Texas Poised To Pass Unprecedented Email Privacy Bill

An anonymous reader writes "A bill has reached the desk of Texas Governor Rick Perry that would give stronger privacy protections to email accounts than exist in any other state. If Perry signs it (or simply declines to veto it before June 16th), the legislation would force law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before reading somebody's email, even if the email has been sitting on the server for a long time. 'As we've noted many times before, there are no such provisions in federal law once the e-mail has been opened or if it has been sitting in an inbox, unopened, for 180 days. In March 2013, the Department of Justice acknowledged in a Congressional hearing that this distinction no longer makes sense and the DOJ would support revisions to ECPA.' This bill passed the state legislature unanimously. The article points out that the legislation won't protect from federal investigations, but it will set a precedent that the U.S. Congress will surely notice. An attorney with the EFF said, 'It's significant as proof that privacy reform is not only needed, but also politically-feasible with broad bipartisan support. And hopefully that will impact federal ECPA reform efforts by getting people on both of sides of the political aisle to work together to make meaningful electronic privacy reform a reality. The more states that pass similar legislation, the more pressure it will put on Congress to keep up with the changing legal landscape.'"

Comments

Oh God Damn It

[Greyfox]

Something Texas has done that I think is actually a pretty sensible idea? What... what have I become? YOU DID THIS TO ME!

Re:Texas leads the way, again

[stox]

        #1 in the Emission of Ozone Causing Air Pollution Chemicals
        #1 in Toxic Chemical releases into the Air
        #1 in use of Deep Well Injectors as method of Waste Disposal
        #1 in counties listed in top 20 of Emitting Cancer Causing Chemicals
        #1 in Total Number of Hazardous Waste Incinerators
        #1 in Environmental Justice Title 6 complaints
        #1 in production of Cancer causing Benzene & Vinyl Chloride
        #1 Largest Sludge Dump in Country
        #1 in mercury pollution
        #1 in executions
        #1 in murders per capita
        #1 in uninsured
        #1 in children in poverty
        #1 in illiteracy
       

Re:Texas leads the way, again

[girlintraining]

Ted Cruz is a "joke to most of the state"? Tell me, genius, how did he win his Senatorial election by such a wide margin? He may be a joke in YOUR circles, but everyone I speak to thinks the man is brilliant...

His teachers were communists plotting to overthrow the government. Well, at least that's what he says, unhindered by the facts though this and many other of his wild accusations may be. Like that secretary of defense nominee he accused of accepting bribe money from North Korea, as another example. And outside of Texas, yes, he is a joke. Even other Republicans have told him to cool his jets with the wild accusations, while democrats have accused him of trying to bring back McCarthyism. He is, to borrow a phrase, coo-coo for cocopuffs. Intelligent people do not think boogiemen lurk around every corner and think the whole of creation is one big illuminatus-styled conspiracy against them. Mentally ill people think that; It's called paranoid delusions.

with the exception of the most rabid liberals who think that it is OK for the IRS to target conservatives for no other reason than they are conservatives.

You know, until that happened, you'd just be a tin-foil hat wearer, without a shred of credibility to you. Actually, you still are. But thanks to the colossal mistake of a couple of people in the IRS and Obama's total and complete inability to deal with a scandal, that singular act has managed to make the tinfoil hat crowd look more credible than the government.

Well, you know what, okay. Out of the thousands of times Obama and the "rabid liberals" have gotten it right, after six years of constant, sustained, unending attempts by the Republicans to find something, anything, to sink Obama even if it means repeatedly punching themselves in the face (Comeon guys, with all the major issues out there, your party platform for the previous four years has been trying to ensure Obama didn't get re-elected. Petty much?)... I suppose yes, with that much scrutiny eventually something had to pan out.

So take this one, singular victory. Have it, it's yours. You can feel righteous for a bit now -- you have a right to be upset. But I'm not going to lose sight over the many thousands of pages of fuckups from the last time you assclowns were in power -- Obama and Co. still have a loooooooooooooong way to go before they'll equal the level of incepid governance that his predecessors engaged in.

And if Ted Cruz is the best the Republicans can come up with, I look forward to an easy 2016 democratic majority.

Re:Texas leads the way, again

[girlintraining]

See, this is why I don't debate with tin foil conservatives: They just keep dragging in more and more irrelevant information in the hopes of finding some "weakness" in their opponents argument. The only weakness though is usually that they simply don't have as much stamina to reply to entire essays of semi-coherent logic mixed with half-truths. Of course, not replying results in confirmation bias -- they believe their opponents lack of response, or a desire not to reply to every little nuanced statement, somehow validates their broken argument. Well, it's a slow night at work, and I guess I can summon at least the meager amount of critical thinking needed to prove this...

Fast and Furious ring a bell? How about the lying to Congress that resulted from that. Executive Privilege to protect the President from having to divulge communications, that he said never existed just a week before? [...] Oh, and say what you will about Bush, his administration never used the power of the IRS, the EPA, OSHA and the FBI to attack political opponents for no other reason than their politics. [...]You speak of credibility and then tell a lie. It has been proven that the IRS scandal goes well be...

There are WMDs in Iraq. The Geneva Convention doesn't apply to "enemy combatants". "Mission Accomplished." There is a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. A "50 to 60 billion" estimate for Iraq ahead of the invasion; Currently at 600 billion, and still rising. Tax cuts for the wealthy amid the longest-running recession in US history. Afghanistan, all of it. Alberto Gonzales' appointment (Hello, Texas!) and the subsequent mass-expansion of warrantless wiretapping, the Patriot act, and the dismissal of dozens of state attorney generals who were then replaced with 'yes' men, Halliburton. Finance industry de-regulation leading to the mortgage crisis, which resulted in dozens of banks folding. Waterboarding, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib. Transporting US citizens and foreign nationals alike to secret facilities around the world to circumvent international treaty. Enron. Valerie Plame. Walter Reed Army Hospital which became the poster-child for an underfunded VA -- and the resulting systematic neglect of our veterans. Suspending of Habeas Corpus and other basic civil rights, secret courts, secret trials or no trials at all. New Orleans/Katrina. SWIFT, which allowed the government to view anyone's financial records, as long as one party was not a US-citizen; No search warrant required. Secret terror watch lists. The Department of Homeland Security <i>in its entirety</i> as a bondongle. Dusty Foggo, (I had to look his name up) -- a veritable laundry list of criminal charges and mass acts of misconduct... plead guilty to a single count of illegal wiretapping and was let off on the remaining 28 charges. But he wasn't the only one who was corrupt; Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, Mark Foley ('only' guilty of sex with minors), Doug Feith Skyrocketing of the national debt. Medicare -- no substantive changes despite dwindling funds and a clear emerging crisis. Same with social security. Blocking of the 9/11 Commission, which most people have now forgotten about. A massive loss of international opinion and confidence in the United States. Gutting of the EPA, FDA, and other agencies -- later leading to several high-profile public health and safety crisis, recalls, etc. But topping all of those things: <i>Both of his elections were the subject of international scrutiny</i>, with evidence that the elections were "stolen" or voting data manipulated. The UN has, in every election since Bush' initial election, demanded independent observers due to substantial concerns that the voting system has been compromised.

But you go ahead and point out that whole IRS thing and then make vague handwave gestures that there could be more we don't know about (ominous look upwards)... like it somehow equals all of that.

I could go on,

Re:Texas leads the way, again

[icebike]

Mod parent +1 proper bitchslap!

Re:Texas leads the way, again

[fast turtle]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with creationism as a hypothesis - just like evolution is a hypothesis as it has not been sufficiently proven to reach Theory Status. So teaching both as part of a science class is completely valid. As someone else stated, the SCOTUS decision in regards to Louisiana was the specific creation hypothesis being taught - It was only Christian - and that violates the seperation of state/religion clause of the constitution. If they included the Buddist, Jewish, Norse (viking/celtic), Muslim and Hindu creation then they'd have been allowed to continue as they wouldn't be pushing a single religion.

I'm by no means religious but even I recognize the possibility that everything was created by God (do not ask that question of a nueral network) it's never ending and when the system finally answers, it will be "Let there be Light"