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Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned
schwit1 writes "The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
That it's taking people this long to realize nothing ever changes.
Pay attention closer next time. Obama wasn't saying "change", he was saying "chains."
Seriously... When will Americans realize that both parties have exactly the same goal: To control and manipulate everything that every citizen possesses or can produce - even thoughts/minds/beliefs - for their own gain alone.
Screw investing in gold - invest in lead and brass....
Same as the old boss, indeed. What amazes me is that we're still a two party system and that people continue to think that their vote matters.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
A vote for the lesser evil is still a vote for evil.
I liked him when he ran for president. Then he failed closing gitmo, didn't manage to push healthcare through, and I kinda attribted that to "circumstances", like FOX "News". But now he doesn't sign this landmine treaty thingie, he doesn't promise any kind of CO2 reduction goals, he extends the PATRIOT Act and now this. I'm utterly disappointed.
Some would argue that since we get the same basic results from either party, we really have a one party system and its all smoke and mirrors between the 2.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, because a warrant won't let them go on a fishing expedition for other crimes, they don't pursue the crimes that they do know about? That's like a kid saying: "If you don't play by my rules, I'll take my ball away".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The question isn't whether he's everything the advertising billed him as, it's whether he was a better choice than the alternative.
Not really. The question HERE is whether the article writer has a shred of journalistic integrity at all.
Seriously, first read the article and then post. I doubt Obama is even slightly involved beyond appointing key person who is involved to a broad role of which 'computer privacy law' is a drop in the bucket. This headline is as absurd as printing 'Obama wants to banish ketchup based on an incident where the secretary of defense complained there was too much ketchup on their McDonalds cheeseburger.
Second, the dispute here is pretty benign. Federal investigators had a WARRANT to search a PC for evidence of steriod use for a handful of players, and uncovered evidence of some hundred other players using steroids in the same folder and files as the information for the players in question. The dispute is whether they should be allowed to use the additional evidence of the additional crime.
The court ruled no, citing that the investigators 'actively scrolled the excel spreadsheet past the names of the players in question'. Come on. Even I, a privacy advocate, don't see anything wrong with what the agents did. I don't even think its wrong to admit this as evidence. I'd argue against being able to search inside every document, hack encrypted files, ... but they found evidence of additional instances of the same crime in the same files and folders that their warrant covered.
Clearly this ruling probably should be overturned. I don't think agents should be given carte blanche to search your entire PC and charge you with unrelated crimes. But there is probably some middle ground where if they are investing the PC for evidence you ripped off the Smiths with ScamX, and they find evidence in the same file you that also ripped off the Jones... that SHOULD be allowed.
But bottom line, declaring that Obama "wants" anything at all with respect to this case is absurd.
The problem with trying to apply old precedents to this matter is that digital databases can be so much vaster than any real place being searched. If the cops have a warrant to search the safe in someone's house for something illegal, they aren't allowed to go search the cupboards. Only if the evidence is in plain sight as they go about their business are they allowed to use it.
This is very relevant. What if the cops bust in to your house looking for marijuana in your safe, based on an anonymous tip, and don't find anything? Maybe they find you've stored chemicals in your kitchen cabinets in violation of federal law for storage, or maybe you've got some prescription med bottles for a person who is no longer living in the house. If the cops are allowed to rifle through everything a private citizen owns, and they get creative, they can almost certainly find SOMETHING to charge you with. Their perspective is "since you were accused, you must be guilty of SOMETHING...let's find what it is because I don't want to go back to the station empty handed"
Well, now, if suppose you were a credit bureau like Equifax. If the cops had the authority to search your database to get someone's credit record in order to prove illegal activity, they could search the records of every citizen in the united states because those records are in "plain sight" within the database! Bet they could find SOMETHING if they are allowed to basically open an investigation against every citizen of the country.
And for those arguing "if we're soft on crime, we're letting teh criminals win". The U.S. has already declared and imprisoned more of its citizens for being 'criminals' than any other nation on earth as a % of population. Now, I'm not saying that a large percentage of those people are innocent, just that this extreme level of imprisonment is not an appropriate way for society to deal with those who misbehave. (I think the percentage of innocent people is probably between 3 and 10 percent)
Happy now? This is what you all wanted... For the past decade I've read post after post after post about Bush spending too much or having too tight an iron fist on privacy issues.
Well, you all voted for change...
Now you have the highest spending EVER. Now you can see the beginning of security corruption as well. At least Bush had a war to justify his need to breach privacy. Obama has no legitimate reason and yet he's going to do it.
When are you all going to learn that government is inherently bad; that it is inherently corrupt. And while there are a couple of functions it should provide to maintain civilization, the smaller we keep it the better... for all of us.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
... but only for a while until the money-changers sneak back into the temple. That's why you have to have them periodically, like defragging and virus-scanning your hard drive. We seem to have fallen behind on the schedule... we haven't had a decent game-changing revolution in a while, have we? Now we have a bunch of people muttering "let them eat cake" again. Does anyone still know how to make guillotines? We'll need quite a few this time.
They all know their jobs and the limits of their office and mission. For various reasons, both good and bad, they seek more power and expansion of current power. I hold that there was great wisdom in the limiting of those powers from the very beginning. That wisdom was established by previous abuses of such overreaching powers of the previous government the founding fathers were living under. They knew where all the government power abuses lead to because they had lived with those abuses until they could tolerate it no longer. This is how the U.S. Revolution began!
The people in various offices seek to repeat those same abuses by seeking to go beyond the limits that were artfully and successfully crafted by the authors of the U.S. Constitution. They may have good intentions, but the evils that can result from it outweighs the benefit of prosecuting one or two more child rapists. And yes, I said it. Protecting the constitution is FAR more important than protecting children from rapists.
The title of the story is, "Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned" except that the story has nothing to do with Obama and calling this the 'Obama Administration' is a bit of a stretch as well.
It is Elena Kagan, not Obama. Her job is the United States Solicitor General. She is represents the US as a prosecutor for the Supreme Court. Isn't she just doing her job?
I don't understand how one person doing what they are suppose to be doing means Obama is against our rights. The connection just isn't there for me.
Could anyone here have honestly voted for McCain with Palin on the ticket as well?
I did. While I'm sure this locks in my nomination for the Slashdotter special needs award, it remains that McCain and Palin, while they talk scary, were more consistent and trustworthy than the Democrat team. Obama had already backtracked on promises ("positions" he calls them) particularly FISA and was throwing out promises that simply didn't make sense (we'll reduce health care costs by increasing costs through adding universal health care), hung around associates that made the Republican team look like a paragon of sanity, and had some Big Plans that would involve gutting the US economy for some sort of nebulous socialist gain.
Well, all I can say is that Obama and the Democrats in Congress have not disappointed me. We may be in the "death spiral" of US history, but at least we're protected from the perils of incandescent light bulbs.
I suppose, just for completeness, somebody ought to point out that the headline says "Obama" wants the ruling overturned, whereas the actual text states, correctly, that it is Elena Kagan, the solicitor general, who wants the ruling overturned. While it is true that Kagan was appointed by Obama, nevertheless I expect that Obama himself probably has never actually given an opinion on the subject.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I voted for Obama because of Palin. I figure that with the stresses of Presidency, there would have been an 85% chance of McCain having to be hospitalized while in office for an extended period of time, and a not insignificant chance of him dying from a heart attack, stroke, or other catastrophe. With Obama, the worst case is a small chance of getting shot by a white supremacist or something. So weighing a small chance of Biden as President versus an 85% chance of Palin as President, I made the only choice that didn't feel like Russian roulette.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Go research the New Deal and how many people the gov't employed in the 30's to ease the depression,
None of which actually worked. The economy didn't really recover until the US entered WW2, pulling millions of men out of the job market and putting them in uniform. The post-war boom owed more to the fact that the rest of the world laid in ruins while the US infrastructure and economy was virtually untouched.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.