js-normative

Hey, this is Julian Sanchez. I'm a fellow with the Cato Institute in Washington DC who covers surveillance and digital privacy (issues I previously wrote about as the DC editor for Ars Technica & a blogger for the Economist). You can hunt down stuff I've written on these topics over at Cato.org or at the new blog JustSecurity.org

FISA information has been used at least once in an ordinary criminal case when a subject under FISA surveillance was recorded murdering his daughter. The metadata program operates under §215, and the law states that the "minimization procedures" governing that data shall: "allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes. "

Here's something I wrote on the "nothing to hide" argument—hope you don't mind if I link it, since it's long, rather than trying to reproduce it here. The very short version is that you have to think systemically, not in terms of "what is someone going to do to me, personally, next week?" but rather "what kind of society emerges over time when we create these architectures of monitoring?" http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/julian-sanchez-nsa/

Unfortunately, a terrible and incoherent Supreme Court ruling from the 70s held that the Fourth Amendment generally does not apply to these types of records. I explain what happened—and why the Court needs to revisit that ruling—in a bit of detail here. (Ignore the linkbait headline chosen by my editor...) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-11/how-rand-paul-can-take-on-the-nsa.html

Not sure how meaningful a number would be, but looking forward 50 years, I think it's easy to imagine a scenario where massive databases assembled for Extremely Important National Security Purposes (regardless of how well they serve those purposes) are gradually made accessible to more components of government, first for ordinary law enforcement, and eventually for administrative and regulatory purposes.

And "Fairytale of New York" by the Pogues. (Honorable Mention, The Eels "Everything's Gonna Be Cool this Christmas")