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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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...

[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.

It's too late

[AndyKron]

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

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.