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They can also implement discrete per-customer cryptographic solutions, so that if they receive a warrant for the data and traffic relating to Customer-X then they don't have to compromise all their other customers.

It'll cost more to set-up and run, but the benefit is that your business won't go down the drain when the warrant arrives.



Thats a set-up that not even the military deploys, or banks for that matter. Its arguable also in the same league of PFS, as the government could easy just issue general warrants or alternative create laws that does the same.


You probably intended only a descriptive term, but fittingly the Americans' opposition to what was called the "general warrant" was precisely what led to the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. [1]

But you are correct that this is the likely outcome, now that the rule of law is essentially dead in the US.

1. See, e.g., http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fourth+Amendme..., "The Framers drafted the Fourth Amendment in response to their colonial experience with British officials, whose discretion in collecting revenues for the Crown often went unchecked. Upon a mere suspicion held by British tax collectors or their informants, colonial magistrates were compelled to issue general warrants, which permitted blanket door-to-door searches of entire neighborhoods without limitation as to person or place. The law did not require magistrates to question British officials regarding the source of their suspicion or to make other credibility determinations.

"The writ of assistance was a particularly loathsome form of general warrant. The name of this writ derived from the power of British authorities to enlist local peace officers and colonial residents who might "assist" in executing a particular search."


I was referring to how the National Security letters has been used.

Stories like the court order requiring Verizon to turn over records of every call "on an ongoing daily basis", or any of the many times when a blanket searches and seizures has happen to people or their property. Their numbers are so great that many lawyers and professors openly state that the 4th amendment do not exist anymore.




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