Slashdot Mirror
A Free Internet, If You Can Keep It
Kethinov writes "My Congresswoman, Zoe Lofgren, a prominent opponent of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act, has introduced two bills to the U.S. House of Representatives designed to protect the free and open internet, expand the protections of the Fourth Amendment to digital communications, and protect against the introduction of any further SOPA-like bills. Since these are issues Slashdotters care deeply about, I wanted to open up the bills for discussion on Slashdot. The bills are: ECPA 2.0 and the Global Free Internet Act. Is my Congresswoman doing a good job? Is there room for improvement in the language of the bills? If you're as excited by her work as I am, please reach out to your representatives as well and ask them to work with Rep. Lofgren. It will take a big coalition to beat the pro-RIAA/MPAA establishment politics on internet regulation."
This is exciting that a member of Congress is doing this, I will reach out to my local representatives and ask them to support this.
"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." This applies to personal emails and other effects but it is not license to take others intellectual property and do with as you like. We need to defend intellectual property as well as our own privacy.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It would be nice to have someone with a degree of credibility look at this legislation and report on how useful it really is. That's exactly the sort of thing that the EFF should be doing. Have they reviewed it?
No....the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to personal email and that is one of the major points of ECPA 2.0. Right now, if your personal email is not in an "electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days or less," it is receiving virtually no privacy protections at all. Even if it hasn't been 180 days yet, that communication could still be handed over by your service provider. How many governmental requests did Google/Gmail receive this past year....?
The Senator is right (from TFA): "the defeat of SOPA should be more than cause for pride — it must also prompt action to secure the future of the Internet." But this is also about securing us NOW.
As a fraction of GDP, the US has less public debt than Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, or the UK.
So... yes. European debt crisis.
Wrong. As of 2011, US public debt was at >100% of its GDP, almost putting it in the top ten:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
If you look at external debt, it's a different picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
If you cancel out what all the countries owe each other, it becomes even more interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_position