Patrick Leahy Ready To Cave To Law Enforcement: Has ECPA Reform Amendment To Include Loopholes For Warrantless Spying
from the lame dept
See update at the bottom...Back in September, we wrote about how Senator Patrick Leahy had introduced a really good bill for ECPA reform. ECPA (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) is an incredibly outdated bill concerning (as it says) the privacy of electronic messages. It was written in a time (the mid-1980s) before everyone had email, let alone everyone used web-based, cloud-stored email. And thus, it has weird provisions, such as considering that messages stored on a server for more than 180 days are "abandonded" and thus subject to very little privacy protections. And that's just one of many, many problems with ECPA, which treats all kinds of messages differently.
Leahy's reform was pretty straightforward: it basically said that if the government wants to see your electronic info, it needs a warrant. This seems completely reasonable and something that probably should be considered the law already if the 4th Amendment were respected. Of course, almost immediately after he introduced his reform package, we noted that the law enforcement community had freaked out over the bill, saying that if law enforcement had to actually, you know, justify its activities to a judge, it might have "adverse impact" on investigations (you know, like reading the love letters of generals).
We noted that those concerns led Leahy to delay the markup on the bill. However, it had been widely reported that the bill was back on track for late next week. And... today comes the bombshell. According to Declan McCullagh, Leahy is planning a manager's amendment to the bill that will effectively give large parts of the federal government an exception to the warrant requirement and let them snoop on your email with just a subpoena (i.e., no judicial oversight).
Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.In other words, this went from being a much needed bill to a dangerous bill very quickly. That's extremely unfortunate. ECPA reform is needed, but not this kind of reform. From what we've heard, while there is this new manager's amendment, it is not certain that Leahy will introduce this version, and may still go with his old version (or a modified version that still requires warrants). It seems important to let folks in Congress know that this possible amendment, allowing warrantless spying, is not acceptable.
Update: There's some debate over how serious this proposal was. A new report claims that this amendment wasn't likely to be seriously considered, even though it does exist. Declan McCullagh is standing by his story, and saying that the claim that this amendment won't be seriously considered is in response to the public outcry about it.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, ecpa, email, patrick leahy
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Patriot Act
When an act claims to be about privacy, it most certainly means less of it for the people.
I love the way they name these things.
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The only difference I can think of as to why it doesn't happen so much in other professions because they have at least some form of shame or reputation.
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Giving him the benefit of the doubt would be nice when it has not been proposed officially yet. This still looks highly dodgy and seems like the classic switcheroo in that he offers something the public welcomes but at the last moment switches it for something quite nasty.
Let the true colours fly, so we will never wonder why, where you shall live and die.
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I can't even think of 22 government agencies, let alone 22 that should have a need for any of this information with or without a warrant.
The people in government pushing strongly against needing warrants for these kinds of searches are going to cost tax payers big time in the event that the Supreme Court eventually rules that you DO need a warrant for all these seizures and searches.
Is it really worth risking that tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of court cases could all be overturned by the Supreme Court for violating the constitution on illegal searches and seizures without a warrant? All those millions of man hours, and hundreds of billions of dollars that will be wasted over the years.
Sure you may say, not if we arrest and convict enough people based on this illegally gathered evidence! But look at past supreme court rulings that did similar far reaching and very costly things.
-Over turning all death penalty convictions in the nation, ruling that it was being unconstitutionally carried out.
-Over turning over 100 years of precedent in campaign finance law in Citizen's United.
-Over turning a large number of criminal convictions where the defendant did not get their constitutionally guaranteed lawyer to defend them, forcing each state to retry thousands the cases again, or just let the people go free.
So yes, it IS a very big risk that COULD very well happen in the future if the government keeps this up and forces the court's hands.
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I'm sure that's no where near to a complete list. Not even in a drug-induced dream state.
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Amazin' how bills flip, huh? To always end up police state.
privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.
CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns."
Not just minor changes, but complete reverse of prior.
"let folks in Congress know that this possible amendment, allowing warrantless spying, is not acceptable." -- Mike, this just "legalizes" what's manifestly going on as daily routine. If they spy on General Petraeus, then they'll spy on you if the whim strikes them. And as I've pointed out before, a gov't that went to war in Iraq with completely phony excuses and there murdered upwards of a million people is NOT going to be concerned with your "civil rights". The "folks in Congress" all go along with the most fascist and high-tech police state in history, they've no interest in stopping it.
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Nothing changes until lawmakers feel personal fear.
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A good start.
This bill sets a valuable precedent for the near future (nearer than most people think):
Clearly, privacy is dead. Time to 'get over it'. The next frontier is to ensure that bad people aren't planning to do harm. Recent experiments have demonstrated an ability to see (to a limited extent so far, and only in a laboratory setting) what people are actually thinking. Presently, this requires MRI and CAT-Scan-like equipment, but that will soon change as equipment becomes cheaper and more portable. Obviously, once we can read all minds inexpensively, we'll be able to stop crime and violence before it happens.
It will be a paradise on earth. Something to look forward to.
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Perhaps because
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Its time people start getting more involved in the laws, regulations and reforming of laws
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You can not dare trust this schmuck.I am so amazed lately at the amount of idiots in both Government and Law Enforcement and the Military who seem to want to do whatever they can to lose our Freedom.Over and over they Pass Bad Laws which just keep giving them more and more POWER.
One of these days they will be paying for this one BIG TIME.
I hate these people and I have no sympathy for them either.
LEAHY is a Frakkin Asshole and we have not forgotten nor forgiven you Leahy...........As soon as I had learned of your so nice Bill I knew it would in the End be as bad or even worse than SOPA.
I hope you and all others who are working towards the destruction of Freedom pay for your Actions dearly.
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Send an email
Send every single member of Congress nasty emails and spam them to death-then make them pay for it by having the FBI investigate where all the emails came from, without a warrant for every single case. Bet they wouldn't like the idea of the Feds going through their emails or computers quite as much.
If I saw 10,000 emails all from 'anonymous' and protesting this, I'd be the first to stop the idea.
Leahy is a dinosaur and should have been put out of his misery in the last election.
Now we're paying the price for it.
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