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

Likely responses...

[Anonymous Coward]

• cut it out - "Ok, whatever you say."
  
• make a full report to Congress - "We ran MySQL. But we stopped, umkay?"
  
• what they're doing to preserve privacy - "We have self signed SSL certificates for our intranet."
  
• why they're doing what they're doing - "To protect and serve."
  
• whether they actually have a realistic chance of catching any bad guys - "Yep. Those bad guys never stood a chance...umkay?"