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Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act Introduced

Posted by michael on from the won't-go-far dept.

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."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Better link ...? by Arthaed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am looking at Senator Ron Wyden's website right now and I don't see anything mentioning this possible bill. Hmmmm. Does anyone have a link to a .gov version of this so called bill?

    --
    Unique signatures are rare.
  2. Interesting law by chrisgeleven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Question is, how likely is it that it will pass or even come up for a vote?

  3. Whoa, this is bad by helix400 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Where I work, our job is to collect *public* information in government databases. We make it possible so people can research a property in just a minutes, rather than a few hours.

    According to the ACLU, because I'm consolidating public information, I'm a national security threat. I should also be forced to submit to even more beaurocratic loopholes to get data that's already public, or be stopped from accessing to much public data to begin with. And I thought the ACLU was all about personal freedom and open governments

  4. Whoops, its only federal by helix400 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My mistake, this bill only applies to the federal government, not for average private citizens like me.

    However, because Slashdotters never like to admit total defeat, I'd like to pose the question. Do you think the the ACLU is still opposed to private citizens like me consolidating so many public government databases about individual people and properties?