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New Bill In Congress Would Bypass the Fourth Amendment, Hand Your Data To Police (medium.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Medium: Lawmakers behind a new anti-privacy bill are trying to sneak it through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass government spending bill. The CLOUD Act would hand police in the U.S., and other countries, extreme new powers to obtain and monitor data directly from tech companies instead of requiring a warrant and judicial review. Congressional leadership will decide whether the CLOUD Act gets attached to the omnibus government spending bill sometime this week, potentially as early as tomorrow... If passed, this bill would give law enforcement the power to go directly to tech companies, no matter where they or their servers are, to obtain our data. They wouldn't need a warrant or court oversight, and we'll be left with no protections to ensure law enforcement isn't violating our rights. A recent report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains how the CLOUD Act circumvents the Fourth Amendment. "This new backdoor for cross-border data mirrors another backdoor under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, an invasive NSA surveillance authority for foreign intelligence gathering," reports the EFF. "That law, recently reauthorized and expanded by Congress for another six years, gives U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA, FBI, and CIA, the ability to search, read, and share our private electronic messages without first obtaining a warrant. The new backdoor in the CLOUD Act operates much in the same way. U.S. police could obtain Americans' data, and use it against them, without complying with the Fourth Amendment."
If there's one thing both Republicans and Democrats can agree on it's that the government needs more access and citizen's concerns are not important. Citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If passed, this bill would give law enforcement the power to go directly to tech companies, no matter where they or their servers are, to obtain our data.
Pretty sure that violates some sort of principals of sovereignty, but yeah, you try doing that.
Don't complain when China comes knocking asking for access to your servers, too.
Wow that summary is a giant load of crap. Doesn't even indicate what the bill is about.
The Cloud act is about establishing a process which approved foreign governments may follow when requesting information about non-US persons (neither citizen nor resident) from US companies. For example, if there were a bombing in the UK, by a UK citizen, and the the UK police wanted to get the perpetrator's Apple Maps history, they could follow this process to request that data from Apple, a US company storing the data in the US.
To be eligible, the foreign government law must "afford robust substantive and procedural protections for privacy and civil liberties", as agreed to by both the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State, with Congress able to overrule approvals.
Requests must be based on "articulable and credible facts" and subject to "review or oversight by a court, judge, or magistrate or other independent authority".
Any information revealed about US persons may not be shared with the US government.
That's the general gist of the bill. You can read it for further details. You'll likely find some good and some bad in it.
Here's one opinion piece about it:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/wh...
This is why donating to organizations like EFF and EPIC is important.
Primary: Rep. Collins, Doug [R-GA-9] CoSponsors: Rep. Jeffries, Hakeem S. [D-NY-8]* Rep. Issa, Darrell E. [R-CA-49]* Rep. DelBene, Suzan K. [D-WA-1]* Rep. Marino, Tom [R-PA-10]* Rep. Rutherford, John H. [R-FL-4]* Rep. Demings, Val Butler [D-FL-10]* Rep. Holding, George [R-NC-2] Rep. Smith, Lamar [R-TX-21]