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New Bill Pushes For Warrants To Access Cloud Data

Posted by timothy on from the unless-you're-in-that-cloud-naked dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "A bill introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy in the US Senate would require authorities to obtain a court-issued search warrant before retrieving a person's email and other content stored in cloud services. The law would update a 28 year old law, which Leahy also introduced, that does not require warrants for data access. The Bill will not prevent the FBI from accessing data without a warrant under terrorism and intellgence clauses."

16 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Sudden oubreak of common sense? by I'm+not+really+here · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know this doesn't eliminate the issues with the patriot act, etc., but at least it's a step in the right direction of treating digital 'property' the same as physical property when dealing with "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. . ." (emphasis mine).

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    1. Re:Sudden oubreak of common sense? by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      As was reported by http://www.koat.com/r/27922147/detail.html
      “While billed as an anti-terror tool, (a sneak-and-peek warrant) had no requirements on it that it precluded it from being used in standard criminal investigations,”
      "According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s figures, the majority of the warrants are for drug cases."
      Expect some very creative use of the term "terrorism and intellgence" over time even if they have a terrorism and intellgence clause.
      Cloud data was always fair game to the NSA in bulk outside the USA and internally with a warrant/national security letters.
      You have new delay period options in "blocks" of 90 days, Section 7 covers "voluntarily disclose content that is pertinent to addressing a cyberattack" - ie your telco reports you.

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      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Sudden oubreak of common sense? by icebraining · · Score: 2

      I agree. Thankfully, privacy rights don't require property rights, or else there would be no need to warrants to tap phones.

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  2. Outpaced by other legislation you mean by memyselfandeye · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to point out, that it's laws such as Sarbanes–Oxley that say you have to store e-mail for 5 years (well if you're a public company). There are a slew of other laws too that have obfuscated the situation so bad my former employer is archiving 100% of Mail, including mail normally rejected to a user's inbox, for over a year. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing, however my point is the problems with all these privacy acts is that they need not exist in the first place had the original laws never been written. I mean, if I keep a wallet for more than 180 days does that subject it to a warrantless search? If do not shred my journal after 180 days does that subject it to a warrantless search? Why would electronic communications ever be subject to a warrantless search after 180 days, whether it is here in 2011 or even back in 1986?

    1. Re:Outpaced by other legislation you mean by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      While publicly traded corporations, and their friends, love to cry about sarbox and similar, to say that those created the situation is so misleading as to constitute a lie. The concern for natural persons is the fact that things like Gmail are socially pretty much the same as personal mail; but have none of the 4th amendment jurisprudence protecting them.

      Work email, and records, since those are already widely understood to be an open book as far as the employer is concerned, are already not usefully private, even if the state didn't exist. The fact that your boss can read them any time he pleases, with even less oversight than the most sinister three-letter-intelligence agency, basically ensures that.

      (now, as the IT department, having to do document retention annoys me as much as anybody; but conflating requirements that corporations voluntarily bring upon themselves as a condition of being publicly traded, limited liability entities(a very valuable status...) with the novel privacy problems encountered by services that are treated as "personal" but run as outsourced hosted services is either confused or dishonest.)

    2. Re:Outpaced by other legislation you mean by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      That's a bit of a stretch, I think. I applaud Sarbines-Oxley or whatever it;'s called. I don't think corporations are people and I don't think they should have rights. You don't have to send private emails from your work email address, and in fact it's against most companies' policies. Use your own email account from your own computer or phone.

      Perhaps if elections here were publicly funded the corporatti would have less influence in this country, and perhaps we, the people, would have more freedom.

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  3. What a load of bollocks by ciderbrew · · Score: 2

    They put in Anti-terrorism legislation here in the UK for searching people. Soon everyone became a terrorist and the search laws get used by the local council to look in your bins to make sure your recycling.
    Apart from a few poor people being blown up, (which I'm very sorry for) - most "terror" and "evil" acts are done by the name of the government. Can I have my freedom back? I'm not bothered about being blown up that much any more. Means I don't have to keep paying tax.

    1. Re:What a load of bollocks by ciderbrew · · Score: 2

      I've been watching that on the news. It seems to happen each year. I'm not too sure why people continue to build in a tornado belt or why they build wooden structures there. I thought houses would be made to stand up to a 100+ year event in that area. If that's possible / feasible. I'm sure a tornado does more damage and has way more power than I give it credit for.

      My first guess it that it's very cheap land so poor people can afford it and they build within their means. So it just lands more woe on the poor as it wipes them all out, again.In the UK they drained and then built cheap housing in floodplains. Oddly nature didn't care much either and as soon as it got the chance it flooded them again.

      As populations expand we'll meet more and more natural disasters. It will be the poor that get fucked over as they can't afford protection and get forced into the outskirts.

  4. Re:Its weird by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    In practice, not very. Legally, the right to "be secure in one's person, papers, and effects" has generally been regarded as providing relatively strong protection to one's domicile and property stored therein(exceptions, of course, exist, because drugs are scary and terrorists are scary); but has not been regarded as being particularly relevant to some bits floating around somebody else's datacenter(that, depending on the ToS may or may not even be 'yours').

    It would be nice to see offsite-stored "papers and effects" get some 4th amendment love. Unfortunately, as long as the 'terrorism and intelligence' loophole exists, the present bill is sort of a waste of effort.

  5. Secure in Our Papers and Effects by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Amendment IV

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

    "Secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is the definition of privacy. We have a right to privacy. It doesn't matter that the Constitution signers "couldn't have imagined" cloud computing. They imagined that they couldn't imagine new things, so they signed a Constitution that recognizes our right to privacy in specific terms of that right.

    If we can't require the government at least obtain a judge's authorization on probable cause specifying what's to be searched and seized, we have no boundary between what's private and what the public can force. The 4th Amendment's line protecting the private from invasion by the public except when it's reasonable and limited is the fundamental right to a limited government. Give it up as we already largely have and we're living in tyranny.

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    make install -not war

  6. Re:Head in cloud storage and darker body parts by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Meanwhile, billions of people listen, everyone takes more dollars than ever before, and people (not corporations) pay more taxes than ever.

    The message is that as tired as people are, they fear an alternative. And for good reason: the alternative is nearly certain to be worse - probably much, much worse.

    Why don't you run for office and make it worth listening, buying into, paying taxes to? Even if just the school board. Stop whining with kindergarten doomsday talk and do something, however small, proportional to you own potential for making a difference.

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    make install -not war

  7. Border Backup/Restore by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2

    If cloud storage has better legal protection than local storage when crossing the border, then I want an app that backs up all my data and configs to the cloud and deletes it locally whenever my GPS says I'm near an airport or the border, then restores it after I'm across - or on demand, when I've passed border control.

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    make install -not war

    1. Re:Border Backup/Restore by AHuxley · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders (along with ~70% of the US), your data is going to be gone for many of the people you may want to interact with.
      http://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone
      and the map http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map of where inland Border Patrol checkpoints can be used.

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      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Border Backup/Restore by ledow · · Score: 2

      Or just - don't take that data to that country.

      I know plenty of people that have stopped taking data (and sometimes their business) over to the states since they started getting too heavy-handed while at the same time ordering the EU to send personal data on visitors to them.

      They either VPN it in and access it live (which is still dodgy because certain people could insist they do that with them watching, but I supposed you'd at least get a choice to notice that from the home-base and revoke their credentials), or don't take the data to the US at all. Some of them literally take re-imaged laptops and/or nothing at all and work it out the other end.

  8. Well by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What stops the Feds from simply claiming anyone they want to investigate is a "suspected terrorist" and doing all the snooping they want. Suppose the Feds simply declare that due to "secret" information, they believe that someone is a "suspected terrorist". They tap his phone, bug his car, break into his email accounts...and discover that John Doe buys personal use quantities of prescription pain meds without a prescription. (but is not a terrorist). Or some other low-end crime.

    Can the Feds put John Doe into prison based on this information?

  9. Re:The 3rd ammendment's still going strong! by VGPowerlord · · Score: 2

    Speak for yourself - I slept in my Mom's living room drunk on leave plenty of times.

    By troops, I'm pretty sure they meant the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, not the the armies of the Alliance, Horde, or Fistandantilus.

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