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Bipartisan Bill Would Mandate Warrant To Search Emails
jfruh writes: Bills were introduced into both the House and Senate yesterday that would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, requiring a warrant to search Americans' email messages stored on third-party servers even if they're more than 180 days old. The current version of the law was passed in 1986, and was written in an environment where most email users downloaded emails to their computer and erased them after reading them.
And what have you done with our Congress?
America calls itself the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
We need to make sure laws are in place to protect our freedom, even if it does mean reduced security. We as a culture should be brave enough to deal with the fact we may have less than perfect protection as so we can have our liberty.
We have law enforcement groups doing their job, and asking for more powers, because they want to do their job to the best of their abilities. However we as a culture will need to go. We know this could cost lives, but our freedom is more important, than the risks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What about servers in other countries, such as countries that may actually care a tiny bit about privacy?
So for 95% of the world, there is no improvement in any way and for the remaining 5%, U.S. agencies have to ask foreign agencies to snoop on their behalf, or find some way in which they can claim this law does not apply or cannot be upheld.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . "
We already have a law covering this.
Our constitution mandates a search warrant. What happened to that?
If a warrant is required, its generally granted. If its not granted, the FISA courts could be used. and if the FISA courts with their 99% rate of acceptance should fail, then most multinational corporations have no objection to forfeiting every document youve written and word you've uttered to local state and federal authorities on principal. In some cases, like telecom, theyre outright exempted from prosecution through blatant legislative mandate and their own kangaroo system of arbitration courts. in others, you'll never know they were the ones to divulge your information thanks to a rats nest of NDA agreements and lack of transparency.
Looking to congress and senate to ensure your security and freedom on the internet is as blind and misplaced as looking to the executioner to ensure your meals at the prison are healthy. https://prism-break.org/ is a collection of open source projects and applications with the altruistic, express intent to preserve your security and safety. Its not governed by politics, or election cycles, or "terror." It doesnt concede to stakeholders, doesnt serve to appease shareholders, and doesnt ask for your personal information. The internet doesnt need a bill or writ of law to protect its users, because its users have been iron clad in an armory of their own device for more than 30 years. Use crypto, study privacy, and enjoy a free internet.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You mean like it was before 9/11.
Because the bill was idiotic ... wow, it's been on a server, you must have abandoned it and therefor we don't need a warrant.
Right, because it should be totally OK for police to rifle through your stuff without legal authorization.
It's about time they started enforcing the 4th amendment ... maybe we're finally starting to see some common sense and sanity applied to this stuff.
Now if they can tackle the institutionally authorized perjury which is "parallel construction", we'll be getting somewhere.
It's time to remind law enforcement that they are not, in fact, above the law.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... except in the case of email. By passing this law, aren't they implying that email (and therefore all other electronic communications) aren't already covered by the 4th Amendment?
How about passing a bill that gives mandatory minimum sentences for violating the Constitution?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
N/T
Funny how the 4th amendment doesn't say a thing about 180 days! A search is a search is a search, you f%*&+)+ bipartisan bastards!
Let's blame the republicans for this, somehow ... It must be an attack on the President's God-given authority.
The current version of the law was passed in 1986, and was written in an environment where most email users downloaded emails to their computer and erased them after reading them.
I *still* POP my mail down to my home PC from my ISP and Gmail, though I still have to periodically log into Gmail and purge "deleted" messages (what part of Delete don't you understand Google?) And, no, I don't read personal email elsewhere. And, no, I don't have a smartphone. Not a Luddite, just don't need to be *that* connected.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's fashionable to shit on politicians no matter what they do, but I very much tire of "HarUMPH this does not go far ENOUGH!!!".
But here's my question- is this bill just like, a great thing that we should have, or is there some hidden aspect to it (ex: if it had language that allowed for warrants to be issued automatically)?
Because if it doesn't, super party and yay. If it does, presumably we'll hear about it soon enough.
Far better, for privacy, if technological solutions (email encryption) protected the privacy of email.
If it's just protected with bills like this, it does nothing to stop programs like the DoD/NSA's "collect everything" projects; and from there it's only a small step for one agency to assist parallel reconstruction to get around the warrant.
Better for everyone's privacy if the bill stated "You have no expectation of privacy for unencrypted email. Any unencrypted email is free for anyone - law enforcements, ad-agencies, spammers - to read. If you want it private, encrypt it.".
The tools exist (GPG, S/MIME). It's just that no-one uses them because they trust policies to protect them instead. If the policies would change, every corporation would insist on encrypted emails by default -- and the email tool vendors would quickly make that the easy/default option.
Better would be one that required the same for searching headers and other meta-data for all live and store-and-forward communication, including snail-mail, and one which would ban retention of this information by carriers after it is no longer needed for delivery- or billing-, or legitimate tracking purposes.
In other words, stop the US Post Office from keeping the to/from information from mailed items for more than a few weeks after the item was delivered (you need to keep it a few weeks in case a customer claims it was never delivered). Similar, force phone companies to delete calling data after the bill has been paid and any bill-dispute time-period has elapsed UNLESS the customer has signed up to have the carrier keep such records.
Is this gonna happen soon? Of course not - it may never happen as long as our country exists in its current form (i.e. all bets are off if there is ever a revolution - which I am *NOT* advocating) - but I still want it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Consider Obamacare: The policy behind it was originally proposed by Republicans
I'm grateful that Obama and Congress got together and passed RomneyCare.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ironically, no provision of the constitution give the congress the authority to enact such a statute.
No one in Washington gives a damn about the US Constitution anymore. It won't pass.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
A secret warrant.
From a secret court.
Under authority of secret laws.
Or alternately secret interpretations of secret laws.
The secret warrant has a secrecy requirement to gag anyone from telling of the warrant's existence.
Breaching the secrecy can result in secret arrests in the middle of the night by secret agents of agencies that must remain secret.
Any secret trials may use secret evidence and secret testimony that the defense is not allowed to see or refute.
But at least a warrant will be required. Whew! I feel safer already.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Might be worth listening to what TLAs have to say about their "authority".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
After a secret conviction you may end up in a secret prison.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"The ECPA was written in 1986 and its provisions have been used by law enforcement to claim the right to access emails older than 180 days without a probable cause warrant." With that kind of logic, wouldn't they have the right to search, without a warrant, anything that you've owned for more than 180 days? Since when has there been an expiration date on the expectation of privacy?
I'm curious why Senator Wyden, a huge proponent of requirements like this, isn't a cosponsor. I'll wait to hear his opinion on it.
An attempt by law makers to skirt the letter or spirit of law is nothing short of an act of insurrection and rebellion against the United States of America.
In addition, the separation of powers indicates that the court decides if a warrant is authorized or not, not the investigative authority.
Virtually ALL electronic signals traffic is intercepted and collected. If you use
encryption your communications WILL be read in plaintext form after having been
sorted into the "deserves special attention" pile.
If the gummint wants to fuck you they just concoct a "parallel construction"
story and that's the end of it.
The notion that a warrant provides email users with ANY protection is a fairy tale
meant to placate idiots.
This is needed because, despite the massive surveillance, they're only storing meta-data.
But really, what is the point of looking at what you did 6 months ago? Why not get a warrant and look at what you're doing today? Especially when they can get a warrant because your "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" is named on a no-fly list. (NB: "father's brother's nephew" means oneself, for a male person.)
This is more about unlimited surveillance. Which may be difficult to do remotely because most people I know download their e-mails although that behaviour may be limited by an age demographic. So it may be about unlimited secret surveillance.
Another point is, how long do third parties keep other people's emails? The Australian government is demanding that all ISPs keep 2 years of meta-data and supply it to the government at any time; essentially making every ISP into a miniature US NSA. Which is the law that USA-friendly Sweden passed then ignored. I doubt the conservative government will be so friendly to Australian businesses. Which is demonstrated as Australia just passed a law allowing police warrants to act on an unlimited number of computers. 'Act' in this case isn't limited to spying or downloading, it also allows Australian police to plant files. These laws bring Orwell's mini-Truth much closer to reality.
Let's hope things work out better than they did in a couple of years ago.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Democrats shifted corporate.
To your points:
o Who benefits when unions are taken down? Corporations.
o NAFTA -- free trade -- brings access to tons of cheap foreign labor. Who benefits? Corporations.
And so on. At this point in time, if it is anything but a relatively pure social issue, you can almost always look into it, follow the money, and end up with a "this benefits the corporations" understanding of the outcome or the push for almost anything you look at within the boundaries of Washington or any state capital. You can do this with both houses of congress, with SCOTUS, with a good bit of the entrenched bureaucracy, and of course the entire lobbyist / party structure exists for no other purpose at all.
Corporations are people. Specifically, psychopaths.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Expectation of privacy has nothing to do with encryption. Encryption is simply hardening a boundary.
If I put a letter in an envelope, you getting to it is utterly trivial -- the use of one fingernail. But that doesn't in any way erode my expectation of privacy. If, on the other hand, I encrypt the letter, all I've done is harden the boundary -- my expectation is still the same: I don't think you have a right to access that letter.
If I close the front door to my house, but I don't lock it, I'm NOT inviting you in. I expect you to knock, and to wait. If I lock the door, I have hardened the boundary, but I have not in any way changed the why of my expectations. If I then add a bar and hooks, I have further hardened the boundary, but the basic point remains exactly the same: My expectation is that you will knock and wait. As long as you meet my expectation, none of that hardening would have any effect upon you. The only ones who are affected by hardened boundaries are those who sunder our expectations.
If a woman wears a dress, is she giving us permission to look up it? Obviously not.
Clearly, "because you can", is insufficient justification to "just do it."
It's not about the envelope. It's not about the lock. It's not about encryption. It's not about the dress.
It's about mutually understood social boundaries. The scam the government is constantly trying to pull is pretending that hardening is the issue, rather than social boundaries. They are doing what governments do, which is constantly strain to accrue more power. If they are not restrained in this process, they will do so -- regardless of the expense to our rights, liberties, and social expectations.
I cordially invite everyone to read this. Carefully.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You know what follows this line of reasoning?
a) "He looked into my home with FLIR!"
b) Well, you should have insulated your walls with IR-opaque materials. No expectation of privacy, brah.
a) He charged stuff to my credit card!
b) Well, he read the numbers they require right off the card. No expectation of privacy, brah.
a) He looked up my dress!
b) Well, you should have worn pants. No expectation of privacy, babe.
a) They stole my identity!
b) Was right there in your wallet and online. No expectation of privacy, brah.
See, what the problem is, is that you are confusing hardening a behavioral boundary that expresses a social expectation of privacy, with the boundary itself.
The flaw is twofold: First, it is essentially an expression of anarchy, of the form "if you can do it, go ahead and do it", or conversely, "if they can't stop you from doing it, go ahead and do it."
Secondly, as the ability to sunder a hardened boundary arises, the privacy evaporates as if it never was. For instance, putting a letter in an envelope has the most minimal hardened boundary one could imagine short of none at all. Sundering it requires the lifting of a finger, quite literally. It's nothing. This is extremely similar to email. I send it out along the network as packets, but people (not the recipient) have to make a specific effort -- more than lifting a fingernail -- to access and open and reassemble those packets. I expect them not to, just as I expect them not to open that physical envelope. It's a behavioral boundary. Not a technical one. And that's what it should be.
Privacy is a set of behavioral boundaries that we agree to expect not just as individuals, but also as a society, and we expect that agreement to extend all the way through the government (the 4th amendment is a classic expression of such an expectation being codified into a restriction on legitimate government action, as is the 3rd amendment.) In other words, it's our expectations made concrete in the very document that authorizes our form of government.
It's not about the hardness, or lack thereof, of the boundaries. It is about our behavior: What is ok, and what isn't. And we know damned well that it's not ok for the government to be reading our emails, our texts, our papers, our bank accounts, our browser histories, and so on. How difficult the task is should be completely irrelevant. The fact that it isn't only points out gross failure in understanding WTF is going on.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Nope. email is not similar to a postcard. email is considerably more similar to mail in an envelope. You have to take some very specific, targeted actions to read my email. In transit, you have to access, copy or intercept, and reassemble the packets. Once on the server, you need to look in an area reserved for my effects for information that was not directed to you, you must open the file, and then read it. It's definitely in an envelope. Just as your banking information is in an envelope, a ladies panties (or lack thereof) remain hidden under her skirt, and so on. It's not about how difficult it is to get at our private information. It's about the boundaries on behavior that we expect as part of the social compact. In the case of government action, the 3rd and 4th amendments both express our expectations of privacy and create concrete limits on legitimate government action. The intent is 100% clear: Stay the fuck out of our shit.
The only reason we currently need "clarification" is because the government is running a scam on us of the form "it's not about what you expect, it's about what we can do." But that's not right, and it has never been right.
It's about the behaviors we expect -- and that's all it's about. The very last thing we should ever wish for is a society where it's ok to do something simply because you can. That way lies anarchy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Anybody here happen to know "Bipartisan Bill"s last name?
I'd vote for him, especially if he is mandating a warrant! (for ANY-damn-thing these days!)