Slashdot Mirror
That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill
Presto Vivace writes "Under the right conditions, online activism can be very effective. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has already abandoned his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill we discussed this morning. 'The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. ... A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved. Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the ACLU saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with over 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My Email!""
try convincing nongeeks and nontinfoilhaters to use double public key encryption for all of their communication be it email chat or voip. they will fight it tooth and nail because it "more complicated" translated requires one additional click per message maybe a couple keystrokes for your password.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Exactly! This is why we need a randomly selected American civilian (similar to jury duty) to follow around every congress member and every time they do something stupid or controversial or clearly evil, they'd get to react like "WTF are you signing that crap? Are you shittin' me right now? Why are you adding that to the bill? Why are you going to a $1000 luxury dinner with that oil company exec?"
Now that's representative-based democratic oversight, lol.