> In other words, the government would be able to deputize an unknown amount of the private sector into acting as its own personal intelligence asset. Indeed, Hamadanchy gives some examples of companies that might potentially fall under this category and they are numerous: “Commercial landlords, grocery stores, barber shops, hardware shops, fitness centers” or, as he puts it, “anyone with a WiFi” connection.
This article is from Thursday. The law passed over the weekend with hours before it was set to expire. None of the privacy concerns were addressed and they did the reading at the very last minute to ensure it would pass without enough time to debate or amend it.
This is why I just cannot take the "our democracy is under threat" bullshit seriously. Our "democracy" is a popularity contest where every 4 years a bunch of rich people lie to us for months to get elected and then do whatever their financial backers tell them to do.
Oh well. Hopefully nobody ever abuses these powers!
This is dragnet surveillance by any plain reading of the situation. This should be illegal under existing laws barring law enforcement from dragnet surveillance.
>The law allows the U.S. intelligence community (most notably the NSA) to conduct “targeted surveillance” of people outside the U.S. with the “compelled assistance of electronic communication service providers,” when a government court deems it necessary for national security reasons.
How "compelled"? Would the government be able to force, say, Signal to do a MITM against some of their users?
How is this not spying on American's?