Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act Introduced

SewersOfRivendell writes "Quote from http://boingboing.net/: 'EFF, EPIC, CDT, ACLU and Free Congress have drafted a bill that's been introduced by Senator Wyden today, for a new law called "The Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act." This is a hell of a law. It finds that various species of spooks are making avid use of commercial and governmental databases, merging them and aggregating them, without transparency, accountability, or any real understanding of the danger to civil liberties involved in this practice. Accordingly, it requires any Fed agency using non-Fed databases to cut it out and make a full report to Congress on who they're buying database and database-services from, what they're doing to preserve privacy, why they're doing what they're doing, and whether they actually have a realistic chance of catching any bad guys. And it calls into account Feds who abuse their authority and limits the kind of doomsday hypotheticals that can be used to justify such abuse.' PDF draft of the bill here."

Comments

Oh boy

[Colin Rawlings]

They get even more information now! Next thing we know, they'll be requiring "spooks" to not investigate anything at all. So, the US government keeps everything to itself, the "spooks" go out of business, extra red tape is added, and the government continues its slow crash. If they're so concerned, why is this stuff around in the first place? What's new?

Re:Whoa, this is bad

[stratjakt]

Umm, nah, the ACLU is all about sound bites on the 6 o'clock news.

You know, suing some small town high school for having a christmas dance, or making sure that noone talks about anything to do with christianity in public.

I'm not religious, but their whole agenda is stupid and counterproductive.

You would never see them sue schools for forcing kids to study the Koran, but if some kid wants to hang a cross in her locker, or sing a christmas carol with offensive religious topics like "Saint Nick", then they come swooping down to save the day.

They're professional extortionists and a big cause behind the idiotic levels of political correctness these days.