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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.
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.
Nah it is general politics.
The general population is getting weary of government surveillance.
The President got on record defending such actions.
So the republicans will side with this just to go against the President.
The Democrats need to distant themselves from the incumbent president so the party will have new talking points during the next election, as position themselves as more moderate than their GOP counterparts.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"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.
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.
Why would then need to distance themselves from the president to be seen as more moderate than the insane far-right-wing Republicans?
The Oberton Window has shifted to the right in America. What used to be "insane far-right-wing" is now considered normal, and what used to be centrist is now considered communist. Consider Obamacare: The policy behind it was originally proposed by Republicans, and it is to the right of the health care proposal put forward a generation ago by that pinko Richard Nixon.
... 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
The wingnuts will not be acting like the wingnuts they are until after the election.
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.
no. I expect that right before the bill is voted on, 'not' will be inserted at a few strategic spots in the bill, completely reversing the sense of the bill, so that even janitors working at the local mayor's office will get unfettered access to your email.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
How do you figure? That's a crock. Overall, the country has shifted more left, not right, over the last many decades, which has simply brought more people out from the Right to complain; so the right feels more extreme. If you're too young to remember what it was like in the '70s or '80s, you might have that mistaken impression that this is a more conservative country than it was before. It's not. And insane far left wingers match insane far right wingers. There are too many far wingers, period.
1) Government is larger than ever before. There are more social programs than ever before.
2) Politicians discuss/argue and vote over gay marriage, something even Democrats would not have touched with a 20 ft pole 20+ years ago. The fact that right wingers cite religious objections isn't anything new, and both parties would've balked at the notion.
3) Media: A really good way to get the pulse of the times. Have you even watched television, or listened to radio? What would've have been vehemently censored before is now commonplace, and no topic is off limits. There are dedicated channels for minorities and alternate lifestyles. Media is much more liberal than ever. (despite protestations from the likes of Dan Quayle)
Obamacare was rejected by the right because they were shut out of much of the process by a majority D 111th congress, the public option was dropped, and because it was rushed through; no one knew exactly what was in it's 10,000+ pages.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
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.
Oh, people propose reasonable bills all the time. It is what is done to them next that one will recognize as our congress...
No one in Washington gives a damn about the US Constitution anymore. It won't pass.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Claiming that politics have gone in ANY direction is a facetious statement at best and misinformed, to say the least.
This country is not any more leftist than it is any more rightist which it isn't. This country is corporatist, which means that whether anyone anywhere politically is in power the vested interests are going to support corporations which benefit either way.
So whether you have democrat a, republican b, it doesn't really matter unless you fail to understand where the real politics is.
If you're too young to remember what it was like in the '70s or '80s ...
In the 1970s the government controlled the airlines, the trucking industry, etc., and many people thought that was a good idea that should be expanded to other parts of the economy. Today, nobody seriously believes that.
The fact that right wingers cite religious objections isn't anything new
Actually, it is. What is today called the "religious right" was through most of our history the "religious left". Religious fervor was long associated with progressive politics. The Scopes Monkey trial was prosecuted by none other than William Jennings Bryan, the original SJW.
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.
First of all, their are two major difference between the parties, that are affecting your thoughts:
1) Liberals call out and vilify their extremists. The Conservatives ELECT them. This is a major difference. There is no liberal equivalent in national politics of Palin, Cruz, Bachmann, or Christine O'donnell.
2) The Democrat party accepts moderates and centrists, while the Republicans kick them out.
This gives the false impression that the country has shifted left. No. The country has stayed the same, the GOP has become extremists.
The government is NOT larger than ever before - when you adjust for GDP. Inflation is the wrong measure. GDP is the right one. The bigger the economy, the more we need to spend.
You mistook prejudice and discrimination for conservative. The fact that the fight over such things has moved from race to sex is not a move from conservative to liberal or vice versa. Or are you seriously going to argue that being racist is a real, current conservative idea?
Finally, the far right has consistently and falsely argued that the media is against them. That is bull and always has been. The honest truth is the media is no different today than it has ever been - it tries to be impartial but fails .
I love your silly argument about Obamacare. There is no such thing. There is ROMNEYCARE, that Obama was forced to accept instead of what he really wanted.
It was rejected by the right because it was proposed by OBAMA, not by a GOP. It was an entirely partisan rejection. Lots of people knew exactly what was in it's pages. Merely passing a big law is not a problem - not when it was based on an existing law that was proven.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Sadly, I suspect you're right. Just like how when Obama said he was pro-vaccines you suddenly have all these Republicans sounding off about how they don't need the federal government sticking needles in our babies. I imagine if Obama said he thought it was wrong to rape puppies, you'd get Ron Paul ranting about how what a man does to his property is none of the federal government's business.
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?
We've secretly replaced you regular Democratic congress with a Republican one. Lets see what happens...
My problem with the Oberton Window, and indeed with the right/left dichotomy, is that not everybody agrees on what is more or less freedom. Take the California measles outbreak. Let's say you have a kid with cancer, so they can't take the vaccine. Well, as long as everybody else in your school has it, you have the freedom to send your kid to school. What about EEOC? Some people think companies should have the freedom not to hire people of certain religions or ethnic groups. Others think you should have the freedom to work wherever you are qualified, regardless of race or creed. How about the right to privacy? Should you have the freedom to set up a camera constantly trained at your neighbor's bedroom window? What if I think I should have the freedom to walk around my house naked without worrying about pervy neighbors posting pics to the net. What about sound ordinances? Truth in advertising? Or getting back to the email topic, what about the freedom to search your gmail so that you can be advertised to? Should ISPs have the right to give information to the government without a warrant? In many of these cases, there is no more/less freedom. Only differences in whose freedom gets priority.
Finally, the far right has consistently and falsely argued that the media is against them. That is bull and always has been. The honest truth is the media is no different today than it has ever been - it tries to be impartial but fails .
Reading about the press's role in the rise of fascism in 1930's Europe is truly frightening. Looking at American newspapers from that era is equally jarring. Some editors were obviously so afraid of Communism (which they conflated with the labor movement) that they were willing to openly support Mussolini and Franco. Anybody who knows anything about the history of the press should scoff (or be worried) anytime Republicans and Fox News talks about the Liberal Media.
You are incorrect and missing sever facts. ...
The government is NOT larger than ever before - when you adjust for GDP. Inflation is the wrong measure. GDP is the right one. The bigger the economy, the more we need to spend. ...
You are wrong on several points, the easiest one to point out is spending as a percentage of GDP. We are above WWI, close to the peak of WWII. It does go back down for brief periods, but the trend is clearly.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_20th_century_chart.html
It shows government spending almost 40% of GDP. What percentage would you like? 60% 80%?? Somehow we grew from nothing to a world power on 20%.
Also, extreme or not depends on your point of view. Some might say electing KKK members to the senate would be extremist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd
amendment 1: Evolution is real
amendment 2: Creationism is a hoax
bill fails
Are you kidding? In the '70s we still had unions. Both the Republicans and Democrats moved to outsource labor which has now mostly neutered the unions. The "giant sucking sound" Ross Perot talked about came to pass. And since then wages have stagnated except for those at the top.
Except the Democrats shifted RIGHT. Remember when unions actually made some difference? I do. Did the Democrats do anything to fight the "giant sucking sound" of jobs being outsourced? Remember who signed NAFTA?
Pretty much yeah. Obvious bills with wide support are easy targets for getting increasingly unrelated and extreme amendments in.
1) Liberals call out and vilify their extremists. The Conservatives ELECT them. This is a major difference. There is no liberal equivalent in national politics of Palin, Cruz, Bachmann, or Christine O'donnell.
So first off you saying Ted Cruz is more extreme then Liz Warren? Why is Ted Cruz extreme? Because he want's to control the size of the federal government using the tools made available by the constitution (congress is not intended to rubber stamp the presidents spending wishes). And comparing Cruz to a Senator who says that a business owner did not build their business, it was government that did it.
Michelle Bachmann - no longer in congress. Why? Because she would have been primaried due to being wacko.
Sarah Palin - Hasn't won an election since 2006; hasn't run for office since 2008.
Christine O'Donnell - (you're stretching by using her). Hasn't been on a ballot since 2010; and the main reason why she won the primary is because Mike Castle was a Liberal Republican.
The thing is, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House is more extreme then any of the Republicans you mentioned.
It's just only conservatives can be extreme, not liberals. Proof: The Tea Partiers vs the Occupiers. The Occupy movement is a lot more extreme then the Tea Party movement, yet is not called out as such.
2) The Democrat party accepts moderates and centrists, while the Republicans kick them out.
Who are these moderates and centrists you speak about and where are they? They are no longer in the House as they were wiped out by the Republicans in 2010 and 2014. Why? Because the party has tilted so far to the left that the populance elected more moderate republicans instead. Also, if you don't accept the Dem party line on abortion and gay marriage, then you are no longer accepted in the party.
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.
But really, what is the point of looking at what you did 6 months ago?
Good question. Let's say that they suspect you of money laundering, but have no admissible proof. If they can examine your old emails, they may find evidence that you were laundering money back then and use that to get a warrant to read your current emails. In effect, this is pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and making an end-run around the intent of the requirement for a warrant. This law would block that loophole and make the law work the way it was always intended to work.
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Underrated. The word is "Oligarchy."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
Old guy thinks kids are more liberal then ever and condemns them (mostly due to jealosy)
More news at 11.
Cheap storage VM.
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!)
Yeah, I know his arguments just fine. The difference the good doctor seems to willfully ignore is that while both are "public health issues," they are completely different. With one, you are asking people not to put something into their body because it might harm them. With the other, you are asking people to put something into their body because if they don't, other people will be harmed. As for whether he has any influence, I was just picking a well-known anti-federal-anything politician. I wasn't implying he's the standard bearer or anything, any more than I was implying that he likes to rape puppies. Which he doesn't. Or at least I assume he doesn't. =P
Who said anything about condemning them? And I enjoy a lot of the raunchy stuff on TV, Family Guy would not have been possible in the '70s or even '80s. '70s television sucked big time.
I merely made the observation that things are not as conservative as they once were. It's not the '50s anymore.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.