Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes

[Hermit-The-Prog]

[I missed seeing this evil little mess before, in all the other distractions.]

UPDATE, March 23, 2018: President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion government spending bill—which includes the CLOUD Act—into law Friday morning.

“People deserve the right to a better process.”

Those are the words of Jim McGovern, representative for Massachusetts and member of the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, when, after 8:00 PM EST on Wednesday, he and his colleagues were handed a 2,232-page bill to review and approve for a floor vote by the next morning.

In the final pages of the bill—meant only to appropriate future government spending—lawmakers snuck in a separate piece of legislation that made no mention of funds, salaries, or budget cuts. Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.

This bill is the CLOUD Act. It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill. Congress has a professional responsibility to listen to the American people’s concerns, to represent their constituents, and to debate the merits and concerns of this proposal amongst themselves, and this week, they failed.

[...]

Make no mistake—you spoke up. You emailed your representatives. You told them to protect privacy and to reject the CLOUD Act, including any efforts to attach it to must-pass spending bills. You did your part. It is Congressional leadership—negotiating behind closed doors—who failed.

Because of this failure, U.S. and foreign police will have new mechanisms to seize data across the globe. Because of this failure, your private emails, your online chats, your Facebook, Google, Flickr photos, your Snapchat videos, your private lives online, your moments shared digitally between only those you trust, will be open to foreign law enforcement without a warrant and with few restrictions on using and sharing your information. Because of this failure, U.S. laws will be bypassed on U.S. soil.

[...]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes

[Surely we didn't just give up sovereignty.]

[Squinch]

1. Holy shit!

This monstrosity will:

•Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people's communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.
•Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.
•Allow the U.S. president to enter "executive agreements" that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.
•Allow foreign police to collect someone's data without notifying them about it.
•Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it's a U.S. person's or not, no matter where it is stored.

They don't need Cambridge Analytica now. They can just give Putin the data directly.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. 4th

Doesn't that violate the 4th amendment on its face?

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment

Or, are there now not enough legit Justices for the Supreme Court to disagree with Reputins?

[Squinch]

4. You'd think, wouldn't you?

[Igel]

6. No.

Let's take one example.

"Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge".

Now, this summary is accurate, in a sense. "I'm thinking of a number from one to 10" has the possible answer, "Ah, I know what it is! It's in the set of all real integers!" My answer is accurate, but meaningless. So the summary is accurate, but meaningless. It summarizes it not to include all and only the cases that the law might cover; it summarizes the law to include far, far more cases than the law might cover.

The act allows foreign governments pursuing criminal investigations involving people involved in local crime (local to them, that is) to get information they've stored in the US. Why should a French prosecutor have to go to a US court and present their information to get US-stored data on a French citizen in France? In fact, if the information is stored on servers in 3 states, the French government would have to go through the process in three states. Or initiate a diplomatic process to circumvent some of this.

Note that the person whose data is requested isn't a US citizen in this example; he's not in the US; the crime wasn't in the US. But a French warrant has no standing. This gives the French warrant standing. And, in so doing, makes it "without prior review by an (American) judge". The law includes restrictions on limitations on the request, extent, purpose, etc., etc.

But the law doesn't include "demand personal data about US citizens in the United States". In fact, US citizens are specifically excluded from this, and a lengthier, already functioning, process is required.

That the law is so misrepresented for the one instance I've bothered to rummage around and check up on gives me no great confidence that the other representations are in any way really accurate. They're scary--and that's the intent.

However, to be fair, the devil's going to be in the implementation. Just as the ACA was implemented in a way that some found excessive and some found not far-reaching enough--because laws are already complex enough and can't account for all the things that a law these days needs to cover--a lot of questions will arise in the regulations that accompany the text of the law itself.

But notice that this is all the result of evil subterfuge, and it's horrible that there are things in that bill like this--it's a violation of principle. On the other hand, most (D) have no problem with the non-budgetary bits of law inserted, often at (D) legislator behest, that they like. They like the violation of principle in those cases.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. did you read the Act?

All I've found is:

https://www.hatch.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6ba62ebd-52ca-4cf8-9bd0-818a953448f7/ALB18102%20%281%29.pdf

I am not reassured.

That relies on the provider filing a motion to quash a demand for the content of a wire or electronic communication, and then a court "may modify or quash" only if -- and then there are conditions.

That's backwards.

[dalton99a]

9. +1

[Clarity2]

3. Wtf?!

How does this protect us from nefarious countries that will misuse personal info??! Russia for one!

So basically anyone from another country can request personal data, or wiretap without any just cause. Holy hell.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. Putin payment?

Maybe it was slipped in there to make Putin happy.

Any other time, I'd check myself in to a rubber room for typing that. Now, 'wtf' is sometimes an hourly thing.

[Clarity2]

8. Wtf has become a daily occurence for me

And anytime I see the traitor on tv, I find myself flipping him the bird. I've never been so angry. It's hard to have a filter these days.

I surely hope a civil liberties group is on this. This just cannot stand up. This is on the list of most outrageous things done by this admin.