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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."
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Oh, yeah. That's right
Maybe I'm completely wrong here but I actually read the legal text and it appears that this is a response to the Microsoft debacle where Microsoft is refusing to fork over data because it's stored outside the US. From what I can tell, it would be used for a reciprocal agreements to disclose overseas data, meaning if the EU law enforcement wanted access to XYZ stored in the US that the company would have to comply and vice-versa.
I really do apologize for not being instantly outraged but in true /. fashion I didn't bother to RTFA. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The bill is authored by a Georgia Republican, dipshit.
Taking out the puppet doesn't hurt the puppet master... He'll just get a new one.