldn't have envisaged a situation where a pen register was used to record absolutely every phone connection made in the US, not sure the same argument applies.

Steve_

It's not relatively little work, they have to fill up every mailbox rather than just a few. Moreover they have to deliver it, even if you don't want it.

jeffreyhy

Perhaps a key word here is "targeted". When metadata (and only metadata) is being collected on anyone and everyone then no one is being targeted.

If in the haystack of metadata a needle is found, then a targeted warrant can be obtained to start looking into the contents of the suspect communicator(s) in keeping with the fourth amendment.

Regards, JEff

Steve_

Not just that one line though is it: "prevent the intentional acquisition of any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States;"

and "a significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information"

Clearly it is intentional if you say to a US-based phone provider, hand over all the metadata. Okay that might be consistent with the fourth amendment but I don't agree it's consistent with the Act. The section would be meaningless if it allowed the collection of everything, it clearly imposes a limit, that limit must have some meaning to it. And there's the use of the word "significant" as well. That also imposes a limit of some kind. The collection at the moment appears to be done in a limitless way, every phone record in the US is collected.

"any communication" might not include metadata but it definitely includes the content of e-mails.

Like I said, I think the fallout from this is going to be that the NSA has to be more careful in ensuring the people from who they're collecting "communication" are in fact not US persons.

Which even if they do and everyone in the US is happy with that, it still presents an awkward problem for the US Govt. in dealing with foreign governments.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Again, you're not following this.

A typical letter goes like this:
-First, it has to be taken from a residence, business or post box to a local post office.
-Then, it has to be sorted.
-If it isn't local, then it needs to get trucked to some other hub or two within the system. (A ship or airplane may also be included.)
-Then, it has to get to another post office close to the final destination.
-Then, it has to be sorted again, so that it can given to the correct carrier for a given delivery route.
-Then, it gets to where it is going.

Junk mail skips most of those steps. The sender presorts it and gets it close to its final destination. It makes the carrier more productive, while pushing the other labor and cost-intensive aspects of the service to the sender.

As it stands, junk mail is about a quarter of their revenue. There is no way to cut costs to offset that loss in revenue.

The most expensive thing about mail is in sending stuff to and from remote locations. In essence, the metro areas are subsidizing the rural ones.

Back in the old days, they use to charge by distance and charged it to the recipient. But it was better for the sake of the society and its usage of communications to create a flat rate for everyone, and to charge the sender and not the recipient. (You'll notice that this is the same approach used outside of North America for mobile phone calls, which obviously helped proliferation abroad to an extent that hasn't happened in the US or Canada.)

If you wanted profitability at the expense of equality, then you'd raise all of the prices so that everyone pays Canadian or UK-level prices, plus you'd charge more for whatever came from and went to a remote location. As it stands now, sending a letter across town is almost certainly profitable, while sending a postcard from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere is a complete loser for the post office.

RoadWarriorFromLP

The entire communication can be reviewed if there is a warrant. FISA courts can issue those warrants, and they do so secretly.

The phone records are not protected. No warrant is required for phone records.

The fact that the case dates back to 1979 does nothing to negate its place in case law. If anything, it makes your position weaker, since no one has found a reason to overturn it over the last 34 years.

The system is based upon case law. Cases from the early 19th century still get cited because they're still relevant. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stare_decisis