New Bill Pushes For Warrants To Access Cloud Data

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."

Comments

Sudden oubreak of common sense?

[I'm not really here]

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).

Outpaced by other legislation you mean

[memyselfandeye]

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?

Re:Outpaced by other legislation you mean

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.)

Secure in Our Papers and Effects

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:Head in cloud storage and darker body parts

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Well

[ShooterNeo]

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?

Re:Border Backup/Restore

[AHuxley]

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.