Slashdot Mirror
US House Passes Bill Requiring Warrants To Search Old Emails (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Monday to require law enforcement authorities to obtain a search warrant before seeking old emails from technology companies, a win for privacy advocates fearful the Trump administration may work to expand government surveillance powers. The House passed the measure by a voice vote. But the legislation was expected to encounter resistance in the Senate, where it failed to advance last year amid opposition by a handful of Republican lawmakers after the House passed it unanimously. Currently, agencies such as the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission only need a subpoena to seek such data from a service provider.
Republicans realize they have more to fear from Trump reading their emails than Obama...
No, they just had Obama promising to veto any such thing. Republicans tabled all sorts of legislation because of that obstructionism. Which is fine. It's supposed to be an adversarial relationship, between those two co-equal branches of government.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Don't you love all of the GOP bashing even though the GODDAMN BILL WAS WRITTEN BY A REPUBLICAN?
You want to give Trump an extra 4 years? Keep bashing and invalidating people who are trying to do good things.
This article is shit. Where's the actual votes? How can you bash the GOP as if you know they ALL opposed it? Do we know what Democrats tried to oppose it and sell out their country? No? Nah, let's ignore them because it messes with "Muh Narrative."
Here's a link with more detail than the OP's article and the plumb sum of every comment here too:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
It doesn't have the votes talled yet. (And the article didn't even mention the fucking bill HR number?) But it's got the list of cosponsers which is a pretty obvious indicator of SUPPORTERS of the bill.
64 Republicans
44 Democrats.
What's that? What? MORE REPUBLICANS cosponsered the bill? No! Surely, the GOP's only goal is to "Take Muh Freedoms!", remember?
Goddamn. Everyone posting here who whines about "The System" doesn't realize their freaking ignorance and blind "Support the Team!" politics are the reason this country is so damn gridlocked in the first place.
And I say all of this as a both-side voting, MODERATE. But nah, feel free to disregard my actual facts under the "He's probably a just Nazi" routine and continue ignoring the GOP people helping you (and ignoring the crimes of the Democrats who DON'T help you). That'll sure make the USA a better place.
Your comment is very presumptuous about both my point and my views. I don't care about NSL's or FISA warrants. I don't care about going after terrorists or enemy combatants. I care about Americans in America who the government is abusing. I care about real people, whom I have personally spoken with, who have and are facing these issues, not people in some thought experiment. Some of them are non-Abrahamic religious minorities that the government seems obsessed with, mostly due to a lack of understanding of their religion. People and causes you have never heard about...
I care about warrants issued by in district courts that function as rubber stamps. I read search warrants every day and more then you may suspect are very weak. They have a very diluted view on what probable cause is. These warrants are generally sealed and in many cases the subject of them is never notified that they were the subject of a search. I am not just talking about electronic records; mail, cars, homes are all searched in this way. I think you would be shocked at the number of packages that both state and federal search warrants are obtained for and are not found to contain anything illegal. In these cases the package is repacked and delivered to the recipient without notification. These searches as documented in my local courts are no more accurate than a coin toss. But if you are on the wrong side of the coin toss, good luck, your life just got incredibly difficult.
If someone wants to make you a target than all an agent of the government needs is to claim to have been identified by an informant, that claim alone passes as probable cause in this world. The "informant" is never made available to the judge for questioning, they just take the agents word for it. The records of this search could stay sealed for years but don't expect a notification when its unsealed if you are an unknowing subject of one. As for subpoenas, they are rubber stamped, they are not subject to judicial review. The government just issues them to themselves. The court only gets involved if you say no.
As for something that impacts me, if a warrant is actually supported by probable cause, and the judge makes an inquiry into the facts of the matter, then I am cool with it being issued. What more often happens is the judge reads the application and signs it. When you fail to be skeptical, then you become a rubber stamp. I believe that it should be very hard for the government to invade your privacy or convict you of a crime. Our society has given the government far too much latitude in these matters and it needs to be rolled back.
The house is majority Republican. It is the Republicans that just passed this privacy measure
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Once upon a time slashdot would have rejoiced at news like this. The notion that privacy is serious and given precedence- celebrated. Now we have page after page of politics, and drivel about this not being good enough. This is a win. Requiring warrants is as good as it gets. Be happy.