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Ask TechFreedom's Berin Szoka About Govt. Policy and Privacy Online

Posted by samzenpus on from the ask-me-anything dept.

Berin Szoka is president and founder of the tech policy think tank TechFreedom. The group promotes a wide variety of digital rights and privacy issues. Most recently, they have started a petition demanding reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) so that law enforcement will have to get a warrant before accessing emails stored in the cloud. With so much attention paid to the NSA snooping, Berin believes that the over 25-year-old ECPA has been overshadowed and is in dire need of changes. Mr. Szoka has agreed to answer your questions about privacy and government policy online. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

7 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Help promote our WhiteHouse.Gov petition today! by bszoka6940 · · Score: 5

    TechFreedom is part of a broad coalition of dozens of groups across the political spectrum are joining in a Day of Action TODAY to drive up the signature count on our WhiteHouse.gov petition: http://wh.gov/lBibY We've got nearly 45k signatures but need to hit 100k by December 12. That's the threshold the WhiteHouse requires for getting a response to a petition. (Remember, they raised it from 50k after that "Please build a Deathstar" petition got 50k.) So please take a moment to sign the petition and share it with your friends! Just use the #ECPA hashtag or reshare or retweet our posts: https://twitter.com/TechFreedom/status/408644380946599937 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=701905029820560&set=a.621919951152402.1073741825.180669971944071&type=1&theater This infographic explains ECPA in more detail: http://tch.fm/IHzTtE

    1. Re:Help promote our WhiteHouse.Gov petition today! by bszoka6940 · · Score: 4

      I hear you, but ECPA reform needs all the help it can get. Even if the White House blows us off, crossing the 100,000 signature threshold will send a strong message to members of Congress to get behind ECPA reform. Until the leadership in both chambers is willing to schedule a vote, we're stuck.

    2. Re:Help promote our WhiteHouse.Gov petition today! by bszoka6940 · · Score: 4
      Wow, and I thought I was jaded!

      Seriously, though, the problem isn't getting one Congresscritter to work this issue: we already have several very dedicated champions in Congress carrying the banner of email privacy on principle.

      The problem is that it takes a LOT of Members to get anything done. In particular, we need the leadership in both chambers -- which means Democrats AND Republicans -- to make it a priority. If we can't get 100,000 signatures, why should they?

  2. Re:Fixing ECPA is not enough.. by bszoka6940 · · Score: 5
    No, fixing ECPA isn't enough, but it's a start. It's something Congress can do right now. In fact, they've been dawdling about it for over a year, even after the Supreme Court said, in U.S. v Jones, that Congress needed to overhaul ECPA. (That case focused on access to location data but at least one Justice made clear that the framework of accessing all content stored by third parties, like email, needed reform.)

    The good news is that the bipartisan Yoder-Graves-Polis bill now has 157 House sponsors and is gaining steam steadily.

    The bad news is that it's going to take a strong external show of support for ECPA reform to really move, largely because the Securities and Exchange Commission has been fighting to preserve their ability to get emails without a warrant. It's an arcane issue but one with broad implications for privacy, since other agencies, from the IRS to the ATF, could use the same loophole.

    Now, if you're really worried about the NSA, the risk here is that, if ECPA reform stalls, it will signal to the NSA's defenders on the Hill that the privacy movement is weak, and if they wait long enough, the whole "Snowden thing" will blow over. At most, we might get a few measly reforms around NSA transparency.

    Point being: getting ECPA reform moving is in no way a substitute for fixing the NSA. If anything, it's a prerequisite.

  3. Check out our lawsuit against the NSA, led by EFF! by bszoka6940 · · Score: 4
    While we're focused on ECPA reform today, we're also working hard to rein in the NSA, both in Congress and in the courts. Check out the lawsuit led by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the NSA's collection of call records: First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA. TechFreedom and the ACLU are among twenty-two plaintiffs in this landmark lawsuit:

    At the heart of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA is the bulk telephone records collection program that was confirmed by the publication of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in June of 2013. The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) further confirmed that this formerly secret document was authentic, and part of a broader program to collect all major telecommunications customers’ call history. The order demands wholesale collection of every call made, the location of the phone, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for every phone and call for all customers of Verizon for a period of three months. Government officials further confirmed that this was just one of series of orders issued on a rolling basis since at least 2006. First Unitarian v. NSA argues that this spying violates the First Amendment, which protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group.

  4. Re:You ever get the feeling... by bszoka6940 · · Score: 4

    For real! We're big believers in technological self-help, but even running your own email cloud won't protect you from warrantless collection of your emails: without ECPA reform, government could simply demand emails to and from you held by the cloud providers of those you correspond with.

  5. Re:Fixing ECPA is not enough.. by bszoka6940 · · Score: 4

    Thanks! Yes, the most constructive thing you all can do now is help us get as many signatures as possible on the petition. That means (a) signing and (b) asking your friends to do so, too.