back to article Google: Tell the feds they have to get a warrant for us to hand over your stuff

Google is promoting a White House petition to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would force government agencies to get a warrant before rifling through emails and other electronic communications. The Chocolate Factory posted a link to the epetition on Google+, supporting the attempt to get the 25-year-old …

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  1. JassMan

    Petition schmetition

    They would get their 100000 sigs quicker if they hadn't put it on Google +. This smacks of trying to drum up cutomers for Gogle + in the same way as the big YouTube comments scam;

  2. dssf

    If the public gave a rat's ass en masse

    The public would en masse drop off the social and email sites for a week at a time, go in for one day, the drop out for TWO weeks, wash rinse, repeat. Once the adverts REALLY are not clicked on, the ads will be pulled. MS, Google, Yahoo!, and loads of other companies one by one would lose market share and value in weeks. But, jobs would be lost in the hundreds of thousands in half a year. This could go global in weeks, with subsids circling the drain.

    Otoh, if the public did it efficiently, they could REALLY pressure the ad slewers and slingers to ramp up the pressure on the alphabets to either back off, or go deeper and stealthier.

    In the wrong country or countries, I could disappear in the night or the afternoon for even mumbling this...

  3. sam bo

    fait accompli

    "that judge could well be a secret judge in a secret court who issues a secret warrant that the data holder isn't allowed to tell anyone about," - that would be the judge with the very large and well worn rubber stamp in his hand.

    1. Cardinal
      WTF?

      Re: fait accompli

      "that judge could well be a secret judge in a secret court who issues a secret warrant that the data holder isn't allowed to tell anyone about,"

      I think it's terrifying that Uncle Sam seems so rapidly to be morphing into Uncle Joe.

      What was the Cold War all about then?

      Equally terrifying is that the main other English speaking nations seem to be scuttling along behind, wagging their tails, without any noticeable attempt to apply brakes of any kind.

      I thought we were supposed to be the beacons of liberties and freedoms of citizenry against despotic governments. I thought that's what Magna Carta and the US Constitution was all about for God's sake.

      What a spineless shower of short-term self serving shite our current crop of third rate politico's are eh?

      Churchill and Roosevelt must be spinning like tops!

      I truly feel that UK citizens essential freedoms are now better represented by Europe than Britain. A bit of financial corruption over there is as nothing compared to the ongoing erosion of civil liberties on this side of the channel - and America seems to be well down the road to 1984.

      Thanks a lot George Dubya!

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Mandatory Franklin quote : "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

        Yup, the USA has forgotten the lessons of its Founding Fathers, ignored the warnings of President Eisenhower and will soon be a totalitarian government.

        And to think that I took Person of Interest for a fiction...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Should be law already. The open season on 6+ month-old data is just another example of "we're gonna do what we feel like and think of justification afterwards". The fact that the data was raped more than $time ago should be wholly immaterial.

  5. Kirel

    Link?

    A link to the petition would be most excellent. I would love to sign that.

    1. Rol

      Re: Link?

      As a UK citizen I would dearly like to have a say in how America is sifting through my online life, but getting to vote on it once every five years or so isn't my idea of representation.

      Thank you HM Gov for doing an absolutely shoddy job of protecting your citizens.

      Here's an idea, force all personal data collected in the UK to be stored on UK servers and prevented from leaving these shores as once it gets to America there isn't, and never will be, any legislation to stop it being plastered on a bill board for all passers by to see.

      If you read this article thoroughly, you will notice any achievements in the privacy lobby is for America and her alone, everyone else can just swivel on this ,l,,

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. x0143872

      Re: Link?

      https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-ecpa-tell-government-get-warrant/nq258dxk

  6. Faster

    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/reform-ecpa-tell-government-get-warrant/nq258dxk

    Reform ECPA: Tell the Government to Get a Warrant

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If sir has to ask for a warrant ...

    ... sir is not tapping our networks or breaking our comms encryption very well...

  8. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    As a UK citizen

    >I would dearly like to have a say in how America is sifting through my online life,

    Well if you don't want to be ruled by a tyrannical empire across the Atlantic, throw the starbucks into the harbour and have your own revolution

  9. JaitcH

    Meanwhile in Blighty we have ...

    Mad May of Maidenhead, 'Toy boy' Hague and the rest of the Tory gang judiciously 'protecting' our privacy - anything GCHQ wants, GCHQ gets. At least the US Agencies have to get around the Constitution.

    You can't trust governments, either. Take Station Sounder, out there in sunny Agios Nikolaos, Cyprus where the GCHQ taps into the Middle East cables, actually BT and the Cyprus Telecoms, and share conversations.

    The UK/Cyprus agreement limits activities to UK personnel. Americans around Agios Nikolaos are actually NSA spies who are are instructed to dress 'incognito'. One can imagine what 'incognito' means - Beach Sandals, Flip-Flops, Beach Hats & Beach T-Shirts in fluorescent pink and orange.

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