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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 you don't want government or corepirate scum hoovering up your data and giving it to whomever their little black hearts desire, keep it locally, on your own servers or on your own computer(s). At least then they will need a warrant to break into your home and access it. (If not a warrant, there's likely to be physical evidence of a break-in).
Cloud = Someone Else's Computer.
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/...
Brought to you by Rep. Collins, Doug [R-GA-9] (Introduced 02/06/2018).
If there was someone I wouldn't feel bad about getting SWATTED, it would be this douchecanoe.
Bill In Congress Would Bypass the Fourth Amendment, Hand Your Data To Police
I say we just crowdfund a blonde katana wielding female assassin and have her kill this Bill character, he seems to be nothing but trouble.
Imagine it had all gone to plan, Trump got to power with a majority instead of a minority. He does his "do it anyway" power grab and they do it anyway. He builds up Muslims as the common enemy with Putin. Trump forms a 'cyber security' section of Homeland Security which works with Russia on US cyber security to protect against this 'Muslim terror threat'. Any barriers internally the US removed to protect its people also fall away as soon as the enforcement barrier to foreign nations is removed.
Putin gets it all.
That's it, USA 100% compromised without a shot fired. Elections would be about as real as they are in Russia. Hannity would spout Putin propaganda openly, police would arrest enemies of the state, i.e. competing politicians like they do in Russia.
All these checks and balances have a purpose. They protect a country from malicious elements inside their own borders.
BTW Look at money for Stormy Daniels. There is no way $120k was paid by Cohen. Borrowing money against a house, is a money laundering trick. He uses borrowing, charges the client 24x$9K over two years consultancy fee (a healthy profit), which is mixed in with other consultancy fees to disguise it's origin. Then he makes his profit and the money trail is hidden. You need to check the fees into Cohen to see what's he's hiding there. Look at Manafort house loans, used so he could bring the Seychelles money into the US in smaller amounts. Same game, same group.
You can write all the imaginary laws you like in the US, it will not protect US corporations from prosecution for failing to adhere to search warrant requirements in other countries. It will be interesting to watch the outcome when the first US executives are given custodial sentences for breaking what a core laws, with regard to citizens rights and the proper application of justice, of they are locals, well, serving another country in a criminal act, is treason. Interesting time for executives of US corporations operating in other countries, would not take the job or the threat of imminent imprisonment and it will occur.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So stop providing your data in unencrypted format to parasitic software companies that store and aggregate it...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Clearly only terrorists care about privacy and silly things like civil rights.
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.
They handed our comments to another dimension.
Wonder if I'll ever see this one...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Warren Buffett
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo
Oh, yeah. That's right
Not likely...
I mean, wouldn't that still require cooperation from law enforcement in the country where the server resides?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Who the hell would sponsor such a bill?
Friends, meet Representative Doug Collins (R-GA):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
They're the cvs of the legal system. This one isn't checked in yet. Thanks for posting the link to the bill. Weird that I see no comments and browser opens a post window first.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
In the headline it says 39 posts but I can't see any. Been messing around again, ms mush?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Such a bill could bring attention to securing you data in the cloud, and potentially encourage companies to encrypt data in the cloud in such a way that the could provider cannot access it. Would help not just against government spying, but also against cloud companies getting hacked.
OK, pass this bill. With law enforcement going to tech companies to get our info, I suspect that this would start a growing movement to bring servers in-house where every family runs their own server, and therefore controls their own privacy. Police will still need a search warrant signed by a judge to search your home. You can try to circumvent the constitution, but people will adapt.
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...
I was going to rage against (R) voters, but I see that this bill has (D) co-sponsors.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This is why donating to organizations like EFF and EPIC is important.
Click on TFA to see comments and none are visible.
TLAs putting our tax dollars to use?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
the head of fbi turns out as a multi billionaire via "investing his money wisely"?
that is one reason why this surveillance without oversight stuff is getting way out of hand. it gives direct access to investment information. it is very easy to privately argue even that such information should be used by americans to further their investments in china and elsewhere and that "oh the russians are doing it already".
of course who it gets to benefit is just chosen by.. well, the local putin equivalent. it's not good for free trade, business in overall or anybody really.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Strange how the constitution is considered extremely important when it comes to allowing people to have guns, yet it is thrown out the window when it comes to communications privacy. Why does the US even have a constitution if they can shove it aside so easily?
Finding loopholes in the constitution... think about that for a moment.
This thread already dead after ~59 posts. Any idea what happened?
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.
Another server failure?
Because I see the indicator says there are 69 reactions yet none show up.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure this new break of privacy would invalidate the new agreements on data security with the EU.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I keep a small cache of enticing files in several places, including Dropbox. Things with names that the curious will want to know more about, or run to their superiors with. The content itself is banal, but it does make for some quiet entertainment, to think of which idiots think they have a winner by snooping on my sh*t.
How would a law passed in the US force European companies to break European data protection law?
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Why do we always have to fight the government that was set up to protect us?
How can they even have power over servers in other countries? Will they be making world wide agreements with other govs?
Or is this only about US companies with servers in other countries, even in those cases don't the rights of the data on these servers fall under the country where stored?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
let's hope this goes the way of SOPA and PIPA
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]
Who didn't see this kind of stuff as the ultimate problem of putting everything on the cloud, out of users' physical reach. Way beyond availability, data loss, or security, having all that data "out there" is the irresistible prize of gov't surveillance and investigation. Don't need to send the FBI into your house with a keystroke logger, just tap into the cloud provider directly.
I've been sure for a very long time they have already been doing this. The Snowdon docs notwithstanding, I believe even one of the post-911 laws (Patriot act?) codified the gov't & tech companies ability and mutual collaboration to provide information. IIRC it even allowed companies to lie in their business contracts, public declarations, and any court proceedings about stuff they shared with the gov't and secrets they keep. I'm sure CarbonCopy stores user passwords and decryption keys even though they say they don't. I'm sure Apple, Google, Facebook are already willingly and readily providing direct taps into their data feeds. That whole Apple push back on data decryption capabilities during the FBI demands seemed really contrived to me.
I expected at least one spirited defense of cloud from the "lawful access" people.
davecb@spamcop.net
The only one there is ever any fight over is the 2nd, maybe the 1st.
... if we could get the 2nd Amendment people to start defending the 4th Amendment a little more.
--#
The bill is authored by a Georgia Republican, dipshit.
The average American will applaud them for this Constitutional weakening.
The lead page shows over 100 comments, but I came here and see no comments yet..?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What's the remedy here? The ballot box? Pretty discouraging.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Isn't this just an expansion of 'Five Eyes' agreement that has been around since (..)? CA US UK AU NZ. I think the USG has been asking UK for intercepts of US Citizens for quite a while, like decades, quietly of course.
This is an expansion, and codification, of the 'rather secret' UK CA AU USA NZ agreement where the USG could gain access to intercepts of a US Citizen from one of the other 4. Under unusual circumstances this has been done for decades, now the police chief in Podunk will be able to access 'legally' without warrant - that is a great idea for dictators. What happened to our Constitution?
This is an expansion of the 'Secret' 5 Eyes agreement with the UK CA US NZ AU - for decades USG has been able to get intercepts of its Citizens without warrant "Because UK intercepted it and 'shared' it with us". This will codify and seem to 'legalize' violations of the Fourth Amendment, and it seems, make it possible for the police chief of Podunk to 'tap the wires' of anybody without warrant. What about our Constitution?
This is an expansion of the 'Secret' 5 Eyes agreement with the UK CA US NZ AU - for decades USG has been able to get intercepts of its Citizens without warrant "Because UK intercepted it and 'shared' it with us". This will codify and seem to 'legalize' violations of the Fourth Amendment, and it seems, make it possible for the police chief of Podunk to 'tap the wires' of anybody without warrant. What about our Constitution?
What did you think the "3rd party doctrine" was going to mean? It means that the 4th amendment is a dead letter the moment you put your data into the hands of a third party. This kind of absolute shit reasoning is why I laugh in the face of the rose-cheek, earnest face fucks who pull a pedantic poindexter by going "but da SCOTUS said X so that is clearly what it means:"
So in other words, even if you signed a legally binding contract with the third party, the intellectual giants of the court know you REALLY did not have an expectation of privacy. Even if Verizon promised in writing to go so far as to hire Blackwater and assassinate hackers who go after your data, you simply don't have an expectation of privacy because the court said so.
This is why all your data should always be stored in an encrypted format and you should never use plaintext or insecure data providers, including email.
and yet we can't challenge the program since no one can seem to prove standing
Give my phones away. Go back to cash.
It's a tragedy that when this bill gets shot down as unconstitutional, the critters that wrote it won't get punished.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Please stop calling such measures circumvention. It's no different than Implied Consent laws. Law enforcement and criminal justice officials who employ such methods with the clarity of language afforded by the Bill of Rights are in open rebellion against the Constitution and the will of the people. It's not circumvention, it's treason.
Blah blah blah ... my 1st and 4th amendment rights don't terminate your right to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness". But 2nd amendment rights frequently have the opposite effect.
But, hey, if you want to live in a shithole country like Beirut in the 80s, you're welcome to it.
Go exercise your 2nd amendment right on yourself, and save the rest of us the bullshit.
Because clearly you're in favour of a police state in which everything you do is monitored by the police without judicial oversight.
You're just spouting drivel and engaging in "whataboutism".
Slashdot... where the 4th matters, but the 2nd, we'll happily ignore or explain away.
The 2A does not (historically) mean what the NRA thinks it means:
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/12/16418524/us-gun-policy-nra
And if you're going to use the 2A to overthrow the government, you'll need to communicate and organize... which can be tracked if the 4A doesn't stick around.
Local church runs e-mail service for it's parishioners. I'd like to see how this will go down.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sorry, I posted and it didn't take (or so it looked).
It would be if people voted for them
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Knowing our government they probably wouldn't complain. Nobody gives a shit anymore since they all take care of #1 - themselves. Everyone who wrote this bill and bills like it should be put in jail without question.
That's right next door, isn't it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
at least we know why the FBI is whining about encryption so much.
All that Cloud data is a juicy target for them. . . . as long as they can decrypt it.
Useless to them if they cannot.
If you're doing the Cloud thing, make sure your data is encrypted before your Cloud provider receives it. At least, this way, they have to ask YOU for access to that data vs handing your provider a National Security Letter that lets them peruse your data at will.
"Lawmakers behind a new anti-privacy bill are trying to sneak it through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass government spending bill."
Can't you guys approve bills one by one? Your current system is *designed* to be abused by assholes.
You are correct. The primary purpose of any bill being passed is to serve pork to donors, either through spending or regulatory capture. I suspect any useful work our government actually does must in fact be snuck through attached to must-pass pork bills.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There is nothing wrong with thinking some are good but others are bad.
However, there are lots of things wrong with trying to circumvent the built-in process for changing the ones you think are bad. People never seem to realize that when you do that for the ones you think are bad, you also do it for the ones you think are good. They don't seem to be able to make the connection between their demanding the government ignore its own processes when it comes to the amendments they think are bad, and their fighting against the government trying to ignore its own processes when it comes to the amendments they think are good.
I am glad you recognize that it is much more important to maintain our divisions than to come together in areas where we have common ground.
If child pornographers are not using your data server, your data is not private
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The all seeing eye on top of the pyramid on your dollar bills seems to be becoming a reality. Sadly that eye seems to be the CIA controlled by a demented pervert we call the president.
Agree...
That said, the Second Amendment states it shall not be infringed...which means strict scrutiny. The Fourth protects from unreasonable privacy invasions, which is a rational basis. Best way to think about it is...if the people don't protest the TSA body cavity searches and replace their congressman it is reasonable.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
I run all my services on Linux locally on my own hardware. It isn't that I don't care, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I started a few years ago to have it all internal to my own location on my own hardware. They can ask all the want but without a warrant they get nothing. Email, web server, sip phone/asterisk, chat, nextcloud, etc., everything that I can house here that's what happens.
All my computers run Linux except my router which runs pfsense. I value my privacy even as others keep trying to give it away. You want privacy you can have it. I don't have to worry for myself but I'm sure others do and I feel for them, but you all have access to high speed 24/7 internet and lots of spare hardware. Don't even remotely think that maintenance is a nightmare. I rarely even look at the systems and when I do I can.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Now, be fair. You have to punish those that vote in favour of passing the bill too.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No, it's ight next doo.
At the bottom of the
While I agree in general, it doesn't look to me like the Second is under serious attack. The Fourth has been under constant attack for quite a few years now. The First has been seriously attacked, mostly the provision against establishing a religion.
Moreover, the Second has a politically powerful organization devoted to defending its interpretation of the Second, and ignoring other parts of the Bill of Rights. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it means other people don't feel inclined to defend the Second.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Says one AC to another AC.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Guns in society didn't stop any of this from becoming enforced law.
Perhaps you were not reading the legisations that were passed after that happened. Both major parties aggregated the parliamentary voting system to knobbe the power of independent parties, new censors ship laws, scrapping of telephone intercept warrants laws, introduction of restrictions on the right to free association, removing legal liability for soldiers shooting Australian citizens.
I suggest you don't know what you're talking about.
There are still many guns in Australia
Whilst I agree that it has reduced harm, it has still been used as a political instrument. Civilians do not have access to semi or full automatic weapons only single shot weapons. Even that is heavily licensed and regulated.
The question isn't weather reducing guns would have reduced harm, the question is if improving mental health would have reduced harm.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You're soooo cute.
One day you're going to look at all the mass shooting that happen in America and realise that the mental health issues that drive people to do that are created by the psychologist working to turn you into a compliant little consumer.
If you knew anything about the way Australia is used as a test market for the US then you would understand why you should pay attention.
But you just go on with your smug superiority.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The 4th amendment was clearly intended to establish a right to privacy of your personal possessions. Just because a lot of those possessions are digital and stored outside of your home, does not mean that right does not exist.
Elections matter. We need to elect people, regardless of party, that defend important rights like this, but you should look at their entire record, not what they say.
Thank the United States Supreme Court for that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Congress then extended 4th amendment protection to third party data through statute but anything Congress can grant Congress can take away. The government's preference is that everybody trust their false assurances that third party data is protected so that end to end encryption and other methods are not used to protect privacy while seizing and searching it all.