Senate Advances Plan To Make Email and Social Sites Report Terror Activity

Advocatus Diaboli sends news that the Senate Intelligence Committee has unanimously approved draft legislation that would requires email providers and social media sites to report any suspected terrorist activities to the government. While the legislation itself is classified until it reaches the Senate floor, Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) said, "America’s security depends on our intelligence community’s ability to detect and thwart attacks on the homeland, our personnel and interests overseas, and our allies. This year’s legislation arms the intelligence community with the resources they need, and reinforces congressional oversight of intelligence activities." The legislation is based on 2008's Protect Our Children Act, which required companies to report information about child porn to an agency that would act on it. One industry official told the Washington Post, "Considering the vast majority of people on these sites are not doing anything wrong, this type of monitoring would be considered by many to be an invasion of privacy. It would also be technically difficult."

Comments

I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

I will dump tea in Boston Harbor, while dressed as an Indian, feather, not dot, and I will then follow it up by riding a horse to Lexington and Concord.

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[bobbied]

Well, that's find, just be sure to sign this document first.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.....

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[LifesABeach]

It sorrows me to inform the DOJ, but the Senate Intelligence Committee are a terrorists organization. Their anti american activities to abolish the 1st Amendment is throughly unignoreable.

And what if those rag headed cock suckers have a valid point? What then?

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[dbIII]

Considering Senator Peter T. King (New York) proudly supported the IRA (including financially) when it was blowing up people in England and he's a prominent member of that committee things are ridiculous.

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to include the terms jihad, Allah, bomb, IED, explosive, hijacking, suicide bombing, etc. in every message you send or post. The best way to fight this kind of illegal spying bullshit is to dilute the information that the government gets so badly as to render it worthless. Also make sure the body of your emails are encrypted, but not those "keywords".

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[johanw]

There is power in repetition... Ceterum autem censeo American imperium esse delendam

Hey, Cato the Elder made it work for the Romans too!

Re:I hereby announce my plans for terrorism

[LessThanObvious]

I certainly regard the bills sponsor Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) as traitor to our nation, which isn't any better than a terrorist. When you take an oath of office that involves supporting and defending the Constitution and then dedicate half your life to undermining the 2nd Amendment, that marks you a traitor in my book. She also has supported the intelligence driven abuses of our civil liberties for many years now as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I define terror ...

[PPH]

... as someone operating outside the purview of our court system running around threatening me with prison time should I fail to hand over my data.

Re:I define terror ...

[fustakrakich]

Great! Let's see you enforce it :-)

Re:I define terror ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed - the biggest threats to our liberty in the US are the very same government agencies charged with protecting us and the legislators who pass laws like this.

Re:I define terror ...

[phantomfive]

The senate intelligence committee has access to all the classified information, and feel they provide oversight on the program. That is why they feel confident introducing bills like this one. They say, "We will watch and make sure nothing goes wrong." Congressional oversight, all that.

If you trust these people you might be crazy.

Re:I define terror ...

[ancientt]

You and what army? Why, this army ... er, where do I get an army exactly? Maybe I just need to get a bunch of smaller government types to go along with me, maybe get a bunch of states together and make our own country? Has anybody tried that? Oh. How'd that work out? Oh.

So, yay America I guess?

So... hypothetical question, exactly what do you have to post in an internet forum to get put on watch lists and no-fly etc?

Re:I define terror ...

[Anonymous Coward]

All he needs to do is refuse. They can jail him but as long as he doesn't hand over what they want, he's still won. You can't imprison a person's mind.

Re:I define terror ...

[Anonymous Coward]

All he needs to do is refuse. They can jail him but as long as he doesn't hand over what they want, he's still won. You can't imprison a person's mind.

No, but you can submerge it at frequent intervals.

Re:I define terror ...

[suutar]

They think they have access to it all, anyway. If so, they're dealing with the first bureaucracy in history that doesn't hide stuff from the boss when it looks bad.

And how are they going to do this?

[GrandCow]

Do they expect email providers to flag every email with keywords in it? Because I'm sure they'll love hearing about all the bath bombs people order. Or the new version of death and decay from warcraft patch notes.

You'd think any kind of organized terrorist would use codewords and not actually write an email saying "the bomb will be placed at and it's set to blow up at 3:00pm, We expect 100+ deaths"

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, people who encrypt their emails will be reported instantly.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed they already capture all our email. WTF, are they now to fucking lazy to read it themselves?

If something semi-legit shows up somewhere someone will probably report it anyway. I can't see how you would find anything thru all the noise.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[amiga3D]

Imagine how "Little Bobby bombed a test at school yesterday" will go over.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, people who encrypt their emails will be reported instantly.

Duh. The terrorists won't operate by encryption but by codewords; different ballgame entirely. The birthday cake is ready to be delivered to grandma's house; birthday cake is bomb and grandma is shopping complex.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends, they'll be given a black box to install or told to send anything to them that matches a set of rules (like keywords). That's how the CP filters work now. The gov says gives me all data whenever you see this hash and they do so with no way to tell what that hash actually is (well, they could look at the content, but these are automated systems so that never happens).

This is the slobbery slope people kept trying to warn others about. It's not slippery all the way down, there's dry spots along the way, but you end up in the same situation. Once the infrastructure is in place, it's trivial to expand these sorts of programs.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[gstoddart]

Yes, essentially they want ISPs to be responsible for policing what we do, and handing it over -- for now if it's terrorism, eventually for anything else they can think of.

What they're saying is sites should be monitoring our activities to report us to the authorities.

They have coopted the internet, and essentially turned it into the thought police. They've basically privatized the surveillance state.

America has finally reached the point of turning into bad cyberpunk, and people are saying yes.

Papers, please, comrade. Anything you say will be used against you.

The scope creep of pretty much everything draconian and fascist will pretty much start coming true if they can get enough popular support.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No you're missing the point. This is GROUNDWORK legislation.

The next time a terrorist attack occurs, they'll be able to go "See? They had a Gmail account and Google failed to flag them to us as terrorists. Clearly, they aren't up to the task to do this vital work" and then they have all the excuse they need to pass more legislation to collect and store everyone's private communications again.

Fuckers.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[I'm New Around Here]

Achmed, stop giving away our secret code.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god president Obama is there to stop them.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[ancientt]

So you're the reason grandma's birthday was so exciting!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Mashiki]

Obviously, people who encrypt their emails will be reported instantly.

Lbh'yy arire pngpu zr naq zl ohqqvrf! Jr'er ng gur 7-11 beqrevat fyhecvrf!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[ATMAvatar]

Why flag emails when you can already designate evil intent at the packet level?

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[St.Creed]

Reported!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[IamTheRealMike]

Same way it works for banks. In other words, it doesn't, but it makes them into awfully convenient scapegoats who can be blamed for any social ill on the grounds that "they could have stopped it but didn't because they're all greedy capitalists".

It was inevitable that things would go this way the moment encryption started getting good. As NSA/GCHQ are now much more limited in what they can see, and privacy advocates are trying to stop them getting more power, the obvious 'solution' is to outsource the costs to the private sector. The advantage is the government can then never screw up, except by being insufficiently aggressive with them. It's a lose/lose situation for anyone who runs a communications system.

And the only solution to THAT is end to end crypto so not even the provider can read the messages. Hence the UK's sudden interest in banning such systems entirely.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[AmiMoJo]

They are trying to get the social networks to do what the NSA was doing before they all found out and closed off their systems. They want units within these companies set up to snoop through private Facebook groups and Twitter feeds, checking for suspicious activity. If anything remotely interesting is found, dossiers are created for all associated users containing their full email, message and browsing histories and handed over to the FBI.

Basically outsourcing illegal mass surveillance work to save money and make it less illegal.

Don't underestimate these guys. The politicians may be idiots without a single clue between them but they are getting their orders from people at the FBI and NSA who do know what they are talking about. They wanted to grab this information quietly, but now they have been exposed there is no reason not to simply force companies to hand it over to them.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Sloppy]

grep "terror" /var/log/mail.log

The article left out that terrorists will be required to send from a hostname that has the word "terror" in it. Failure to do so, is a violation and will be punished!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[RabidReindeer]

I've got an idea. Let's enlist the children to report suspicious activities!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop reporting Robert'); DROP TABLE Terrorists;-- you insensitive clod!!

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're the reason grandma's birthday was so exciting!

Grandma was enjoying herself until SWAT arrived and ordered everyone to lay face-down on the ground. She had a heart attack and was shot 125 times as her speech was slurred and the SWAT officer interpreted her words as a terrorist proclamation.

Re:And how are they going to do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, people who encrypt their emails will be reported instantly.

Lbh'yy arire pngpu zr naq zl ohqqvrf! Jr'er ng gur 7-11 beqrevat fyhecvrf!

Nice. I want a Slurpee. That sounds so delicious!

Good thing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... my email provider is based in Sweden. The ultimate result of foolishness like this on the part of the US government is that eventually there will be no tech companies remaining here. Honestly that's probably the plan: the government has been doing everything in their power to kill US businesses for decades.

Re:Good thing ...

[Trachman]

You are ultimate fool thinking that the appetite of data gathering (spying) organizations is somehow limited to the servers that are stationed in US.

You are double the fool thinking that the government was doing kill US tech business: the truth is these two were adulterers all the times while on surface pretending to be independent. Some Companies even had the guts to state that they are "committed to the privacy" and "fighting the government" ("google and yahoo). The truth is that not only they were adulterers, but more like fused cojoined twins where government and corporations. There is another term that, look it up.

Re:Good thing ...

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

... my email provider is based in Sweden

Great, so not only can the US government easily spy on it, so can the Swedish government.

Sorry, but running away isn't going to solve this problem.

Re:Good thing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod the parent up. The whole purpose of these new legislations is to be able to gather domestic evidence without the need for too much and mostly unconstitutional domestic spying. Instead, people and companies are supposed to provide the information voluntarily or regulated officially by new laws like this one.

Intelligence agencies tend to have a carte blanche for spying in other nations, and this will not change any time soon no matter how much these nations protest. So they will grab the data from Swedish email servers by surveillance tools that are illegal in Sweden, and grab domestic data via the new official interfaces.

Monitoring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Requirement to report != monitoring

I find it highly unlikely that a Republican senate is creating an obligation that will burden their business masters with whatever costs are involved in monitoring. If that actually happened this would be even more controversial because they'd doubtless insist that the government allow them to outsource it.

Re:Monitoring?

[davester666]

No, they expect the email provider to charge their customers more.

But this is just the first step.

Next will be "you have to periodically do a global search with these keywords that we provide, and report to us all emails that match, along with related connection logs, etc.."

Then it will be "the keywords must be kept secret, you must permit us to search through all your email periodically, and also have access to the rest of your systems to look for terrorists. and child molesters."

I found a suspected terrorist

[Anonymous Coward]

His name is Richard Burr and he appears to be trying to subvert the Constitution of the United States. Where do I turn him in?

Pull a hildabeast

[Anonymous Coward]

well, time to run my own email server from home and pull a Clinton when they ask for data...

worse than ISIS, KKK, Nazis, and the Kwianis Club?

[Anonymous Coward]

#gamergate!!! Can't wait until the FBI get deluged with reports of terroristic tweets from misogynistic, problematic, toxic, cisheteropatriarchial neckbearded pissbabies!

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most incredible thing is there's a piece of legislation titled the "Protect Our Children Act". Unsurprisingly it's being used to "track" "terrorists"

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're even remotely surprised you've been living under a rock this last 15 years. The US is going full fascist.

Re:Seriously?

[RabidReindeer]

The most incredible thing is there's a piece of legislation titled the "Protect Our Children Act". Unsurprisingly it's being used to "track" "terrorists"

You should IMMEDIATELY be suspicious of any legislation whose title includes "Children", "Homeland", "Security", "Safety", "Protect", "Patriot", "Freedom", "Motherhood" or "Kittens".

Re:Seriously?

[Speck'sBacon]

The most incredible thing is there's a piece of legislation titled the "Protect Our Children Act". Unsurprisingly it's being used to "track" "terrorists"

You should IMMEDIATELY be suspicious of any legislation whose title includes "Children", "Homeland", "Security", "Safety", "Protect", "Patriot", "Freedom", "Motherhood" or "Kittens".

You should IMMEDIATELY be suspicious of any legislation... FULL STOP. There. It's fixed.

Re:Pull a what?

[ewhac]

...and pull a Clinton when they ask for data...

You misspelled Romney . HTH. HAND.

This will never work...

[bobbied]

But the politicians won't care, they will all be seen as "doing something" by passing another law that purports to fix something. All they will really accomplish is leveling undue hardship on E-mail and social sites and get a flood of useless information nobody at the NSA is prepared to deal with. Well, that and driving business off shore where they have no rights to force the collection of any data.

Hey, bone heads, stop messing with stuff you don't understand... Didn't the ACA teach you anything? Besides, if you wanted to do something like this, why in the blazes did we give up control of the top level domain servers?

Re:This will never work...

[Anonymous Coward]

This right here is why things like the Orwellian-named Protect Our Children Act should never be allowed to pass. Because nobody seriously challenged it on account of it being "for the children" and all. So now we get this business, and a choice. We can stop this in its tracks now, we can let it pass, or we can try to overturn it later. It's going to be damned hard to overturn without also overturning the "for the children" legislation that preceded it since they're the same legal theory. Interesting choices, huh?

Re:This will never work...

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of the law is not to "work" or at least not in the sense that you might think. The law "works" to the extent that it provides convenient leverage for when the government doesn't like something or someone and wishes to be rid of them in the most expedient way possible in each circumstance. Sometimes that means blowing them up with a drone, but other times it means sending them to the supermax for five or six lifetimes. The right tool for the right job and all that.

terrorism, bomb, nuclear, child porn

[turkeydance]

i ran out of ideas.

Re:terrorism, bomb, nuclear, child porn

[SeaFox]

You forgot the magic words --- copyright infringement!

Re:terrorism, bomb, nuclear, child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Jihad, Fatwah, Democrat, Liberal, Progressive, Socialist, IRS, NSA, FBI, TSA, DHS, Republican, Senator, Congressman...

Re:terrorism, bomb, nuclear, child porn

[St.Creed]

That will be in the legislation planned for 2016. You're just a tad early.

Re:Pull a what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, didn't misspell. Clinton is the one who ran her own server from home and trashed the data AND server when asked for it..knowingly. Even if other POS elected representatives wiped data from state servers it doesn't diminish the fact that Hillary did it AFTER she was told to give up the goods, hence my original comment and your moronic response that had nothing to do with it, but I shouldn't be surprised from this sites; liberal readers.

Boneheaded

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't legally collect the data yourself then just pass laws requiring someone else to collect it on your behalf under threat of law.

If we ever find out they're collecting it and it's deemed illegal just change the law and grant them retroactive immunity.

Really, why do we even bother with the law anymore? None of this is in the spirit of the law. These are all just legal 'hacks'.

Terrorists

[penguinoid]

Terrorists are attacking our homeland, reading our mail, threatening the security guaranteed to us by the First and Fourth Amendments. And if the terrorists find something they don't like, expect to see a large group of them show up with guns and take you away.

Re:Terrorists

[Zak3056]

The phrase "they hate us for our freedom" is finally true.

Re:Terrorists

[david_thornley]

When I first heard and pooh-poohed that phrase, I may have been interpreting "they" incorrectly.

It would also be technically difficult.

[frovingslosh]

It would also be technically difficult.

Nothing is too difficult for the person who doesn't have to do it their self.

Re:It would also be technically difficult.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There ain't nothin' to it if you ain't gotta do it"

Re:It would also be technically difficult.

[amiga3D]

That's what tax money is for. Congressman XYZ has a brother-in-law with a software company that can solve that for the small price of 348 million dollars. As a bonus they also do healthcare websites.

Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr...

[Gription]

"America’s security depends on dispensing with people's liberty when we can come up with a scary possibility."

Liberty is a risk. We are supposed to cherish that we in the "home of the brave" were brave enough to choose the RISK of liberty.
The endless pulpit banging about risks to the "Fatherland" ... (wait... oops... erase, erase, erase...) I mean risks to the Homeland are still a microscopic percentage of the risk of getting in your car to drive to work.

QUIT PROTECTING ME FROM LIBERTY! (and pass me the Advil...)

Re:Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr...

[cayenne8]

So....maybe this makes the argument good once again for running your OWN email servers at home, no?

It really isn't that difficult...linux, postfix...add in a bit of 'magic' spam filter settings...and email server from home!!!

No reporting required?

Re:Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr...

[Anonymous Coward]

So....maybe this makes the argument good once again for running your OWN email servers at home, no?

That will just be made illegal, because Hillary did it and terrorists might do it too. Why would you need to run your own mail server instead of paying a nice American business to do it for you, Citizen?

Re:Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you want to snoop on the activities of others without justification, potentially to the detriment of everyone, just so you can be seen as "protecting the homeland."

There is no security if the state does not provide it to it's citizens. Intentionally decreasing security for the purpose of security, does not magically cause an increase in security. It causes a decrease.

In this specific case, the decrease comes from actively advertising to your adversaries: "We will monitor all communications to detect your activities." Monitoring only ever works well in secret against an unwilling foe. The second that foe finds out about it, they can take action to avoid it, (use alternative methods, figure out how the monitoring works to bypass it or have it otherwise rendered useless, or outright abandon the monitored practice), or they can engage in counterintelligence. (By using the monitoring to feed an unsuspecting monitor false information.) As if anyone still needed to be told: "Don't use their stuff, it comes with bugs and strings attached." you could not ask for a better declaration of intent than a public hearing on a bill to make the state immune from the consequences of such acts, and to expand it's ability to engage in such acts. Any true foe, immediately upon hearing such a declaration, will be suspect of anything the state does at that point going forward, and will attempt to neutralize anything the state does in an attempt to harm them. Thanks for giving them a heads up.

As for the actual citizens, we experience a decrease in security too. Our foes now will redouble their efforts to avoid law-enforcement. (Bad.) Our allies will now suspect us of snooping on them and want to distance themselves from us. (Worse.) We, the citizens, will now suffer due to the decreased demand for our products and services due to lack of trust, in a time when our economy is not faring too well, and people are still trying to rebuild their lives after their losses. (Fail.) We will also suffer more due to our personal info being potentially accessible from others either due to abuse or bad implementations, which can lead to (personal / medical) identity theft, (bank / credit) fraud, death, false suspicion, etc. (EPIC FAIL.) Thanks for making us, the people your supposed to protect, less safe.

By the way, "Homeland"? Take your patriotism and shove it. It's shameful to take pride in the violation of the privacy and freedom of others when the country itself was founded on those principles.

Re:Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr...

[beastofburdon]

If I had mod points I would mod you up for this! Also, if you had been logged in I would have added you to my friends list.
I could not have said it better!

Re:Pull a what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you're a Democrat and can't believe that "you're team" could ever do anything wrong. But I highly recommend you look at the front page of basically any major news outlet right now. Pulling a Clinton is completely accurate.

The more things change...

[Anonymous Coward]

It has ever been the way of the coward and despot to force citizens to inform on their neighbors. This behavior is antithetical to the ideals America was founded upon; unfortunately, there is always another Joe McCarthy waiting in the wings. Land of the free and home of the brave, indeed.

Which government?

[AndyCanfield]

Report to which government? My email is at Yandex in Moscow. I moved it there from gmail just before Ed Snowden's revelations. I don't want ANYBODY knowing EVERYTHING about me.

Re:Which government?

[amiga3D]

You should ask Hillary about using her server. Even the NSA can't read her email.

Re:Which government?

[AndyCanfield]

You should ask Hillary about using her server. Even the NSA can't read her email.

Yeah, but the Chinese can.

Re:Which government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this should be called the "bootstrap non-American communications companies" act. Google already makes half its money outside the US. Not for long. Freedom-loving Americans will hem and haw, but Europeans won't, nor will businesses worried about industrial espionage. The arrogance is less shocking than the cluelessness. And both are just about commerce, less important than the principle, but of course politicians don't care about anything but commerce.

It's too late

[AndyKron]

The noose is tightening. Pretty soon we won't even know that it's too late.

Double-Speak

[Anonymous Coward]

"Homeland"
"Terrorism"
"Interests"

The United States of America's government is unchecked and continues to destroy the freedoms of everyone around the world in the name of control... Welcome to 1984.

Re:Double-Speak

[amiga3D]

Speaking of 1984, I just got a 60 inch TV with a video camera and internet connectivity. Only 31 years late.

why not go full Stasi?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Senate Intelligence Committee has unanimously approved draft legislation that would requires email providers and social media sites to report any suspected terrorist activities to the government.

Why stop there? If you're going to have various private parties report on each other, why not go full Stasi? Have teachers report on students, kids on parents, parents on kids, etc. And we clearly need a Division of Garbage Analysis and a Main Administration for Struggle Against Suspicious Persons.

Come on Dianne Feinstein, what are you waiting for? We all know it's what you really want anyway.

Re:why not go full Stasi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop there? If you're going to have various private parties report on each other, why not go full Stasi? Have teachers report on students, kids on parents, parents on kids, etc...Come on Dianne Feinstein, what are you waiting for? We all know it's what you really want anyway..

"If you see something, say something". Let's revisit this conversation in a decade or so, and discuss whether or not this seemingly prudent admonition to the public has yet morphed into exactly what you describe. We're getting there; it's just a question of how long it will take. Feinstein and her ilk are usually very careful, so as not to let most observers realize that they've set us up with banana-peel loafers standing on an astroglide-coated slippery slope.

- T

The Magic Words

[dcollins]

"This year’s legislation arms the intelligence community with the resources they need"

Translation: There's nothing here that really needs to be illegal; and we do not expect this to be enforced regularly or equitably. We just want to be able to declare as criminal anyone we take a disliking to, or who doesn't bend over for us on demand.

Re:worse than ISIS, KKK, Nazis, and the Kwianis Cl

[Anonymous Coward]

Er; looking at them, they seem to be mostly chinbeards, and scraggly ones at that!

WHAT 'Homeland'??

[Anonymous Coward]

Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) said, "America’s security depends on our intelligence community’s ability to detect and thwart attacks on the homeland, our personnel and interests overseas, and our allies."
-
I refuse to refer to the USA by that totalitarian-tinged term 'The Homeland'... by the same token, I refuse to use the word 'consumer' to refer to the citizenry. Those terms say a lot about the people using them.
Apparently, Burr has no problems with monitoring everyone on Earth, because that is exactly what it will take to do what he wants. Someone needs to tell him that "1984" was a novel, not an instruction manual.
=

Guaranteed zero reports

[Areyoukiddingme]

The laws surrounding terrorism are already nearly as toxic as those surrounding child porn. No one ever voluntarily reports child porn on a server they control, because possession itself is a life-ending felony. Terrorism laws are about as bad, so once again, no one would ever volunteer a report to law enforcement about terrorist activities. Law enforcement is entirely too likely to take the bird in the hand and arrest the messenger.

Oxymoron Alert!

[amiga3D]

"Senate Intelligence" Committee. If ever there were a contradiction in terms.

So reddit has even more problems.

[catsRus]

Seems they need to stop running off "employees" if they will have to deal with regulations like this. Place is full of keywords to scare the paranoid idiots in the government.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Are we missing the big picture?

[Anonymous Coward]

With thousands coming across the southern border every day that the gov knows nothing about and yet no big attacks, doesnt that say something about how we really are not in as much danger as they want us to think?

SYCOS Act

[J'raxis]

These idiots always like coming up with pithy and (in their opinion) appropriate names for their laws, so here's a suggestion for this one: The Send Your Customers Over Seas Act, or SYCOS Act for short. Why? Because this will drive anyone interested in privacy to overseas email providers like Startmail, a company who intentionally set themselves up outside U.S. jurisdiction for reasons exactly like this.

Dear Mr. America:

[swschrad]

We here at DaWeb are reporting a consistent national power attempting to eavesdrop on data moving across our network. we first noticed this when data was delayed and the far end detected stateful detection and attempts to break encryption. there is now evidence the command structure of this nation has been discussing requiring this activity.

this is obviously state terrorism and we demand to be protected from it.

sincerely,

DaWeb

PS: these weasels identify themselves with three-letter names.

the legislation itself is classified

[Anomalyst]

Identifies it it as double plus ungood.

Smell my vagina!

[Anonymous Coward]

Inhale my funky Mitch McConnell / John McCain Snatch

Encrypted e-mail

[Todd Knarr]

ISAGN for an e-mail system that makes it easy to get an x.509 certificate associated with your e-mail address, pull in the certificates for other users so you can automatically encrypt messages to them, and handles all encryption/decryption on the client side (whether in an application like Thunderbird or in client-side Javascript in a Web browser). The infrastructure's there except for the ability to generate a CSR or retrieve a certificate in e-mail clients. In fact with client support it's not even necessary to use any one service for anything but certificate generation/lookup, the encrypted messages can travel over standard e-mail channels. Let 'em ask for anything they want when everything's encrypted and I never had the keys at any point.

My government

[p51d007]

Has changed me from a Conservative (not to be confused with Republican) to more and more each day to a Constitutional Libertarian. I've gotten to the point in my life (mid 50's) that I see myself more as a libertarian, than anything else. I do not trust government. I believe governments sole purpose, as written in the constitution, is to provide for the defense of our nation, promote general welfare. THAT'S IT! The rest, should be left to each state. Government now, wants to be our mommy & daddy for flipping everything, taking more and more responsibility for our lives, along with more and more of our money. It's about to the point where I should just have my paycheck direct deposited at the Treasury department, and hope they send ME back enough money to survive, along with a thank you card to them for being so nice.

Re:My government

[dbIII]

THAT'S IT! The rest, should be left to each state.

That's the bit that always confused me about libertarians until I finally found out that by government they always mean Federal.
Good luck with your 13 colonies and King George running the military - worked so well last time. I've got no idea why you people want to get rid of the best thing the USA has going for it.

Re:My government

[Anonymous Coward]

The federal government is the best thing the US has going for it?
Jesus things are worse than I thought.

Classified laws are not democratic

[Anonymous Coward]

Any law that is classified cannot be legal. It goes against the very fabric of our nation... which is unfortunately already in tatters. It's absolute crap that we can have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, if they people are not allowed to even know the laws which govern them. Sure it becomes readable once it is on the floor, but taking away our ability to influence our representatives is to strike at the very heart of democracy.

Sigh. CAPTCHA: resent

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already almost certainly against your ISP's TOS.

Richard Burr is a traitor.

[cb88]

Richard Burr is a traitor along with the rest of DC as well. A traitor to the foundational rights our country has cherished since it's birth.

Monitoring prevented this planned attack

[myid]

According to this article, Robert R. Doggart posted a Facebook item, which asked other people to join him in burning down a mosque in New York state. He was arrested in April.

Court documents say Doggart talked with a confidential source and with others on a cellphone the FBI was monitoring, saying he wanted to firebomb several buildings, including the mosque, a school and the cafeteria.

I'm glad the FBI was monitoring his phone calls. And I'm glad someone reported the Facebook item to the FBI.

Re:Monitoring prevented this planned attack

[rubycodez]

Then you have no critical thinking skills. Robert Doggart has been released to the custody of his family, and the judge has asked the prosecutor to come up with a shred of evidence that Doggart actually posed any kind of credible threat whatsoever.

Talk is cheap, and doesn't blow up or set fire to anything. Doggart is guilty of running his mouth, nothing more.

Re: Monitoring prevented this planned attack

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for see something, say something. Just not compulsory. If you, as Facebook, ignored the post or read a false negative for auto flagging the post and let it go on, you would be legally held responsible for the acts performed by that person.

Your example in no way reflects what is actually being discussed. You do not, in any way shape or form want compulsory reporting. Just look to the past and other cultures, it is not the land of the free.

Re:Monitoring prevented this planned attack

[Cajun Hell]

I'm glad someone reported the Facebook item to the FBI.

What's really odd and exceptional about that situation, is that they did it without the government sticking a gun in their face and saying "I dare you to not report that. Make my day, you piece of shit citizen." It's almost as though they wanted to report what they had noticed.

Oh wait, that's not odd or exceptional at all. I almost think it's human nature that, when you stick a gun in someone's face, it just makes people treat you as less of an ally with whom you would want to share information.

Then there's the robotically-thoughtless ass-covering. Someone greets their friend Jack at the airport, "Hi, Jack!" Someone sees a circuit board somewhere in public and doesn't know what it's for. Someone notices a pressure cooker in the back seat of a parked car. Someone posts a vague tweet that could be about anything. Guess what stupid thing some stupid person has to do. "I have to ruin everyone's day." And we're going to have a new law to make more of this nonsense.

I wonder if these Senators have thought about why they write laws and what outcomes they are hoping to achieve. I hope all their re-election campaigns get shot down. Oh shit, I said "shot" in a Senators context. You'd have to report me, because the law will be that you have act stupid even if you're secretly not stupid.

Keep the secret! Let's all work on repeating our 21st century mantra: Duuuh. Duuuh. Duuuh. Duuuh. Never let anyone in public know that you can say anything else. Save your other words for the cell meetings.

Great

[nehumanuscrede]

I'm sure it will follow the same sort of rules that lands one on the do-not-fly lists.

I suppose we can start using encryption but, knowing what level of intellect is writing these laws, using it at all is probably one of the triggers for reporting " suspicious activity " :|

OMGOMGOMGOMG looklooklook EXTREMIST TERROR LANGUAGE ! GETEMGETEMGETEM !

E2F3D 60DDE 37AAC 5E48F 9E891 2B1C7 BD6E0 D62D3 1D815 0FC96 D5679 9452E C15E9 81453 488A6 D8F84 2A39E 9365E 9897C 67857 D5182 2EE14 7A34F CC1F7 6C0A4 9FC48 28E32 57CDE A6DBE 2F3C4 57FF4 EDD44

Re:Great

[nehumanuscrede]

Oh and while I'm thinking about it. . . . .

"America’s security depends on our intelligence community’s ability to detect and thwart attacks on the homeland"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

With nearly zero oversight and the bending or outright breaking of many constitutionally protected rights, you all have done an outstanding job thus far at preventing such actions on US soil.

*** Just how many failures does it take before Congress realizes the common denominator for failure here IS the intelligence community ? ***

Off the top of my head in no particular order and limiting the list to 2001 and beyond:

World Trade Center - 9/11
Anthrax Laced Letters
LA Airport shootings
DC Sniper Attacks
Ohio Sniper Attacks
Fort Hood Shooting
Boston Marathon Bombing
Ricin Laced Letters
Church Shootings
School Shootings
Most Mass Shootings for that matter

I find the lack of competence in our leadership . . . . . disturbing. :|

Anyone who lets illegal immigrants stay

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a terrorist.

Re:worse than ISIS, KKK, Nazis, and the Kwianis Cl

[I'm New Around Here]

Speaking of that: What the fuck is up with the neck beard anyway. It used to be how cartoonists drew hillbillys. Now they are all over, where fat white men gather.

And googling for images of neckbeards shows several guys with normal beards. So even the term neckbeard is diluted by dumb shits that can't tell the difference.

Re:Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

[Anonymous Coward]

The committee chairman is a Republican numbnuts

Re:Pull a what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you're a Democrat and can't believe that "you're team" could ever do anything wrong. But I highly recommend you look at the front page of basically any major news outlet right now. Pulling a Clinton is completely accurate.

"I don't know! Maybe some IT admins were out taking a stroll through my personal email server in a closet in my personal residence and said; 'Hey, let's delete some emails and destroy some hard drives.'. At this point, what does it matter!?!?"

Planet Commandeer Please Respond

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Planet Commandeer.
I am Cuming.

Ha ha

Flood 'em with data

[davidwr]

As an ISP/mail-hosting provider, I can't tell if my clients are speaking in code-talk or not, so I could interpret such a rule as requiring me to forward all of my customer's communications to the government and let them sort it out.

Of course, that would get me sued by my customers, but that's the point - get it in the courts and get the media buzzing all over it.

Even if the courts rule that I only have to report "obvious terrorism" that ruling would, by itself, tell terrorists that all they needed to do was to talk in their own code-talk that would appear to their mail provider to be a normal, non-terrorism-related English-language conversation, and their mail-provider would be expected to treat it as if it was a normal, non-terrorism-related conversation, thereby defeating the purpose of the law.

Re:worse than ISIS, KKK, Nazis, and the Kwianis Cl

[dbIII]

From elsewhere the term just makes whoever uses it look like an inbred idiot anyway and I've given up trying to work out what it actually means in English. Which part of the USA does that slang come from anyway? Is that odd sounding insult a withdrawal symptom from not being able to use the other "N" word?

Solution: Cry Wolf

[LostMonk]

My Solution: Cry Wolf

Re:Solution: Cry Wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. My ISP lets me run servers because they are a real ISP, not some fake Comcast or Verizon portal bullshit.

Amazing ignorance

[Futurepower(R)]

Most people are amazingly ignorant about technology. The effect of forcing monitoring would be to cause terrorists to encrypt their messages.

Re:Amazing ignorance

[StikyPad]

That should be irrelevant. End-to-end encryption should be the default.

Surveillance State

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail The Great Surveillance States of America under the guise of security.

Granted, without reading the legislation, it may be presumptuous but it's probably in my "best interests" not to be able read it, for "my security."

Move email into your house?

[skibumatbu]

I have my own email in my house which makes me immune to crap like this... ISP's can only see my email in transit because the drives are in my basement. I wonder if we can't produce a device that will give people control over their mail and take it out of the hands of google.

The device is about the size of a Netgear ReadyNAS (in fact maybe we just use the ReadyNAS for this... Its linux after all)... Just a couple of disks driven from a small low performing Linux controller. It runs a mail server (postfix + dovecot + IMAP + round cube), and any other services we need on it. One service we may need is a VPN service... Since most people don't have static IP's we'll need a way to direct traffic to them. So we'll give them a small VM in AWS and a VPN connection from their device. the VM can't store anything locally. Everything in their name and not ours.

We'll offer services for $50 or something where we help them set this all up or they can leverage our simple instructions and tools themselves. We'll even partner with godaddy to help them buy domains and get SSL certs for the mail server and web server from another cheap vendor.

Anyone willing to go in it with me?

Re:Move email into your house?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you run your own mail server in your house, everyone you talk to doesn't. Every email address you send to or receive from is probably hosted by Google, Yahoo or Microsoft. Even many business email accounts are actually hosted by Outlook.com. So every email conversation you've had is fully accessible on those servers unless you can convince all the people you talk to to move to a pay email provider in a time when younger people check their email once per month because "everyone uses Facebook".

Entire Government is an..

[Anonymous Coward]

This entire government is an invasion of privacy...

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[cayenne8]

It's already almost certainly against your ISP's TOS.

Nope, I have a Cox Cable business account, no blocked ports, no caps, no limits.

$69/mo.

Unanimous: these 15 people just outed themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's unanimous, then nobody on this page gets to pretend they have common sense or had American interests at heart. Look for your state (oh, your poor bastards in Maine) and make sure you do your duty to prevent the re-election of these truly worthless people:

Arkansas - Tom Cotton

California - Diane Feinstein

Florida - Marco Rubio

Hawaii - Mazie Hirono

Idaho - James Risch

Indiana - Dan Coates

Maine - Angus King

Maine - Susan Collins

Maryland - Barbara Mikulski

Missouri - Roy Blunt

New Mexico - Martin Heinrich

North Carolina - Richard Burr

Oklahoma - James Lankford

Oregon - Ron Wyden

Virginia - Mark Warner

Don't be afraid of crossing "party" lines to do this. Just think of the scumbag that you're voting against as an in-duh-vidual that needs to be purged. Yes, you're probably putting in another scumbag, but it won't really be worse. (But also keep an eye out for any non-D+non-R candidates, and don't worry about "winning" or "throwing your vote away." If even 2% of America shows up and votes for America, that'll be an improvement over previous elections. It'll be noticed, and 2 years later we an try for 3%. And so on. Your grandkids might get to live in America, but only if you give a fuck in the present.)

Re:Pull a what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a typical ignorant conservative. She was asked for the data, not legally required to hand it over.

From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who sponsored the Internet services provision,"

Tells me everything I need to know about it already.

Am I missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Report to which government? My email is at Yandex in Moscow. I moved it there from gmail just before Ed Snowden's revelations. I don't want ANYBODY knowing EVERYTHING about me.

Good thing our government never heard of Google.

Would this be a good starting point?

The language police

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a very explosive situation. That senator really dropped the bomb on this one.

Re:I am against this

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha ha. Social media you say? You are SOL for sure then unless your part of a false flag op.

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[DroolTwist]

Nope, I have a Cox Cable business account, no blocked ports, no caps, no limits. $69/mo.

Exactly. Business account. I believe most residential plans block ports needed to run your own mail server. Or at least they used to.

Death by 1B papercuts

[Wokan]

Since you can't be sure if someone is just speaking in code, just send the government everything and claim you think it could be terror activity. In fact, send them 10+ copies of everything and inundate them with the reports. Hell, generate random email messages and submit those. Let them set loose their analysts trying to puzzle out randomly generated garbage.

homeland

[chilenexus]

All by itself, their use of the word "homeland" kind of implies/engenders the feeling that places not inside the United States are not somebody's home - and therefore free for the droning/bombing/cruise-missiling.

Role-playing games

[david_thornley]

I've been part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government and have discussed it on email.

The government in question was the Empire from Star Wars, and I was playing a character in the Rebel Alliance, and none of the planning had anything to do with the real world. I hope everybody understands that.

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Sonic.net residential service and have zero limits on what I can do. No data cap, no monitoring, no throttling, no filtering and I can run whatever servers I want.

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[cayenne8]

Well, for $69/mo...why would you not rather have a business acct than a residential one?

By the way..this account comes to my house (rented).

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[DroolTwist]

I live in Albuquerque, NM, and I tried to get a business account when we got our house in 2003, but due to zoning I couldn't (this was through Comcast). I have CenturyLink DSL now, and don't really have the need or desire to run my own at the moment, so I can't speak to being able to do it now.

Out of curiosity, do you get the usual business SLA with your service?

Re: Let me rewrite that for you Mr. Richard Burr..

[cayenne8]

Yes, I get a low level SLA.

Interesting. I really didn't have to do anything to prove I was a business (although I am incorporated).

But I've never seen any type of zoning law come up with reference to what kind of ISP connection you have.

Interesting...