Secret Text In Senate Bill Would Give FBI Warrantless Access To Email Records (theintercept.com)

mi quotes a report from The Intercept: A provision snuck into the still-secret text of the Senate's annual intelligence authorization would give the FBI the ability to demand individuals' email data and possibly web-surfing history from their service providers using those beloved 'National Security Letters' -- without a warrant and in complete secrecy. [The spy bill passed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, with the provision in it. The lone no vote came from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who wrote in a statement that one of the bill's provisions "would allow any FBI field office to demand email records without a court order, a major expansion of federal surveillance powers." If passed, the change would expand the reach of the FBI's already highly controversial national security letters. The FBI is currently allowed to get certain types of information with NSLs -- most commonly, information about the name, address, and call data associated with a phone number or details about a bank account. The FBI's power to issue NSLs is actually derived from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- a 1986 law that Congress is currently working to update to incorporate more protections for electronic communications -- not fewer. The House unanimously passed the Email Privacy Act in late April, while the Senate is due to vote on its version this week. "NSLs have a sordid history. They've been abused in a number of ways, including targeting of journalists and use to collect an essentially unbounded amount of information," Andrew Crocker, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote. One thing that makes them particularly easy to abuse is that recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from revealing the letters' existence to anyone, much less the public.]

Comments

R.I.P. Land of the Free

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all be ashamed. We don't deserve freedom.

Re:R.I.P. Land of the Free

[whoozwah]

I disagree. Those that didn't oppose this don't deserve freedom.

Re:R.I.P. Land of the Free

[NatasRevol]

Bullshit.

The majority hears 'it's for safety, you wouldn't want to help the terrorists kill children, would you' and, without a critical thought in their head, vote it and those leaders all the way to the courthouse.

Re:R.I.P. Land of the Free

[MachineShedFred]

Do you really think that those things aren't going to happen? Have you seen anything in the post- USA PATRIOT Act Congressional history that says that this won't become law except for the loud noises made from a few 'fringe' Senators that actually give a damn about the Bill of Rights?

US law needs to change

[DrXym]

Any rider that is unrelated to the title or purpose of a bill should be automatically struck out. Maybe someone should slip this law in as a rider to another bill in order to make the point.

Re:US law needs to change

[Anonymous Coward]

Never going to happen because the people who could slip it in have a vest interest in keeping things the way they are.

Re:US law needs to change

[DarkOx]

Yes and under Hillary we just won't worry about words mean so any existing law can be used however she wants and rules won't apply to herself and people she likes. That sounds so much better sign me up.

Honestly I don't understand how ANYONE can make the case the Hillary is different than Trump other than what "team" she purports to be playing for.

Hillary contradicting herself for 13min on just about every current issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Look the only questions in this election are do you like the list Trump put forward for the SCOTUS candidates and do you want people like Paul Ryan to get legislation passed. If the answer is yes then vote for Trump because he isn't any worse than Hillary. The polls indicate he can actually win. If you abstain or vote for a third party you are effectively voting for Hillary that is the reality of the system.

If you like what his happen in Washington right now vote HRC, but don't think for a second that makes you a more responsible person or anything of the sort. She isn't by any measure more qualified to be president than he is. She was unaccomplished as a Senator, and her tenure as sec State was nothing other than a string of failures and scandals. Having had an important job before that you performed terribly at isn't a qualification for promotion.

The solution has been around for years. . .

[Salgak1]

. . . .but J. Random User out there doesn't know of, much less use PGP or Gnu Privacy Guard. . .

So let me try to figure this out

[Bob the Super Hamste]

So we have some secrete text in a bill that may be come law that supposedly allows my government to avoid going to a secrete court to get a secrete warrant to spy on me and instead just secretly spy on me. At this point it seems that it should be a perfect acceptable defense to state that one is ignorant of the law as there is so much effort being put into keeping the law from the governed. Hammurabi's code was put up in public so that people would know what the law was, now it is secretes the whole way down.