House Panel Approves Bill To Protect Older Email From Gov't Snooping (usatoday.com) 78
Erin Kelly, reporting for USA TODAY: A key House panel voted Wednesday to pass an email privacy bill that would stop the government from being able to read Americans' old emails without a warrant. The House Judiciary Committee voted 28-0 to approve the Email Privacy Act, a bipartisan bill that would replace a 1986 law that allows government investigators to peruse emails at will if the communications are at least six months old. The bill would require federal officials to obtain a warrant before they can read or view emails, texts, photos or instant messages -- regardless of when the data was sent. "Today is a great day for not only the Fourth Amendment advocates who have fought long and hard to move the Email Privacy Act, but also for all Americans, who are one step closer to having private and secure digital communications," said Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., the lead sponsor of the bill along with Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.
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Re:no parallel construction act? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parallel construction [wikipedia.org] is an orthogonal (unrelated) problem. Yes, it can be abused to obtain a warrant dishonestly, but it has legitimate purposes too. It is dangerous, but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it...
You are right — we had less. There was a law that diminished our privacy — in contravention with the Constitution. That law could've been abolished by either Supreme Court hearing a concrete case, or by a new law. The former has not occurred in 30 years, the latter just happened. Rejoice.
No, actually. We're all cows. Moo.
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Parallel construction is an orthogonal (unrelated) problem. Yes, it can be abused to obtain a warrant dishonestly, but it has legitimate purposes too. It is dangerous, but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it...
Parallel construction is far from orthogonal to privacy. It's basically permission to violate your privacy any way they wish, pretend it didn't happen and after the fact come up with an alternate story that doesn't violate your rights. They can just read your emails, listen to your phone calls, open your letters, bug your house, attach a GPS tracker to your car and if they get caught, too bad it's inadmissable. If they don't, a police officer just happened to catch you in the act or they got an anonymous ti
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It is not, even though police have (ab)used it, because it removes an important safeguard.
I do not like it in the least, but I don't think, it has much relation to the law in TFA.
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What parallel construction does violate is the fundamental bedrock principle of the modern legal system that you are allowed to question your accuser.
It is dangerous, but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it...
And just how do you know this? An 'innocent' person is one who can't be convicted based on the evidence introduced against them. When evidence that wouldn't be admissible is us
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Parallel construction is far from orthogonal to privacy. It's basically permission to violate your privacy any way they wish, pretend it didn't happen and after the fact come up with an alternate story that doesn't violate your rights. They can just read your emails, listen to your phone calls, open your letters, bug your house, attach a GPS tracker to your car and if they get caught, too bad it's inadmissable.
Exactly, thank you for pointing it out, especially considering there is no *time limit* for the monitoring of a citizen via intelligence sharing arrangements with other nation states. I have to admit that I'm still stinging a bit from being called a facist and a hater for pointing that out to people who didn't understand the issue so I hope people do develop a better understanding of what is going on when it come to the reality of their "freedom". Modern western democracies have access to more powers that m
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It's not often that I go a day without mud being thrown at me. I kind of like it. I do my best to state the truth and to accept my mistakes and not repeat them. However, I can - and will, tell it like it is. I'm pretty damned on the socialist side (for *very* different reasons than most) and have figured it's a badge of honor to be called an ultraconservative.
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However, I can - and will, tell it like it is.
I'm don't see this as a political issue in the sense of right or left, more of a matter government deceiving the electorate so that it can wield more power over the people, who are being deceived. This is more left *and* right.
These laws were presented with bi-partesan support in my country almost 18 months ago. There was the same public outcry about something that was irrelevant so they could pass something else. The contents of the both articles are identical in intent.
Section 4 in the US version conta
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but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it.
Kinda hard to do when the prosecution ends up charge stacking until 90% of defendants cop a plea.
So to be clear, enhanced interrogation can be abused to obtain information dishonestly, but it has legitimate purposes too.
I want to know how much gray is tolerated with procedure as long as it gets results.
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Citations missing.
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Citations missing.
That's easy enough:
Currently about 97% of federal "convictions" are guilty pleas. [themarshallproject.org] Other topics like the "trial penalty" are common enough subjects someone with your low user-number should know, and are easily found in search engines.
The common practice is for prosecutors to heap on an enormous pile of federal crimes until the risk of happening to be found guilty of some obscure aspect of one of them, like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that potentially forbids screen names under penalty of jail time,
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... [wsj.com]
http://www.thecrimereport.org/... [thecrimereport.org]
Moneyshot- "Ninety-seven percent of federal criminal prosecutions are resolved by plea bargain. In state courts the numbers are comparable."
And quid pro quo
Parallel construction [wikipedia.org] is an orthogonal (unrelated) problem
[citation needed]
but it has legitimate purposes too
[citation needed]
but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it
[citation needed]
I mean fair is fair, right?
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Why should the age matter in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I kept a diary no one would expect that entries older than six months were not still personal and private.
How is my private communication any different?
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The reason is that email worked different back then.
Back then, you would pull your email off the server and it would be off the server. Old emails could then be considered 'abandoned' which removes your rights to it.
Trouble is, that practice changed and the law didn't change to reflect that.
Re: Why should the age matter in the first place? (Score:2)
Old emails could then be considered 'abandoned' which removes your rights to it.
Like maritime salvage law? Are you sure you even know what you're talking about?
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Are you sure you even know what you're talking about?
Yes, in so far as I know what "logic" the government used.
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False. I got my first email account in 1990. I'd telnet in (yes, telnet!) and read my email in pine. It all stayed on the server.
The whole "abandoned" theory is just a legal fiction.
No pine in 1990... (Score:3)
Pine [wikipedia.org] was first released in 1992. Elm [wikipedia.org], perhaps? Or just the good old mail(1)?
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And I read my first email back in 1982. Stayed on the machine though until you deleted it.
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Age is certainly irrelevant, but dead citizens have no rights (to privacy), so once they're dead, only copyright prevents emails from being distributed. I don't know how this would work with two people communications where only one individual was alive.
This all reminds me of the steamy love letters from Warren Harding.
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My assumption would be they would still have full access since the owner of the account was deceased.
That being said I would not wan't someone running through my mail even though I would no longer be able to contest it.
Or... (Score:3)
Just store your old emails locally, instead of with your mail provider. Unless the provider logs everything, for all time, they can't cough it up, even with a warrant.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Informative)
This is warrantless search we are talking about. The gov't would still be able to get anything they wanted to know with a warrant same as always.
Email is not in anyway a public forum. Your Facebook wall however with your 3,531 "friends" is fairly public.
What if all the pictures on your phone (on many they are automaticity backed up to the cloud) were to be automatically forwarded to your local police dept if you didn't delete them after six months just in case lets Assume its not their job to look at them but they could if they wanted to without having to ask anyone.
Would that also be ok?
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Great plan until you have multiple devices. I sync work, home, laptop and cell phone with my mail server.
Luckily it's hosted in Germany rather than the US so I don't have to worry about these things.
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Great plan until you have multiple devices.
Because there's absolutely no way to work around that problem.
Not for long... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Exactly. This does absolutely nothing to stop any of the NSA programs. Did we....did we forgot about PRISM? Seriously?
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On one side we have disproportionate fear pushing people to blindly try to take security and privacy away from the public while on the other side we have the public's need for their data and e-commerce to secured against theft. Those agencies pressing for more and easier access to data and communications are trying to take advantage of that fear to make their jobs easier while not addressing the concerns of the public's safety from theft and fraud.
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This wont last long. The FBI, NSA and probably half a dosen other agencies will start to cry "but terrorism!!11!!!"
NSA: No problem.. We have all the old mail and a rolling grab on new stuff..
I bet Hillary likes this... (Score:3, Interesting)
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That she gave to them because if she were anybody else they would have raided the house and taken the server.
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Not that I have a full understanding of the whole private email server fiasco (TLDR requested), but either she was indited for a crime and a warrant could legally be issued for said emails, or there wasn't just cause, in which case these privacy protections would prevent officers from going on a fishing trip. What are you arguing for exactly?
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Not that I have a full understanding of the whole private email server fiasco (TLDR requested), but either she was indited for a crime and a warrant could legally be issued for said emails, or there wasn't just cause, in which case these privacy protections would prevent officers from going on a fishing trip. What are you arguing for exactly?
This. "Servergate" seems to be largely being propagated by people who don't seem to know how email works. If I'm allowed to access, for example, classified emails from a personal device, then they are, by defnition, copied to that device. Whether that device is a "server" or not is utterly irrelevant.
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Not that I have a full understanding of the whole private email server fiasco (TLDR requested), but either she was indited for a crime and a warrant could legally be issued for said emails, or there wasn't just cause, in which case these privacy protections would prevent officers from going on a fishing trip. What are you arguing for exactly?
This. "Servergate" seems to be largely being propagated by people who don't seem to know how email works. If I'm allowed to access, for example, classified emails from a personal device, then they are, by defnition, copied to that device. Whether that device is a "server" or not is utterly irrelevant.
Your opinion is obviously propagated by someone who does not understand how information security works at that level. At no time was Hillary Clinton authorized to send these documents to her private email server. That's why Hillary first asked for an approved Blackberry device from the NSA. They said no, she threw a fit and then illegally disseminated the email to her private server. Even if the email was not marked as classified, she's not off the hook. The rules clearly state that if you believe that
The requested TL;DR (Score:3)
Hillary had her own private e-mail server.
Hillary used that private e-mail server for government communication.
Some of that communication was classified, and wasn't handled as such.
Hillary did not turn over the server at the end of her tenure as Secretary of State (a condition of the rules allowing the use of a non-government server).
When prompted about the server because of Benghazi, Hillary denied access to the server until quite some time later.
When she did, she printed the e-mails out on paper, instead
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Questions circling: What, exactly, was Hillary truly aware of at the time, from a technical standpoint?
Irrelevant. She's required to undergo annual security training. During that time you are trained to not mix secure systems or networks with insecure systems or networks. If she did not know the rules then that is her fault. She agreed to uphold them and certified that she attended her annual training. If she did not know, it is her fault.
What, exactly, was Hillary truly aware of at the time, from a political standpoint?
I don't see how politics fall into this whatsoever. This is purely a criminal matter (the email server). Whether she did anything illegal for political reasons is ir
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As I recall reading recently, some of the classified emails were written BY Hillary, not sent TO Hillary. Really hard to argue that they were only classified after she received them when she was the author....
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Just don't try to convince me it can't...
Re:Let me guess. (Score:4, Informative)
I have not read it yet, but I would guess it has one or more of the following people in it.
Diane Feinstein
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
Lindsey Graham
Mitch McConnell
Notice how, in the title of TFA, this bill has been approved by a House panel? As in, The US House of Representatives? Of the five people you've listed here, four are US Senators. Nancy Pelosi is the one person in your list who is actually a member of the House. Note also that the bill has been passed by the House Judiciary Committee, of which Nancy Pelosi is not a member, so she could not have participated in this vote. Furthermore, she is not listed as a cosponsor of the bill.
There is a related Senate bill, the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015." None of the cosponsors of that legislation are on your list, either. There's also a House bill corresponding to that Senate bill, which also does not include Pelosi as a cosponsor.
Did you just vomit out a list of politicians that you dislike? This information is in the public record. It's pointless to 'guess' about facts that you can easily look up.