I don't mean to appear to be playing fast and loose with the facts. Certainly, the NSA tapping exchanges is a different issue than whatever restrictions the government has placed on itself when issuing NSLs for message metadata.
The fact is, message metadata is enough. I have friends and acquaintances that have been harassed and detained by officials based on their names appearing in contact lists of other suspected-but-not-charged-with-anything individuals. We're not even talking about evidence of actual communications such as message headers or metadata.
The fact that they can (and do) pull thousands of people's message headers and have access to the communications graph and traffic frequency without ANY JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT WHATSOEVER means that their ability to conduct state-sponsored extrajudicial harassment is way out of control.
It truly doesn't matter if NSLs allow them to get the body of the messages or not. If you're on the radar, you and everyone you communicate with regularly is a target. There are no legal remedies for this sort of stuff anymore.
If you do anything of import non-anonymously, you can expect to have your hardware stolen and never returned (under the guise of a search), your travel impeded, your accounts inaccessible (google "civil asset forfeiture"), your social network harassed and detained similarly, and your access to legal remedies hindered in every conceivable way.
A half-dozen examples known to me personally come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about.
The threat is very real, and trying to split hairs about whether or not "reading your email" means message bodies or just headers is not productive.
I disagree that "It truly doesn't matter if NSLs allow them to get the body of the messages or not". It truly matters a whole hell of a lot to me if someone can see my messages, as versus my email headers.
The fact is, message metadata is enough. I have friends and acquaintances that have been harassed and detained by officials based on their names appearing in contact lists of other suspected-but-not-charged-with-anything individuals. We're not even talking about evidence of actual communications such as message headers or metadata.
The fact that they can (and do) pull thousands of people's message headers and have access to the communications graph and traffic frequency without ANY JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT WHATSOEVER means that their ability to conduct state-sponsored extrajudicial harassment is way out of control.
It truly doesn't matter if NSLs allow them to get the body of the messages or not. If you're on the radar, you and everyone you communicate with regularly is a target. There are no legal remedies for this sort of stuff anymore.
If you do anything of import non-anonymously, you can expect to have your hardware stolen and never returned (under the guise of a search), your travel impeded, your accounts inaccessible (google "civil asset forfeiture"), your social network harassed and detained similarly, and your access to legal remedies hindered in every conceivable way.
A half-dozen examples known to me personally come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about.
The threat is very real, and trying to split hairs about whether or not "reading your email" means message bodies or just headers is not productive.