

Leahy scuttles his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill - jsm386
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552687-38/leahy-scuttles-his-warrantless-email-surveillance-bill/

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tptacek
He didn't "scuttle" it. CNet saw draft language being circulated among
Senators and reported on it. Leahy issued a clarification, saying that he
didn't support the draft language. Leahy's own language eliminates the 180-day
rule for warrantless access to email, which is a _huge step forward_ for email
privacy.

Unless Leahy is directly lying in his statement, what CNet's reporter did was
to play "gotcha" with draft senate language. While this may make us feel
better, like we all played a role in ensuring that a terrible bill wasn't
passed, what it really does is ensure that senators and their staffs will work
even harder to make sure we don't see draft bill language until it is more or
less a fait accompli and the only two outcomes are "pass" or "discard".

Patrick Leahy has one of the better reputations in the whole senate on civil
liberties issues (check out the ACLU scorecard). But yeah, let's definitely
eat our own to ensure ideological purity. That worked super well for the Tea
Party.

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nhebb
> _But yeah, let's definitely eat our own to ensure ideological purity._

"our"?

Leahy was the author of PIPA, so I'm not one to extend that umbrella. He has
been a champion of civil liberties and other worthy causes, but that doesn't
mean he gets a free pass on everything. If we blindly defend "our" side in
two-party politics, we inevitably end up defending some pretty bad
legislation. I'd rather assess each piece individually.

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tptacek
Who's talking about parties? I'm talking about ACLU voter scorecards.

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nhebb
I misread your use of "our own" followed by a reference to the Tea Party. I
still stand by my opinion, though, that we shouldn't give legislators a free
pass on bad legislation just because we support the positions they have taken
on other issues.

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jdavid
As the Internet we need to do two things, one start getting our sorry little
asses in congress to stop this stuff where it starts.

Two, build better technology that is not such an easy target. If individual
keys were required to decrypt messages, then it's hard to take the data
without your permission because cryptography prevents that.

This might be a good enough reason to switch off of email, especially email
like gmail.

~~~
tptacek
As EFF reports, large email providers (one assumes this includes GMail) have a
practice of demanding warrants for email, even though the FBI is in some
circumstances technically entitled to email with just a subpoena. The FBI
apparently (as far as we know) hasn't litigated any of these cases, and has
simply obtained warrants.

It doesn't seem unlikely that we're converging in the short term on a legal
terrain where all access by law enforcement to email is going to require a
warrant.

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swohns
Scary wasn't disclosed until today, it was scheduled for a vote this week.

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ajross
Sadly this is the way non-partisan issues are legislated in the US system. But
the system worked -- the vote was scheduled, the relevant interest groups
noticed, the media reported it, the people contacted their representatives and
the bill was pulled. We win. Note also that "the vote" was a committee vote.
There were plenty of other chances to stop this.

This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work. So don't despair,
just be vigilant.

~~~
nitrogen
_This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work. So don't despair,
just be vigilant._

It's just that most of us can't afford to outsource our vigilance, and the
system works better for those who can.

~~~
ghubbard
But you can afford to outsource your representation?

~~~
nitrogen
There the cost structure is reversed: most of us can't afford to _in_ source
our representation -- that costs millions of dollars in campaign funds.

------
adventured
Cockroaches scatter when you shine light on them.

------
zrail
Well, that was fast.

