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What Congress' New Email-privacy Bill Means For Your Inbox
erier2003 writes: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act has a simple and vital purpose: making it harder for the government to get your email, instant messages, and Facebook chats. It amends a decades-old law to require government agencies to get a warrant to access the contents of any email or other electronic record—no matter how old those communications are. Sen. Mike Lee, one of the bill's cosponsors, told the Daily Dot why it matters. "The bill adds a warrant requirement for communications that were previously considered so old as to be irrelevant to their participants and unworthy of privacy protections. Right now, emails and other electronic messages older than 180 days are considered to have been “abandoned” by the people who sent and received them. Law-enforcement agencies don't need to get a warrant to force a company like Google or Facebook to turn over those communications." The act also requires the government to notify people whose records it has acquired, though they can delay that notice for 90 or 180 days if they feel sending it will put somebody at risk.
What it if actually starts the ball-rolling, so that maybe more legislation later can further actually accomplish something?
I think it's bullshit that anything over a certain age was considered 'abandoned' when other laws actually mandate the retention of old communications as legal records. At least this starts to make a difference.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
they'll just have all traffic routed offshore where it can be freely trawled through in a 'constitution free' zone, or else get the Brits to intercept it all as it goes via a British controlled territory...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
What it if actually starts the ball-rolling, so that maybe more legislation later can further actually accomplish something?
Won't happen. Congress won't pass anything because terrorists.
They already capture and store data that should have a warrant, without one. This will just add another law that will be ignored. What is needed to start the ball rolling is people being prosecuted for breaking the existing laws.
A problem can be attacked from more than one angle. Courts are already starting to take exceptions to the use of Stingray fake cell towers, and if what I've read is correct, it's costing the prosecution convictions. If undisclosed and unwarranted surveillance means that prosecution cannot happen then they'll have to rethink how they go about procedure.
Don't let-up the pressure but give it time to happen. This kind of thing takes years or decades to resolve, not weeks or months.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Law-enforcement agencies don't need to get a warrant to force a company like Google or Facebook to turn over those communications. Agencies just need to assert in writing that they need the communication to further an active investigation.
If that is the case, it is because Google and Facebook *choose* to turn over those communications. Back when the constitution was written, it was assumed that the accused would refuse to provide information without a warrant. But today, most of our information is held by 3rd-parties who have no reason to withhold our information. So the 4th amendment doesn't work any more.
The ultimate fault here is that when Google holds my email, it should be *my* email not theirs, so they should not have the legal power to give it out without my consent. That is how the post office worked. They are actually not allowed to intercept mail without a warrant: it isn't theirs to give out. We lost that protection. Same without your gas-and-electric bill, your credit card records, and your passwords (don't forget that one if you use a password manager!). Those things are not yours, so the constitutional protections don't apply.
"What Congress' New Email-privacy Bill Means For Your Inbox"
If the Do-not-call Registry, or the 4th Amendment are any indication, not much.