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National Security Draft For Fining Tech Company "Noncompliance" On Wiretapping
Jeremiah Cornelius writes with what looks to be part of CISPA III: Children of CISPA. From the article: "A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur. ... 'The importance to us is pretty clear,' says Andrew Weissmann, the FBI's general counsel. 'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept." Other countries have that.' Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 'This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs,' said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 'They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act.'"
"Wiretap warrants require a lot more than just reasonable suspicion of a crime, though. "
Absolutely. They require probable cause, which means real evidence. Of course, then there are the secret rooms the government built into some telco offices that simply siphon off data without anybody's knowledge or consent. Those are established fact... they are the whole reason Congress had to give telcos "immunity" for passing on the information. But as far as I know, there still isn't a law that allows the government to do it legally or constitutionally.
"Wiretap laws were written to fit the idea that phone companies were simple carriers who would respect the integrity of customer's conversations, and since they didn't provide services themselves, people had a reasonable expectation of privacy."
It's not that they didn't provide services. They didn't provide content. As the courts have ruled: there is a lesser standard of evidence needed for telephone records (who called who, and when, for example) than there is for the content of the telephone conversation (wiretap).
But this brings up a good point. Telcos were (FCC Regulations) classified as Title II "Common Carriers". I.e., they provide the call service, but are strictly forbidden from intercepting or interfering with the content (conversation) without a warrant.
It is quite possible to classify and regulate Cable companies and other ISPs as Title II Common Carriers. In fact, the FCC has wanted to do it for decades. But lobbyists got Congress to pass a law specifically excluding ISPs from Common Carrier status. That was one of the biggest mistakes of the last few decades.
The solution: get Congress to remove the exclusion from ISPs. Then the vast majority of your privacy concerns go away, virtually overnight: it will then be prohibited for ISPs (or anybody, including usage trackers) from monitoring your activities without a warrant. Most of the major privacy and security concerns surrounding the Internet simply disappear.
Sure, there will still be a few criminals doing it now and then. But criminals tapped (probably still tap) telephones, too. But the big problem -- government and corporations -- will be forced to leave it alone.