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Microsoft Sues US Justice Department, Asks Court To Declare Secrecy Orders Unconstitutional (geekwire.com)
Todd Bishop, reporting for GeekWire: Microsoft is suing the U.S. Justice Department, asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional a provision of U.S. law that lets the government keep Microsoft and other tech companies from informing their customers when investigators seek access to emails and other cloud data. The suit, filed moments ago in U.S. District Court in Seattle, targets Section 2705(b) of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to seek and obtain secrecy orders preventing companies from letting their customers know when their data is the target of a federal warrant, subpoena or court order. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, recently criticized the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act as outdated during his testimony in February before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee -- bringing along IBM's first laptop, released the same year, to help illustrate his point.Microsoft argues that these "indefinite gag orders" violate the First Amendment rights to inform customers. Furthermore, the company adds that the law also "flouts" the Fourth Amendment, which requires the government to give a notice to the concerned person when his or her property is being searched or seized. "This is a First Amendment fight that needed to get picked and I'm glad Microsoft picked it. Just as in the real world with physical seizures, secrecy in digital seizures should be the exception and not the rule. Yet as the Microsoft complaint shows, it's receiving thousands of law enforcement gag orders every year and more than two-thirds of them are eternal gags with no end data," said Kevin Bankston, internet freedom advocate and digital rights lawyer. "This is clearly unconstitutional, yet with so many orders per year, it makes sense to strike at the root with a facial challenge to the law rather than try and challenge them all individually. And based on previous similar cases around gag orders in national security cases, I think they'll succeed in striking this overbroad law down."
Even state secrets are subject to FOIA acts and even if decades pass they are eventually released. These should not be any different.
But spying on Americans is unconstitutional as they have done it.
It's sad that SCOTUS won't allow Americans to sue for unconstitutional actions to collect their data, but will allow American companies (in the loosest sense of the term) to do so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's like a law implementing harsh punishment for leaving your car in a stable without a bale of hay and a clean water trough.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
recently criticized the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act as outdated during his testimony in February before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee -- bringing along IBM's first laptop, released the same year, to help illustrate his point.
This seems like an odd analogy to make. Did he ride a horse to the courthouse to show that the fourth amendment is outdated?
No, he's not making the case that the 4th Amendment is outdated. Laws can easily be changed, and should if they no longer meet the goals they are supposed to. Amendments take considerably more effort, which is a good thing.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's sad that SCOTUS won't allow Americans to sue for unconstitutional actions to collect their data, but will allow American companies (in the loosest sense of the term) to do so.
The difference (probably) is in that Microsoft has actual evidence of harm done to them and their customers so they have standing to sue. Microsoft would be aware of these gag orders and what the government was requesting from them. Additionally it costs a measurable amount of money for Microsoft to comply with these search orders so there is a way to gauge A) the amount of harm done and B) the cost of compliance. Since Microsoft should be able to show some amount of harm (even if small) then they would have standing to sue.
While I agree that it's kind of shitty that citizens are in this catch 22 where they can't sue because they don't have standing but they can't get/prove the information to establish that they do have standing because the only means to get it is to sue. But if Microsoft can short circuit this problem on behalf of citizens then perhaps we will end up with a resolution after all.
I swear Ill give Windows another shot...
Sometimes it's necessary to maintain the secrecy of an investigation, like to find out who a terrorist's conspirators are. That said, Slashdot is primarily concerned with ensuring that terrorists have privacy to plot their attacks, that they have strong first, second, and fourth amendment rights, and that the contents of dead terrorists' phones aren't decrypted by investigators. Sorry, Slashdot, but the Bill of Rights was never meant to protect treason.
Microsoft says in the suit that federal courts have issued nearly 2,600 secrecy orders to the company over the past 18 months, and more than two-thirds of those orders didn’t have a defined ending date.
I seriously doubt that the 2,600 orders that Microsoft has received in the past 18 months, are all for foreign adversaries.
And even if they are for an American who the law thinks is a terrorist, the law needs to respect that person's rights. Otherwise if the person is convicted the conviction will eventually be overturned.
If we start ignoring all of our constitutional rights because of terrorism, then what are we fighting for at that point?
and also... for the children.
The Bill of Rights WAS meant to protect someone from being prosecuted for treason unless the government acts within the bounds of the Bill of Rights. Namely, right to an attorney, right to a trial, right to warrants, right of free speech, right to cross examine, right to review evidence, right for refuse to board soldiers in your home, right to refuse to submit to a state religion, right to publish articles in the press that do not favor the government.
Any person could make an argument that X is treason or terrorism or any other thing you want to call it. Congress can pass any law they want defining that X is unlawful. They can argue until they are blue in the face that the public needs to be protected from X and in order to protect the public from X that certain rights need to be ignored and bypassed... but guess what... rights are SUPPOSED to trump that. If I am a traitor, prove it without violating my rights. Then and only then can you punish me.
If you sacrifice liberty for security, you deserve neither. && Government should stop legislating morality. && Anytime someone says "There should be a law..." there probably shouldn't.
Laws are supposed to exist to prevent your exercise of rights from affecting my rights. If a person doesn't interfere with the rights of another, there is no need to legislate or prosecute.
I admire this effort to look out for my privacy but it's too little and waaaaaaaay too late. The travesty of Windows 10, cooperation with the Chinese government, rolling over for the NSA, peering agreements that include customer data, privacy agreements detailing essentially inevitable loss of all personal data, abuse of certification programs... Microsoft hasn't cared about my privacy for the last 41 years and now suddenly they want to give precisely one fuck?
Sorry Microsoft, I know a shit sandwich when I bite into one. If you want my trust here's what you need to do: Divest the software you want me to trust into a new department. Enforce complete transparency in that department. Enforce a top-to-bottom ethics code in that department. Offer a transparent reward for whistle-blowers there, overseen by an independent privacy-minded organization. Do all this and I'll trust the software from that one department.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Even state secrets are subject to FOIA acts and even if decades pass they are eventually released
What good does a FOIA act do for a citizen if they can't get an answer until decades later? The effects of the gag order and the information they are seeking happen presently. Denying a citizen the right to face their accuser in a timely manner is functionally equivalent to declaring them guilty of whatever they are accused of. The notion of a permanent gag order seems blatantly unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.
... right for refuse to board soldiers in your home,
Important point about the Third Amendment: The soldier didn't just eat your food and sleep on your couch. He served as a government spy. Listened in on your conversations, went through your papers and mail when you weren't looking, reported all to his superiors in the military and intelligence services.
He was the revolutionary-era meat version of spyware installed by the government on your computers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ah, the old "criminals don't have rights" point of view, which depends upon the belief that "we only investigate criminals" or similarly "we only investigate / target the guilty"
A quite controvertible non-fact.
A) Yes. See the Snowden releases for details.
B) Yes. This has been known since *before* the Snowden releases.
C) Yes, but that has nothing to do with the suit in question.
Basically, there's a concept that if someone else is holding your stuff, then it's not private, and therefore, they only need a subpoena and not a warrant to get it ... and they don't need to notify the person whose stuff it is (so there's no chance for them to get a lawyer to try to stop it).
This is why someone concerned about their privacy would prefer hosting their own mail server (in their own home, not at a colo) vs. using one of the many 'cloud' offerings:
https://www.worldprivacyforum....
But you probably don't want to host your own e-mail if you're a government official, and there's any chance of anyone sending work e-mails there.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Naw, based on Eldred v. Ashcroft, Congress can just approve a gag order extension every time the previous gag order is about to expire. And legally, it won't be "indefinite".
If you want to legally prohibit indefinite anything, you have to explicitly state that the copyright or gag order expires in x years with no extension or renewal possible. Otherwise the rules lawyers will walk all over you.
A common misconception.
The bill of does not grant rights to persons. Rather, it restricts government power.
Congress shall make no law...
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...
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Amendments take considerably more effort, which is a good thing.
That's arguable. If having a Constitution that is too hard to amend just encourages politicians to write unconstitutional laws and the courts to allow it, how is that a good thing? The Constitution should be a document that the government, including the courts, follows. Not a document that is routinely ignored.
Really the fix would be a Supreme Court that took the Bill of Rights seriously, then amendments would be forced.
Examples include this story. The 1st is pretty clear, Congress will make no law abridging speech, which includes secrecy laws, even if they are in the interest of national security. The 2nd is also pretty clear, everyone is allowed to be armed, including criminals, the mentally unstable and even terrorists like your founders. Imagine enforcing those amendments as written and the debate on amending to allow Congress to pass secrecy laws, child porn laws, laws denying all people arms etc.
Instead, because it is hard, it is ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's not the pro gun people screaming militia. It's those trying to undermine the fact that the 2A guarantees a right of the people, by claiming that it only refers to the Militia. In which case the age limit you mention would have basis. It's those who want to be able to restrict ownership of firearms that try to cite the militia clause, not those standing in defense of the right to keep and bear arms.
But the 2A is protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Amendment does give a justification that a big portion of the reason for this protection is because you can't have a functional militia if the citizenry is disarmed or heavily restricted in the arms it can own. But the right is reserved to the people, not members of the Militia.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.