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US Spending Bill Contains CLOUD Act, a Win For Tech and Law Enforcement (axios.com)
The 2,232 page spending bill released Wednesday by House and Senate leaders includes the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data [CLOUD] Act, which provides a legal framework for law enforcement to request data from overseas servers. The CLOUD Act currently sits high atop the wish list of tech firms, law enforcement and even foreign nations. Axios reports: The Supreme Court is currently mulling a case determining whether the Department of Justice had the right to force Microsoft to produce client emails stored on a server in Ireland without permission from Ireland's government. Microsoft fears the DOJ will force it to violate the laws of Ireland. The DOJ hopes to avoid the often years long process of abiding by treaties dealing with evidence. But both have publicly urged lawmakers to render the pending decision moot by passing the CLOUD act, a way to streamline the treaty process for requesting digital data.
The CLOUD Act provides a framework for reciprocal treaties for nations to request data from computers located within each other's borders. It also provides a mechanism for a Microsoft to take a law enforcement demand to court if it would force them to violate another country's rules. But when neither apply, law enforcement will be able to demand files in accordance with U.S. law.
The CLOUD Act provides a framework for reciprocal treaties for nations to request data from computers located within each other's borders. It also provides a mechanism for a Microsoft to take a law enforcement demand to court if it would force them to violate another country's rules. But when neither apply, law enforcement will be able to demand files in accordance with U.S. law.
This is one more reason to be extremely wary of international treaties à la CETA and TTIP.
And why again do you think your laws apply here?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Go ahead and pass this POS legislation. This has been building for a while - draconian police state laws in usa are unbearable. I think I'd rather live in Nazi Germany at this point. Those of you wishing to live in pre-crime/thought-crime utopia of USA - be my guest. Ive had my fill thank you very much.
And why do the lawmakers intend to determine the country where the data is stored? ... no, Germany ... in fact, I think now it's in Luxembourg, etcetc.
In a geographically dispersed storage with automatic loadbalancing, any item can be stored just about anywhere, and moved around before anyone can trace it. Good luck demanding the document of your interest from Ireland
Both the EFF (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/new-backdoor-around-fourth-amendment-cloud-act) and the ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/consumer-privacy/proposed-cloud-act-would-let-bad-foreign-governments-demand) think the CLOUD act is a bad idea.
J'aime mieux les méchants que les imbéciles, parce qu'ils se reposent. -- Alexandre Dumas
This article seems quite positive about the CLOUD act.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has quite a different take: The CLOUD Act: A Dangerous Expansion of Police Snooping on Cross-Border Data.
Is /. written for the benefit of law enforcement and big tech business or for nerds?
How long until Congress only passes one law a year: the Must Pass Logrolled Omnibus Act of 20XX?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The Echelon program allowed unfettered exchange of security data among various partnered nations. The NSA could, and did, obtain US domestic monitoring by asking other nations for it, and they obtained domestic monitoring in their own nations which they were not allowed to gather directly by their own national laws or constitutions. Given the extent of wholesale monitoring on the backbones of the Internet, by both domestic and international agencies, it effectively eliminates the privacy protections within individual nations.
The monitoring is also wholesale. I just had a Belarus company interview me for their wholesale email monitoring tool, designed to extract email attachments from a server plugged into the local network, but not placed on the SMTP server or physically installed as a man-in-the-middle. It's just the sort of thing the NSA used in "Room 641A", their infamous tap on the AT&T fiber optic backbone of the west coast of the USA. They certainly haven't given up on the backbone taps, and they've done wholesale monitoring on the whole email traffic of the USA with the Carnivore program. (That program is still active: they just renamed it wien it became public.)
Hurrah for the Stasi!
Hurrah for the Stasi!
Hurrah for the Stasi!
so you pass a law that has zero ability to work if the jurisdiction its in says get stuffed
nice waste a money again
Ask your pals at Time Magazine. They bragged about how Yeltsin (approval rating 8%) was put in power by the US via the IWF fund giving him $500 million to run a propaganda and smear campaign using Bill Clinton's campaig managers. (VS 3 million + harassment for his "communist" competitor.)
And Yeltsin was who put Putin in power.
Like the old joke: Why was there never a coup in the US? Because there is no US embass there! ^^
(The US meddled with the governments of 83 countries since '45. Coups NOT included. Russia did something in the 30s, and so is not a good fella either. Again not counting coups. Wikipedia has a list.)
Just another way for the Government to spy on us without due process.
Why is the CLOUD act part of a spending bill rather than a separate document? Are you unable to pass laws these days without threatening a government shutdown?
Maybe it's time the USA stopped exporting democracy and started importing it from those countries who haven't lost their way.
But, but it has the word "cloud" in it, so it must be good.
We also need a "blockchain" act, to make law enforcement great again.
I'm ll for working together where there are commonalities. That is a great power in social lifeforms.
What I am concerned with, is forcing people into one mold, of laws and moral standards and viewpoints, who are not the same!
Compare the Brits and east/south Germans. In the UK, nudity is still treated wth Victorian Catholiban insanity. Meanwhile, Munich has official public nude areas in the city and eastern Germany has a long tradition of nude bathing and sports (including hiking).
There are countless exampes of countless variations.
And most of us don't like most of them.
Yet I want everyone to livr their life how they want, as long as that does not prevent others from also living theirs.
And you can bet if the EU becomes a federation, it will be pushed into becoming one culture too, with the same insane duo of SJW safe-space-dictstorship-prison diversity-or-die nutjobs and polar opposite dog-eat-dog capitalist aka neocon aka fascist literal-actual-psychopath-in-the-medical-sense nutjobs that rule the US. With everything sane and *human* suppressed due to that mindset duo dominating "public opinion".)
There are ways. Keeping keys only in a foreign branch is one. But, in general, don't trust your data to any US-based company.
I am having trouble understanding how this wouldnt be a poison pill for us companies. If this act is made into law and then used, would it not over time lead people in other countries to garner mis-trust in US Corporations?
What confuses me more is this could be most detrimental to Microsoft as losing their monopoly of business desktop operating systems would be a death blow, after-all there is no point in using Microsoft server systems if you don't have the desktops to tie into it.
Maybe it is just hope but i could see this having the unintended consequence of creating more local social media and search options or other countries enacting laws specifically to guard against this type of BS. I just cant tell any more if it is stupidity or we are all just being played on so many levels, for example:
Sidewalk Labs(part of google) 'hadn't foreseen' data concerns in designing Toronto neighbourhood:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...
Threats and military force are the most VISIBLE use of a large military, but not at all the most common or most important to international relations. Ireland, spending 0.5% of its GDP on military, lacks even the most basic ability to defend itself. Ireland doesn't NEED to be able to defend itself because it can depend on its friend, the United States.
For comparison, Saudi Arabia spends 10% of GDP, the US 3.5%. The US doesn't need to threaten invasion, nations like Ireland know that they are 100% reliant on the US, UK, France, and Germany for their defense. The US has twice as much military power as the entire EU combined, so it's a really good idea to have the US on your side in case of any conflict.
That's the primary use of the US military - allowing countries like Ireland to be defended by the world's only $500 billion military while they spend only $500 million. They just have to be a good friend to the US.
All US Services located in countries overseas should have to provide the following disclaimer on every page, in a large font.
WARNING. Data stored on this server is the PROPERTY of the US Goverment. You do NOT OWN This data.
The DATA is NOT Encrypted, The DATA is Stored in CLEAR TEXT. No WARRANTY is given. NOW WARRANTY or FITNESS for a particular purpose.
Yoy PAY US, You take your chances with your DATA. You may be FALSELY ACCUSED of CRIMES , and subject to US law in a kangaroo court.
It turns inadmissible, illegally garnered evidence through theft, torture, etc., into legal admissible evidence. The governments already have all the access they want. Nobody can stop them from doing that. They just break in and take it, which of course they do all the time. All this is happening because there is no effective opposition, in fact the conservative authoritarian majority of the population wants it. Democracy cannot work when run by the stupid and the corrupt. Without effective resistance we are doomed to fascist dystopia for all of eternity.
Anything hailed by both law enforcement and big data means privacy just got the shaft
Basically the DOJ finds due process and the use of evidence to be too cumbersome, so they'd rather just be able to force Microsoft and others to bypass that whole process.
I can't wait until some MS employee lands his ass in jail for complying with this kind of thing, and MS themselves get huge fines.
America has now officially jumped the shark, and the concept of the law and due process is too inconvenient.
The rest of the world is going to tell you to go fuck yourselves, and you deserve it.
Encrypt everything. Use PGP, make sure your passwords are strong and secure.
Use encrypted e-mail and messaging. Signal is a great end-to-end encrypted messaging app. ProtonMail is a fully encrypted e-mail provider, all of your e-mail is encrypted on their servers, and even the admins cannot access your data, and don't have the decryption keys.
If you use cloud services, in your home country or abroad, make sure your data is encrypted.
If the governments want your data, let them struggle with an encrypted file, or produce a proper legal warrant to request the keys/passwords.
Now is the time for us to protect ourselves more than ever from illegal use of the legal systems.
paying back his debts.
Well, I hope you do, because I don't. But I imagine it involves something about a pub tab and unpaid fines to the government.
When Republicans cared about the Constitution? And balanced budgets? And their candidates not sleeping with porn stars, then paying them hush money, then lying about it?
Ah the Good Old Days, it was a simpler time.
is like saying that cancer is a win for the medical industrial complex.
NHA
Is this meaningful? What force of law does a treaty framework coming from the legislative branch have? The executive branch is the one with the treaty power. The senate can either agree or disagree. Is this just advice to Trump that he can then follow at his discretion in negotiating new treaties?
This is not a win for tech, they should be worried. This is a bad thing for privacy, for everyone, and typical behavior of the USA asserting themselves over other sovereign nations.
The DOJ is pushing back at Microsoft over the whole NYC case, which is now before SCOTUS, ruling expected in July. The case started in 2014 with the NYC DA wanting to go fishing on an email account without any real case, MS have a reasonably robust process and criteria which were not met, so they said no.
Like all good governments, if they can't beat them, they legislate against them - making it illegal to say know with likely substantial fines, instead of the current moral grey area it is now. Do you really trust the Executive Branch (Donald Trump) to unilaterally negotiate data access agreements with foreign nations?
Hopefully MS/Google/FB et. al. have the stones to resist forced requests for information, saying it's unconstitutional which always ends protracted out in court.
The EFF has an excellent write up on this and a call to action https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/new-backdoor-around-fourth-amendment-cloud-act
The other missing part is that our Government, or any other Government could obtain an individuals files without a warrant. The internet just died, don't use your debit or credit, go to raw cash or bartering. 1 pound of beef for 100 bullets? That sounds pricey to me!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks