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Privacy The Internet United States Politics

Senate Defeats Amendment To Shield Browsing Histories in FISA Searches (politico.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
The Senate on Wednesday blocked a bipartisan effort to shield Americans' internet browsing and search histories from warrantless surveillance. From a report: Lawmakers voted 59-37 on an amendment by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to a House-approved bill that would reauthorize domestic surveillance authorities. It was the first in a series of at least three amendment votes that senators agreed to in March. The intelligence tools expired on March 15 after senators left town without renewing key sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, amid objections from privacy hawks who said the compromise bill didn't go far enough to safeguard Americans' personal data and communications. Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted in a floor speech that Americans are relying on the internet more than ever due to the Covid-19 pandemic. "Don't those Americans deserve some measure of privacy?" he asked, arguing that without the amendment "it is open season on anybody's most personal information."
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Senate Defeats Amendment To Shield Browsing Histories in FISA Searches More

Senate Defeats Amendment To Shield Browsing Histories in FISA Searches

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  • Let it expire. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by syn3rg ( 530741 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @02:38PM (#60057120) Homepage
    The FISA Courts haven't exactly worked as advertised.

    • Re:Let it expire. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @02:57PM (#60057194)
      I think everything the government does should come with an expiration date. Very little of it works as advertised and Congress is too chickenshit to actually vote to remove anything less someone raise sufficient fuss to hurt their reelection chances in any way. Make the passive choice the one that prevents government detritus from building up.

      • Won't work.

        They'll just have a Bill up every few years renewing everything with an expiration date on it.

        Unfortunately, the only real solution to something like this is well into the realm of Ain't Gonna Happen - and that would be vote out anyone who voted for this....

        And even that won't work well. Because some group will see an advantage in the Other Guys voting their guys out (to wit: Committee Chairmen and such are picked from among the most experienced Congresscritters, so if we don't vote our guy

        • Just as the Congress gets past the Article 1 (s) 8 injunction "Congress shall have the power to raise armies, but no appropriation for any such shall endure beyond 2 years"
          i.e. army closes and ends in two years and a new one must be raised.
          So, new appropriations every year, same army.
          End run

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by The Rizz ( 1319 )

            You misquoted the clause. It's “raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years,”

            So, specifically, you cannot pull money aside one year to be used three years later, but says nothing about the army having to be disbanded after two years. It was disingenuous to misquote it the way you did. Doubly so since the US had formed after a conflict that had required an army to fight against the British for over 8 years, and it's ridiculous to t

        • We're talking about a FISA renewal vote (again) precisely because many programs, including FISA *do* have expiration dates, and they are NOT in fact renewed en masse.

          FISA has actually been renewed in 2008, 2012, 2017, and 2020, each time with changes. (Also modified in 2007).

          So your prediction about what would happen when FISA comes up for renewal is actually predicting the past. The prediction about the past is wrong. Each time it gets modified.

          Speaking of predicting the past, wrongly, it's interesting to

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DeVilla ( 4563 )

          I think you have it wrong. Give every bill a 20 year expiration. (I'm using 20 years for discussion. Just something less than a life time and fixed.) If you can prove it hasn't been enforce in some short period of time (say 10 years) the public can trigger an early expiration. If someone can prove a law is being enforce selectively, the public (perhaps a defendant) can trigger an immediate expiration.

          Note this important point. By being "expired", that means it's still potentially enforceable. But it

      • That could become as shitted on as the âoelimited timesâ clause in the constitution for copyrights and patents. The government just laugh in the face of the founders and set the limited time to essentially infinity.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Guaranteed AT&T, Google, Cisco, Microsoft, and many other large American IT companies have back doors to their products which they give the NSA access to. Some American "patriots" then have the Chutzpah to mock the Chinese for spying... when the NSA and CIA have been spying on virtually the entire planet for years. The US forefathers, good principled men, fought for their liberty from foreign oppressors that attempted to dictate to them how they should live. Now some Americans are trying to dictate to

    • "The FISA Courts haven't exactly worked as advertised."

      They may not work as advertised, but they almost certain work as intended.

      What I don't get - some USAian needs to chime in here: aren't secret courts and secret court orders kind of a violation of y'all's Constitution?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomn8r ( 635504 )

      The FISA Courts haven't exactly worked as advertised.

      It sounds like you're not clear about for whom they're supposed to "work." I'll give you a hint; you are not the customer

  • oxymoron (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dr. Tom ( 23206 ) <tomh@nih.gov> on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @02:57PM (#60057186) Homepage

    It's funny that the "open private window" function merely disables saving of history to YOUR device. By going "private", you're only deleting your copy of the data. Everybody else still knows.

    • Which is why if you value your privacy you should use a VPN, disable cookies, and take other measures that limit the ability of others to compile that kind of data on you. Maybe in some far-off and wonderful future, companies and governments will be prohibited or otherwise prevented from doing that, but until then it's up to you to take the necessary steps to protect your privacy if that's something you value.

      • Which is why if you value your privacy you should use a VPN,

        What's the Slashdot recommended VPN of choice these days?

        • Ssh tunnel through AWS instance. (Technically they can still track you if they want to work hard enough but that's true no matter what).

          • Ssh tunnel through AWS instance. (Technically they can still track you if they want to work hard enough but that's true no matter what).

            Oh..that's interesting!!

            I saw a mention of something like that the other day....do you have any more info or links to this, what to run, how much it costs, etc?

            • It should be around $5 a month, less if you want to spin down your AWS instance when you're not using it. To proxy web browser traffic, you use SOCKS. Start the server on AWS EC2 with SSH running, then on your local machine run a command like this:

              ssh -D 1337 -q -C -N [username]@[AWSinstanceAddress]

              Here is a decent walkthrough [ttias.be].

        • All the VPN companies are likely run by various countries' secret police, probably yours or has a deal with yours to shared data. This is even if those companies appear to be hosted in a different/antagonistic country - anyone, including your country's secret police, can open up shop in any other country.

          The only VPN that has a chance to work reliably is TOR or similar.

    • Folks have been paranoid that their secrets would be exposed to their partners long before Edward Snowden made the rest of the world aware of just how visible the modern citizen really is.

      That's why I'm always behind seven proxies. Good luck.

  • How long do you keep browsing data or really any browser data?

    Assuming you follow common sense practices, which I tell family, friends and coworkers to follow, you should clear your browser every day, at least once, and have it set to clear on close. You should always use at least a single hop VPN, if not a multiple hop and when possible you should route over TOR, just to add a layer of security. On top of that I recommend running something like BleachBit at least once a day just to make sure you clean u

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mononymous ( 6156676 )

      Why?
      What in the world are you looking at?
      Nobody cares about my browsing history.

    • How long do you keep browsing data or really any browser data? Assuming you follow common sense practices, which I tell family, friends and coworkers to follow, you should clear your browser every day, at least once, and have it set to clear on close. You should always use at least a single hop VPN, if not a multiple hop and when possible you should route over TOR, just to add a layer of security. On top of that I recommend running something like BleachBit at least once a day just to make sure you clean up temp activity. There's very little reason to let data sit around unless you have a reason to keep it, and if you have a reason to keep it, then it should be encrypted or stored in a method that doesn't leave it flapping in in the wind.

      And not disable javascript!?

      • Actually disabling JavaScript unless you need it active is reasonable. I generally leave it active, but that's my choice, and I can disable it at a click.

        • When I leave the house, I like to lock all the windows, put up "No Trespassing" signs, throw a tarp over the TV, and rearrange the digits of my address.

          Closing and locking the front door is reasonable. I generally leave it open, but that's my choice, and I can lock it with a click.

          • If you could re-arrange the contents of your house, it's numbers, and it's physical address with a button click, then why not. If disabling JavaScript involved more then a button click, or more then several, then I'd see an annoyance, but it's extremely simple.
    • The practices you recommend are not common sense practices. If they work for you, that's great, but I wouldn't recommend them to my friends, families and coworkers.

      If you're browsing sensitive topics, it's probably best to use a completely separate browser, preferably even a separate OS, like Tails. I don't recommend that everyone clear their browser history/cache daily or upon close simply because cached files do reduce latency, and the ability to search history can be very useful. I want to have my h
      • I'll combine the points out of order.

        Using multiple browsers is an excellent idea and one I readily practice. If I'm doing something "risky" I might even spin up a quick VM just to make sure that whatever happens doesn't corrupt my entire system. On that note, OS selection is also important, while I don't recommend that people install something like Quebes OS on every computer, I do think you should taller the OS for the computers use. Well Windows might be fine for my children's computer, it's not so
  • A number of top GOP get caught on pedo and treason sites and then and only then, will the GOP CONgress decide that browsing history is illegal to use for FISA searches.
  • Pretty soon the government will require every American to be tracked in order to combat COVID-19; so your internet history will be the least of your concerns.

  • Defeated by 1 vote (Score:5, Informative)

    by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @03:22PM (#60057274)

    To be clear for everyone reading this, the amendment failed by one vote. It's complicated but the amendment needed 60/100 votes to pass due to Senate rules on restricting debate.

    • Too bad the reauthorization of FISA isn't subject to the same 60/100 threshold.

      Two reforms that are badly needed are (a) mandatory sunset clauses and (b) a minimum 4/5 majority requirement to pass any bill. I would add a limit on the complexity of any one bill, but first we'd have to decide how to measure that in a way that can't be easily gamed.

  • these sorts of things poll badly but always pass. Folks who are "Tough on Crime" show up to the polls and regular folks don't.

    Voter suppression is a huge problem, with polls waits in excess of 7 hours, polls near universities being routinely closed and massive purges of legitimate voters from the rolls. There are plans to implement voter Id laws again (which may pass in the new Supreme Court) and even to start allowing poll watchers again....

    What this country needs is National Vote By Mail, Automati

    • Re:We need more voter turnout (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @04:22PM (#60057510)

      The biggest objection to Ranked Choice Voting is that it is too complicated for the public to understand.

      But Maine has adopted RCV, the change is popular with the public, and it seems to be working well.

      RCV tends to favor moderate centrists.

      Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah have universal vote-by-mail. VBM favors Democrats so Republicans tend to resist its adoption.

      19 states have some form of automatic voter registration. AVR also tends to favor Democrats, and most states adopting it are blue.

      Rule of thumb: Anything that makes voting easier helps Democrats. Anything that makes voting harder, including bad weather on election day, helps Republicans.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Anything that makes voter fraud easier seems to indeed benefit Democrats. Peculiar how that works.

        More than 800 mail-in votes in one of New Jersey's largest cities have already been set aside. Those hundreds of votes represent about six percent of all ballots that have been sent in thus far in Paterson's election Tuesday.

      • The biggest objection to regular simple non-ranked choice voting is that voters are sometimes forced to vote strategically, which necessarily entails guessing how others will vote.

        Ranked choice voting promises, by making the algorithm used more complex, 'simplify' voting choices by making it seem, due to the more complex rules that there is no longer a need to vote strategically, guessing what other voters will do to vote reflecting your will.

        However this promise is a lie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spitzak ( 4019 )

          What RCV does is make the rules of the game more complex, so that it requires more mental effort to vote strategically.

          This is not exactly correct. RCV will greatly reduce the chances that the correct "strategic vote" is different from "vote first for the person you like the most". It "requires more mental effort to vote strategically" because it is much, much harder to come up with a reason to vote differently than your favorites, partly because it is complex, but mostly because there are far fewer cases o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a very strange argument: "You are too dumb to understand ranked choice voting so we shouldn't have it. You are a moron, right? You don't want this."

        But that's exactly what people opposed to it argue, in slightly less obvious terms. It happened in the UK when we tried to change the system, you had the incredible and depressing spectacle of members of the public going on national TV to tell the country they didn't understand something so simple a 6 year old could grasp it, and acting like they were proud

  • Two pretenders to caring about the American people working against America from both sides of the aisle.
  • We can't entrust such powers to the government. This isn't about voting Team A out, and replacing them with Team B, as a way to impose accountability, the current setup is immune to that.
  • See [senate.gov] how your senator voted.

    • The senators had decided it will fail, then negotiated risky seats to be allowed to vote for it until it almost passed. So it didn't "almost pass". It just seems that way.

      This is a common trick with bills they don't want passed but are popular.

  • After much searching last night, I finally found the text of the actual amendment. The part about browser histories, etc., was section 103, about 10 lines of several hundred lines of a couple dozen other sections, all in legalese. Further, the voting (for or against) wasn't at all along party lines.

    Sure, the media is making it out like anyone who voted against the bill was voting in favor of FISA courts granting access to browser histories, but in reality, that was only one small fraction of what these Se

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