New Trump Executive Order Says Federal Agencies Should Exclude Foreigners From Privacy Protections
from the immigrants-founded-this-country,-but-what-have-they-done-for-us-lately? dept
It's America first, everyone else second. That's the new administration's message. An executive order full of disturbing mandates contains a proposed rollback of privacy protections extended to foreign residents' personal information, as ProPublica's Julie Angwin pointed out on Twitter.
Here's the section detailing the clawback of privacy rights from President Trump's "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States" executive order.
Sec. 14. Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.
This doesn't appear to touch the Obama's Presidential Policy Directive issued in response to the Snowden leaks, which ordered US agencies to show a bit more respect to the personal information on foreigners harvested by multiple surveillance programs. The relevant part of PPD-28 reads:
All persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside, and all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information. U.S. signals intelligence activities must, therefore, include appropriate safeguards for the personal information of all individuals, regardless of the nationality of the individual to whom the information pertains or where that individual resides.
What it never instructed agencies to do is stop collecting it, or to even scale their collection programs back. The solution isn't less spying -- despite the Snowden revelations -- but more policies. This is still intact despite Trump's executive order. He has the option of revoking previous Presidential Policy Directives, so it's not as though this extension of rights is untouchable.
The order basically states that government agencies no longer need to extend privacy protections to foreign residents' data that they may possess. The problem with this rollback is that it rolls back very little. Foreign data isn't covered by the Privacy Act. The president may have been targeting Obama's presidential directive with this executive order, but he has missed badly.
What it does do, however, is screw with the Passenger Name Record agreement the US signed with the European Commission back in 2007.
IV. Access and Redress: DHS has made a policy decision to extend administrative Privacy Act protections to PNR data stored in the ATS regardless of the nationality or country of residence of the data subject, including data that relates to European citizens. Consistent with U.S. law, DHS also maintains a system accessible by individuals, regardless of their nationality or country of residence, for providing redress to persons seeking information about or correction of PNR.
Then again, this was screwed with before the ink was even dry. The Bush Administration changed the terms of the deal less than two weeks later by stripping everyone -- US citizens and foreigners -- of these privacy protections by exempting the DHS's Arrival and Departure System, as well as the multi-agency Automated Targeting System from the Privacy Act.
The more disturbing part of the order is the installation of a Two Minutes Hate program for foreigners and any municipalities deemed to be "sheltering" aliens from the federal government.
To better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions, the Secretary shall utilize the Declined Detainer Outcome Report or its equivalent and, on a weekly basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens.
One would think it might be just as useful to collect information on domestic, US person-created "public safety threats" and make a "comprehensive list of criminal actions" committed by people who can't be expelled from the country. Presented without comparison, it will skew public perception, making it appear as though the main criminal force in the US is people who aren't here legally. (The order doesn't specify whether non-residence will be considered a "criminal action" worth listing in the report.)
On top of that, the order mandates the creation of an office that will cater solely to victims of criminal acts committed by non-US residents. It also orders the funding of additional personnel to man the borders and expedite the expulsion of non-residents. There's no stipulation for random testing of US persons' bodily fluids for dilution or impurities, but one assumes the nascent order will be undergo further alteration during rollout.
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Filed Under: donald trump, executive order, foreigners, privacy, privacy act
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what mr cushing is trying to hide is the section 1 to which sec 14 applies.
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Yes, 49 pointy heads CAN dance on the head of a pin. It may not matter much to the apparatchiks referenced in the "banality of evil" quote, but it will matter a great deal to the specific victims of the specific crimes.
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Media isn't fake just because you don't agree with it.
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On Wednesday I responded to "Appeals Court Upholds Its Denial Of DOJ's Demand For Microsoft's Overseas Data:"
Microsoft and it's various resellers here in Canada are constantly trying to convince us to move all our servers and workstations to the cloud. The number one selling feature, from an email just yesterday:
This is a big deal. A major theme of the NSA spying, Gitmo and drone killing debates in the US is "How Dare They Do It To AMERICANS!" The subtext being that doing it to non-Americans is acceptable. No-one believes that foreign-owned data has any legal protection whatsoever against otherwise unlawful search and seizure once it enters the US. No-one believes that it won't be mined by American security contractors "because terrorism" to give an advantage to American industry.
If Microsoft were to lose this fight they'd lose much of their overseas cloud hosting business.
[...]
This Executive Order was issued the same day.
Americans are getting their own "Great Firewall of China." Even if their own government doesn't order it, governments, cloud hosting providers and others outside the US are finding it necessary to build it themselves.
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Makes sense
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No seriously, America managed to put a lunatic in the White House.
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For those people, there are additional filing requirements under FABAR, the detailed banking records of which are reported to the FinCen.
Under FATCA, foreign financial institutions worldwide are required to report bank account information to the IRS, for all US persons - anyone with a "US indicia" or taint. FATCA is currently being challenged in the 6th district court on constitutional grounds
Many expats and "accidental Americans" are renouncing or relinquishing their citizenship because of the impacts of FABAR and FATCA. These impacts include being subjected to huge penalties for errors, omissions, late or no filing; double taxation; loss of banking facilities; loss of or inability to plan for retirement; and, of course, the time and money to file an additional multitude of tax forms annually, requiring the assistance of speciality tax preparers.
Under this executive order, these people whose detailed personal and financial information is held by FinCen and the IRS, which can already be shared to a multitude of other federal, state and local agencies, now no longer has privacy protections.
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Re: Makes sense
This was already discussed here on TD. Parts of your Constitution were written in a way to include everybody.
"If you're not doing anything wrong why should one care"
This was also discussed and proven wrong here and elsewhere. You have plenty to fear even if you've done nothing. When the 'just metadata' discussion was in all heat it was shown how metadata alone can paint an entirely false picture of somebody.
"If someone wants to track me from day to day have at it, you're going to be bored out of your mind in about 3 days."
Or, if the person doesn't like you and has connections to the power, they can find suspicious places somewhere around places you go frequently (ie: a meth lab you are unaware of in the neighborhood you park your car to jog everyday) and screw you good. You wouldn't even know until the truck hit you :-)
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As quoted in the Techdirt piece, the order applies to ... persons who are not United States citizens .... Expats and accidental Americans are United States citizens until their renunciation is completed. They may be exposed by this order after their renunciation is formally accepted; prior to that acceptance, they are United States citizens, whether they want to be or not.
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The favor may be reciprocated.
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All of this information, and potentially any previously held information, is now excluded from privacy protections. That's bank account numbers, balances, transactions, personally identifying information - name, SSN, address, etcetera. More than enough for identity theft, and with the added bonus of being able to identify the best targets.
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Avoidance of reality
The purpose of creating a list of illegal immigrant crimes helped by sanctuary cities is to publicly shame those cities into renouncing their sanctuary status. That way, the next time an illegal kills a person in San Francisco, the feds can point to the San Francisco govt and say "this is all on you!"
And its not Two Minutes Hate. In 1984, that was a mandatory program designed to enforce party loyalty and denigrate the enemies of the state through mandatory action. In this program, the state will merely advertise atrocities and point to the accomplices of the criminals (sanctuary cities). The public is free to make their own choice whether to celebrate the crime, condemn it and sanctuaries, or ignore it altogether.
Its trivial propagandizing of truthful information. Far removed from the author's claimed fascist progroms.
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Re: Makes sense
TRAVIS LOSES... Thanks for playing.
"If someone wants to track me from day to day have at it"
The part of a republic is that each of us have unalienable rights... like the right to privacy. You don't care about yours... fine. But you have no say as to me and my privacy, or to just brush away EVERYONE else's concerns.
"If someone wants to track me from day to day have at it"
Yeah... you say that here. EVERYONE has things they don't want others to know.
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Re: The favor may be reciprocated.
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Also, under FABAR, the business accounts on which a US citizen is a signatory or has signing authority are required to be reported to the FinCEN. This may include payroll and expense data for non-US persons.
None of this qualifies for privacy protections under this executive order.
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Apropos torture: it's not all that surprising that the concept of only being able to expect from others what you are willing yourself to grant is alien to a president who made a fortune by paying no taxes unlike less wealthy persons and by strategic bankruptcies ruining the business of other people in order to further his own.
This is a man who does not understand the benefits of compassionate or moral behavior, either by conviction or even mere reciprocity. He is a sociopath utterly unsuited for a position of power, specifically political power.
He is what America adores.
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NORAD is now at DEFCON 2
The SSBBAS has moved the Doomsday clock to 3 minutes to midnight.
And I just saw Miss Piggy flying overhead.
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Re: Makes sense
In that case you would STILL have the same rights that the locals have. You're not being singled out, not being spied on in PRIVATE places too, made legal because you're a foreigner.
A better (and real) example is that your medical data may be moved to India for clerical work. Your email may be mirrored to overseas cloud server farms. Your company data may be in the US, in the hands of a foreign-owned company (or American company operating overseas) that could be ordered by a foreign government to hand it over.
In each case YOU are the foreigner. You're OK with that nullifying any right you have to privacy?
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Re: Avoidance of reality
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This is why the bill of rights should apply to foreigners
Situations like this are exactly why I argue the bill of rights does and should apply to everyone, and not just US citizens as many others insist.
If the government will violate the rights of foreigners, such as their rights of privacy, how can US citizens expect to have the same rights? With technology connected to the Internet especially it's absurd to think the government can spy on everything a foreigner (especially a foreigner on US soil) does online, all while respecting the privacy of US citizens.
Plus violating the bill of rights on foreigners can have massive chilling effects. Imagine for example if the government passed a law that foreigners who criticize the government are to be sentenced to life in prison, all while insisting US citizens were free to do the same thing because of the bill of rights. It's absurd to think such an action wouldn't have a massive chilling effect on freedom of speech, and that people wouldn't be scared if they do the same thing as a foreigner the government will find some other reason to throw them in jail that doesn't have the pesky bill of rights interfering.
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Given that his approval ratings his first week in office look like George Bush's the week after Katrina, I'd say pretty good.
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Two Things Money Cannot Purchase
2. A soul
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Criminal Acts
On a lighter note, 1984 is a bestseller again.
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I've stated elsewhere that "fake news" is a dumb, imprecise term. This is why.
When people started talking about "fake news" in the wake of the election, they didn't simply mean reporting that was biased or incorrect, they were referring, specifically, to fraudulent news sites: sites that were designed to look like NBC or other established media outfits (nbc.com.co, etc.) but whose stories were completely made up.
That is not at all the same thing as biased reporting. Biased reporting is still reporting. It isn't just making shit up out of whole cloth (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor).
All that said, the notion that media bias is a new thing is absurd (the other Anon mentioned Hearst and the term yellow journalism; that's from over a century ago) -- but, at the same time, you're on to something when you suggest that the news media's current poor reputation is somewhat self-inflicted.
I think it's quite clear that the news media are biased -- but not toward a liberal or conservative point of view. They're biased by money and power. They favor the stories their corporate owners and advertisers favor, or the stories that they think will get them good ratings or clicks, or the stories that will allow them to keep their access to their high-profile sources. For all these reasons, they've done a great deal of damage to their credibility and reputation.
This is not a good thing. Skepticism of the media is healthy, but we're beyond that and into people who believe that facts are just opinions. That is a very dangerous thing indeed, among our elected leaders and among the people who vote for them.
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GOOD!
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Re: Re: Avoidance of reality
Plus, he misspelled pogroms.
Or possibly programs. I can't really tell.
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Re: Makes sense
Because privacy isn't the same thing as secrecy.
I'm quite partial to Cory Doctorow's analogy: what I'm doing in the bathroom stall isn't secret, but it is private. Just because you're not doing anything wrong doesn't mean you want somebody watching you do it.
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Re: GOOD!
Well, this guy seems trustworthy.
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US First
Look, I get the US first mindset. I do. There are plenty of real problems here at home, and it can be frustrating to see so much time, effort, and money spent towards problems that don't even affect us. The US should not be acting as world police (and, indeed, doing so for the most part just pisses other nations off).
However!
With that said, it's doubly important to think about chained effects. Shit like this is dangerously short-sighted. Like it or not, we live in a global community. When we do shit like this, it sends a message that it's "us against the world", and that's a very dangerous message to send. Look at what Obama did after the Snowden leaks, he pulled back on intrusive surveillance of allied nations. Was this because he cares one whit about privacy? Obviously not, given what he sanctioned within our own nation. No, he curtailed some of the more egregious programs because our allies were pissed off about it, and he wisely avoided a major diplomatic incident. This is something Trump desperately needs to learn. Shit like this tends to escalate. It won't be long before our allies, let alone the rest of the world, takes this a step further in response.
Fuck, say what you will about Hillary, (she would have been fairly terrible on domestic issues, in my opinion), but at least she understands international politics.
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Re: Makes sense
Put up or shut up.
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"Deadly radiation, no atmosphere to speak of, and now no in-flight meal! Mars is a terrible place to visit!"
Did they really need another reason to avoid the US at this point?
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Changing names and IDs
Good luck on that one.
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Re: Makes sense
So americans don't have the protection of the laws in other countries, got it.
Also if you don't have any problem with people tracking you because you're 'not doing anything wrong', then post under your full name and provide enough personally identifiable information so people can know exactly who you are. Unless you are doing something wrong of course, which will be the default assumption if you don't provide your full name and info.
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Re: Re: Makes sense
After all, the US's "Extraordinary Rendition" program kidnapped over a hundred people from EU soil alone. Many tortured, and many returned months or years later with an "er, never mind." Turnabout is fair play.
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I dont think so.
More like ummm .. idk, 30 percent of registered voters?
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Re: Criminal Acts
Hmmmm, I recall a recent news item which claimed Melania Trump was guilty of this. Was she deported or lose any assets?
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Re: GOOD!
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Re: US First
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Re: Re: Avoidance of reality
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Re: Re: Re: Makes sense
That's not something a bully needs to accept when he has what it takes to let Untermenschen eat sand.
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Re: Two Things Money Cannot Purchase
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Finally some clarity from the US govt
In my opinion, to start a broad, collective, productive reasoning on privacy, all cards need to be on the table. Then, everyone can think with his head.
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Re: "Yankee Go Home"
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Sorta like what you are trying to do in your comment.
fake comments - lol
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" true journalists like Walter Cronkite"
and your memories are not biased?
"People who reported facts, actual facts that had been checked and vetted"
You mean back when editors were given more latitude by their corporate overlords?
" Fake news, Biased news and Bad news are all marketing techniques. "
And here you hit the bulls eye.
Everything you see in the corporate media is a marketing campaign. Sell sell sell, always be on the make and everyone has an angle. It has been this way for some time and is continuously getting worse. Truth in advertising laws were nice fluff with little substance, politicians could pat themselves on the back because they did something for the little people while still collecting their bribes -errr I mean campaign contributions from captains of industry.
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Have you any data in support of your claim?
Seemingly, the recent national vote result might be somewhat close to an accurate poll which, based upon demographics, could be extrapolated to indicate a preference within a deviation of maybe plus or minus 5 percent. How does this not represent what the population "adores"?
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Nice job trumpster
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Re: Re: "Yankee Go Home"
Doubt that will be happening in the next four years
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Re: Re: Re: "Yankee Go Home"
If anything, it fits in with his anti-refugee policy of providing aid locally instead of transporting those affected to the USA.
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Trump reprises Churchill
Clinton's version:
"condescension so smug that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of hypocrisy"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: "Yankee Go Home"
Curtailed?
That implies there was such a thing to begin with.
We can not help our own citizens while we busily pat ourselves on the back for "sending in the marines" whenever a natural disaster occurs elsewhere. Strange thing though, that so called help comes with conditions, if it happens at all. Much of it is promises that never appear and then some folk turn up handing out bibles, Mmmmm those bibles taste really good.
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Re: Trump reprises Churchill
"We have the best bigly truthiness, no one has better truthiness than we do. You will have so much truthiness you get tired of having so much truthiness"
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Foreign nationals rights.
The assumption is that a foreign national is an agent (acting in the interests of that nation, not necessarily a spy) of that nation. Nations with large exchange (Mexico, Canada, UK etc.) have very specific treaty rights that include their Citizens and nationals being treated the same as US Citizens in the USA only if they are here under the color of law. Nations outside of these specific nations (China, Russia, North Korea, etc.) the rights are only rights of not being tortured, etc.
Not everyone is the same both the Government and the "civil rights community" need to remember this.
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Politicians on the take are here illegally?
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Re: Re: Re: Makes sense
I would think that a better measure would be the number of fools who sign up for said storage - not the text of an agreement that said marks are supposedly reading.
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Re: Avoidance of reality
Will this "list" include all those individuals responsible for the many atrocities committed in the name of fighting their pet war - for example, the war on; terror, drugs, poverty, christmas, whateverBindsYourPanties ?
Yeah, I didn't think so either. It is just another stunt to further their ridiculous "Make America Great Again" bullshit, something they never defined and something no one understands but it will continue to plague the airwaves regardless.
When was America great and exactly what was the defining characteristic that made it so - in addition, why is it so important to return to whatever that was that no one can define? .... If anyone can answer this it would be great because I must be missing a key bit of data here.
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Re: This is why the bill of rights should apply to foreigners
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
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"Fake news is really just referring to the journalists who try to burden their readers with their own personal views/feelings/agendas."
How the hell is it that in the space of about a year a huge number of people like you lost their shit and changed the meaning of the word 'fake'? Go read a damn dictionary.
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Re: Avoidance of reality
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/27/trump-says-sanctuary-cities-are-hot beds-of-crime-data-say-the-opposite/
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Re: Foreign nationals rights.
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Our national charter starts with the words WE THE PEOPLE.
Your logic is flawed; and your grasp of civics and government would get you a failing grade in most middle school curricula. But you are correct about the fact that recent studies have shown that most top-tier CEO's have sociopathic personalities. That is undeniably a large part of what got the current president elected. The fact that he refuses to be bound by the norms and standards of the corrupt and disfunctional clique that is and has been the US federal government. The principal at work is exactly the same as turning an overactive terrier loose in a shoddy tenement full of rats. Hopefully the result will be too.
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What about embassies? Does this mean it's ok to order diplomats to surrender all their data? How their home countries will react to this?
Also, what about...Russian goverment saying it's ok to ask Yandex any and all information about Americans who use them? (it's unlikely there are many but still)
What about them asking same data from Kaspersky?
What about Chinese goverment asking Xiomi about data THEY collect?
What about EU (or Russian) goverment suing Google in their local courts for privacy violations ?
and so on...
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"Accidental Americans" often have absolutely no idea about this (or about the requirement to register for the selective service), particularly those that either don't know that they are US citizens or those that may have left as young children, and not returned and don't consider themselves American.
Permanent residents that have left the US without formally terminating their permanent resident status are also subjected to this taxation. If you've ever tried to contact the INS or whatever the current incantation is known as now, you would know that this may have been an all but impossible requirement for someone departing the country, again, if they even knew of the requirement to do so in the first place.
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Yes, born on US soil, the US maintains the right to dictate terms to you, follow its laws, and to tax you, anywhere in the world you might reside, with whatever other citizenship you might have.
To gain your freedom from this it must be bought by the paying of a fee (currently US$2,350), submitting taxes and potentially paying an exit tax on your worldwide assets (including any and all assets outside of the US, gained since leaving the US). This applies to "Accidental Americans" some of whom have never set foot in the US). And this is done with the risk of never being allowed entry into the US again.
Just think about that.
If you are born overseas to a parent that is American, everything that you do for the duration of your entire life is subjected to US taxes, while you are subjected to US law. Until you pay to no longer be subjected to the dictates of a foreign government.
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So, for an Accidental American, who may never have set foot inside the US themselves, marrying a non-US citizen later in life, that noncitizen's lifetime savings are also subjected to tax by the US, even though their sole connection to the US is by marriage to someone that may not have even known that they were a US citizen.
Apologies for hijacking this thread to use as a soapbox on the circumstances of taxation, instead of the issues of privacy originally raised.
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I repeat - bullshit
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Re: Re: US First
It's like talking to a brick wall,
but wth..........
---- This is no longer about Hillary ----
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Exceptionalism Destroys Democracy
Exceptionalism destroys democracy. It does this by pretending that {$group} is superior or requires special treatment. This puts other groups at a disadvantage, thereby creating an imbalance of power. Trump is invoking the "Bloody foreigners!" boogeyman, a trope he no doubt borrowed from his good friend that bloke who looks like a tortoise escaped from its shell. What'shisname. Whojammaflip. That British guy the rest of us are ashamed of. Oh, yes, Nigel Farage. The Tories, which are basically Trump Lite, swept to power on the back of fears stoked up by UKIP, Farage's party. Theresa May has a nerve proclaiming that she disagrees with Trump policies when she's enacting them over here. And what is she demonstrating as she trots around the globe? Exceptionalism, the British edition.
So as you Americans flock to the airports, etc., to protest against Trump's treatment of the "Bloody Foreigners!" flying in (because it is so egregiously horrible), don't forget to flock to your representatives to complain about the treatment of the "Bloody foreigners!" who reside peacefully and productively in the land. It might not be visible, there aren't queues of desperate people being herded onto planes by hard-eyed officials deaf to the cries of their waiting families; and there aren't any desperate appeals to help some poor sod stranded at an airport on t'other side of the world clutching their spoiled green card, all money spent on getting there; but it is as egregiously horrible as the entry ban.
Privacy is a human right, not an "exceptional group" right. If you don't fight for the rights of the "Bloody foreigners!", you can kiss your own goodbye down the line.
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Or trans fats out of their food.
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Expect more of this.
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