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Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

as a non-US citizen this won't change anything for me.

"free society" here should be really re-worded to "free US society".

as long as there is a intelligence apparatus in the US at all, spying on the rest of the world will continue. by definition.

the NSA is monitoring all internet traffic as it would be really hard to know beforehand if it only pertains to US citizens. not sure what exactly you're trying to achieve here. the NSA either monitors facebook or it doesn't.

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This is a broader movement. We're pushing for principles that extend beyond the US border, as best outlined here: https://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text

The US Constitual protection for privacy only applies to US citizens. Would US citizens be willing to amend it to make it apply to everyone.

Some things in the constitution apply only to citizens, most don't. When it says person, it means person, not citizen. Educating people that this prevalent view is false would already go a long way.

Not quite that clear. There is an (sort of) exemption to the US 4th Amendement warrent requirement for " surveillance is conducted to obtain foreign intelligence for national security purposes and is directed against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers reasonably believed to be located outside the United States"

And this applies to blanket mass surveillance how?

However, this definition of "person" requires them to be subject to US law (typically by residing in the US) which foreign residents of a foreign country are not.

That is part of the reason we have a detention facility at Guantanemo.

It is not sufficient that the person acting on someone else is subject to US law? That seems kinda broken. Do you have a link that elaborates on this? From the 14th Amendment for example:

> No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Note how it mentions citizens, any person, and persons within the jurisdiction as three separate things... ?

What protection is that? Search and seizure is not about privacy; it's about physical intrusion into personal space. Had they meant to address intrusion into abstract privacy they would have.

It's easy to argue that abstract privacy as a concept separate form physical privacy simply did not exist at that time in history because of a lack of electronics. A corollary is that they probably would have added abstract privacy if they had had the benefit of hindsight.

Oh, it certainly existed. Conspicuously no stricture on unwarranted spying for purposes of investigation was stated and that had to be read into it later by the courts (which I consider juristic legislation.) It's not clear to me that the framers didn't intend to reserve that right for investigation.

I'm not saying it is wrong to restrict it, just that the constitution should have been so amended for it to be considered a constitutional question.

Maybe your government should be working to promote the security of its citizens. The US is not alone here, despite being a bad actor -- did your government work to promote widespread use of good cryptography, or did your country's law enforcement agencies whine about how hard it would be to wiretap people? Should I, as a US citizen, feel more comfortable with my personal data being stored in your country than you feel about yours being stored in mine?

Oh don't worry, they'll keep spying on Americans exactly like before.

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