House Passes Email Privacy Act, Requiring Warrants For Obtaining Emails (techcrunch.com) 61
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. House of Representatives has passed H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, sending it on to the Senate and from there, hopefully anyhow, to the President. The yeas were swift and unanimous. The bill, which was introduced in the House early last year and quickly found bipartisan support, updates the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, closing a loophole that allowed emails and other communications to be obtained without a warrant. It's actually a good law, even if it is arriving a couple of decades late. "Under current law, there are more protections for a letter in a filing cabinet than an email on a server," said Congresswoman Suzan Delbene during the debate period. An earlier version of the bill also required that authorities disclose that warrant to the person it affected within 10 days, or 3 if the warrant related to a government entity. That clause was taken out in committee -- something trade groups and some of the Representatives objected to as an unpleasant compromise.
So, they don't have to show a warrant? (Score:1)
But they can execute it anyway? Nice!
Re:So, they don't have to show a warrant? (Score:5, Informative)
But they can execute it anyway? Nice!
Yes. They'll just say the warrant fell into your spam folder.
any other... exceptions? (Score:2)
What other exceptions and riders did they wrote into the bill for themselves or their enforcers?
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3 letter agencies are going to do what they want, regardless of what the "law" says, just like they do now.
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The 3 letter agencies are going to do what they want, regardless of what the "law" says, just like they do now.
Yep. Some fine print is missing:
House Passes Email Privacy Act, Requiring Warrants For Obtaining Emails *
*Unless we don't want to issue a warrant and want to keep everything secret because terrorism.
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Why do you assume that their motives are altruistic? You think that after 250 years it's bound to happen or something?
How about this: When was the last time you saw the US Government do anything that didn't ultimately screw the population? I'll wait.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
So while we need change, what we certainly don't need is religious idealism. In short, I understand that you're angry, but you're not really helping, and no rational person is taking you seriously.
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yes but what we have established there are a significant number of bad actors. What we can't always do is tell the good ones from the bad. When we can't the safest thing to do is to assume malice.
Therefore, I would argue the only rational thing to do is a complete house cleaning, rip and replace approach to entire agencies.
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At best you have varying levels of incompetence competing for survival and trying (in vain) to do the right thing.
As we have seen time and time again, however, there are an abundance of self-serving people that have taken a job nobody else wants. They do as they choose, and when it's "wrong" they get the support of their cronies. Now, I have to wonder why their cronies would be so willing to go out on a limb for them? Is it because they're such nice guys? Is it because they think they might find themselves
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The goal was to have those mediocre or evil motives translate into helping ordinary people.
So far it has failed less badly than every other government in the world.
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Why do you assume that their motives are altruistic?
I certainly won't assume their motives are altruistic. I'd be surprised if the main reason this passed ISN'T because some relatively large number of congress critters and/or their powerful friends have quite a few things to hide in their emails.
That doesn't, however, automatically mean this act is bad. To know for sure one way or the other, we'll have to wait until we see what changes get made and riders get added by the Senate and then in committee.
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Smart people change their opinions on the basis of new information. Things like the subprime mortgage crisis, citizens united, climate change denial and the revelations from Snowden constitute new information.
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Also, it seems to only apply to email. People are putting a lot more than just email in "the cloud".
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what? iirc gmail (for example) keeps deleted email up to one year after it's deleted.
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That was the offer of IMAP... just leave it all on the server. See what that brings us?
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You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
You think that the NSA is looking through your actual "inbox"? Idiot. They are INTERCEPTING the data...by the time you've deleted anything they've already got a dozen copies. Dumbass.
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Re: Too little too late for Hillary (Score:2)
clap....clap....clap (Score:2)
Good for us! Vote early and often. Pretend this shite matters. Preserving rights and improving one's government is the very best legacy that can be left to your children, grand or otherwise.
Re: Republicans always stand against public safety (Score:2)
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Does this require that service providers retain that information, or does it just require that they turn it over if they have it? The law looks pretty broad, covering not only ISPs but any "remote computing service". Does that mean that anonymous services can no longer be offered? Does it require ISPs to retain logs of IP address assignments permanently?
If you, instead of being lazy, click through to the congress website and actually take the 5 minutes of your life it'll require to read the text, you'll see this is purely updates to the existing act. This is literally just editing the original bill so that wording encompasses modern/digital services.
I looked for any riders or other amendments, can't seem to find anything nefarious, but it was mostly a quick and dirty look to get the gist.
Sometime fear is a wonderful thing (Score:2)
What? Congress did a possibly good thing?
Yeah, but only out of cowardice. They're each terrified their own email might be abused. Sometimes bad motives like fear can produce good results, eh?
However, if you wait until the public isn't looking (which will take about 7 minutes given the current conditions) they'll add the rider in the fine print that the legal protections only applies to their OWN email (and perhaps the email of their campaign donors and future employers).
Still government of the corporations,
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Why not make it one year?
That way its ridiculously long and they would at least have to notify you eventually.
Madame Vice President (Score:2)
In other political news, Ted Cruz just announced his selection for vice president:
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/... [asset-cache.net]
Re: we already had such a law! (Score:1)
Well, see, the law currently says that if you abandon your property long enough that you've given up the expectation of privacy. This makes sense leaving physical items behind, and was applied to email in a time when storage was expensive and etiquette dictated that you not leave your email on the server. But go off with your uninformed rhetoric.
I'm all for it (Score:2)
They could create an international version of the NSA with domestic spying done by other countries agents.
There is a difference between requiring a warrant and magical folders appearing on your desk and not being able to use it.
This is not the same as making the government be responsible to preventing foreign intelligence agencies from spying on US citizens.
This is a mistake. (Score:2)
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Right, and searching your car should only require a warrant if it's locked in your garage.
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BTW, my reason for suggesting that it be encrypted is to encourage everybody to encrypt. Simple as that.