Let Europeans sue America for slurping their data – US Senate European citizens will soon win the right to sue the US government for snatching their personal and private data. On Tuesday, the US Senate passed the Judicial Redress Act, which is a critical jigsaw piece for the new Privacy Shield agreement that governs the exchange of people's personal information over the Atlantic. The …
"In particular, the Senate added a new provision that said the bill could not impede US national security interests"
I have very little hope that the House of Representatives will overturn this provision in conference. Nor that the President will veto the bill as written.
Yeah, ask US citizens how well their attempts to sue the government over online privacy have gone. First, you have to prove that you have been targeted, but all the spy programs are covered by top secret classification, so you can't perform discovery on the information required for the basis of your suit.
"First, you have to prove that you have been targeted" - easily done, if you're the least bit awake, and actually have been targeted.
The issue isn't that you have the right to sue the US government. The issue is "Why bother? They're our Allies." Besides, if anyone actually succeeded in suing them, then they'd overturn the law.
The US is more than capable of giving away its money if it wants to, and they're more than welcome to send me some, but somehow, I don't imagine it will happen.
However, if they want that problem solved, you know, nudge nudge, wink wink - the one that solves the HOLLYHOCK problem, and the BLACKNOVEMBER problem, and also the problem they're having with REDMARKET, then they can feel free to send me a cheque for 13 million USD and pay the UK taxes on it, and I'll email the solution to their CRB.
LOL!
"A concept so malleable it can be used to conclusively prove black is in fact white."
A pity they can't make the local law enforcement understand that black = white:
Read in conjunction with 5 USC 552a, the modifications appear to have very little to do with US or other signals intelligence activities. It appears the changes, whether the House or Senate version, will allow citizens of designated countries to require designated federal agencies to correct records they maintain, and give the citizens cause for civil action against an agency that declines to correct errors. It is not likely that the NSA will be a designated agency. It also is likely that if NSA are maintaining records of personal data on a citizen of a designated country they have shared that data with CIA or FBI (or both) , who very likely will have shared them with security agencies in the targeted citizen's own country as well as possibly others. The FBI or CIA probably will be "designated agencies" for the Act's purposes, and will correct the records as they think appropriate based on information the targeted person brings to them, much as they do (or do not) in the case of US citizens.
@ Nick Kew - Nick, I don't know where you hang your hat (I'll guess the UK), but here in the US there are shysters falling all over each other to advertise "No Fee Unless You Win" representation. They might be worth a flutter.
Granted, you'd have two chances of succeeding; slim, and none.
All things considered though, that might be a better risk than engaging the services of Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe, and watching your hundred million warchest vanish into a cesspit of "billable hours".
funny, Feds just sued Ferguson for "routinely violating residents' rights and misusing law enforcement to generate revenue". And then they come with this idea where side whose rights were violated can't win yet it'll surely generate revenue on perpetrator's end. Win Win (for our side;)
"And under whose jurisdiction does this fall? If europeans must file suit in an american court, presided over by american judges, interpreting an american law ... well, let's just say my expectations of a fair trial are pretty dim."
Funnily enough, that is the kind of thing my rather right wing fellow students at university used to say of Russia in the times of the good old CCCP.
“Be careful how you choose your enemy, for you will come to resemble him. The moment you adapt your enemy's methods your enemy has won."
(Michael Ventura's take on a much older sentiment.)
Indeed, almost the same mechanism by which China defeated the invading Mongol empire, within a couple of generations they were assimilated despite having nominally "won".
Mind you, on a brief glance around it appears that process is highly advanced on this side of the pond :(
I can imagine the conversation went something along the lines of: 'I know. We'll tell them that their citizens can sue us through our courts, with our rules to protect the data that they won't even know we've stolen. That'll do. I bet those European idiots will buy this.'
I can't help but feel suspicious that the 'powers that be' are on the side of the Americans and simply want to find a way around the 'inconvenient' decision that the previous arrangement was illegal.
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Co-sponsor of the bill Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said: "I am pleased the full Senate has passed this legislation, which demonstrates that the United States respects cross-border data privacy [...]
Too bad the United States can't demonstrate that it respects intra-border data privacy.
NOW we should mandate for notification of any surveillance done by ANY agency,be it cell phone slurping by local PD, license plate scanning, landline, email, WIFI, drone, satellite, trash snooping, discreet observation, if NOT fruitful. If there's not any cause, privacy must be protected. If there's a criminal act,a warrant should be in hand.
BTW, what kind of unnecessary surveillance occurs that we don't even know of? What technologies does our government use that's still totally secret?
The only thing that the US has demonstrated is that it will stop at nothing to get the data it thinks it needs.
This stuff is just PR for the media.
The NSA couldn't care less - we have been repeatedly told that what it is doing is legal.
"It will also allow them to review and correct information held on them by federal agencies."
So when Uncle Sam tries to capture and store as much of your personal information as possible and makes a mistake, you'll be able to voluntarily take time out of your day to furnish them with the real info....
What a generous guy he is...
IMHO this is just the US government showing the world that they refuse to stop no matter what you do and saying "here's a treadmill to run on..."
The US Government wont stop spying on the people in the US no matter what they do to stop it, so why would this same Government stop for anyone else?
"In particular, the Senate added a new provision that said the bill could not impede US national security interests"
Huh?
That's the exact problem of the original 'safe harbour' - the NSA can take whatever they want, whenever they want so long as they mumble "national security".
Translated, this means: "we won't look at your data unless we want to".
We spy on our own people and they're OK with it. And you, well, you're foreign. We *will* have your data too.
It's not a threat, just... look. You can't stop us. We're going to take your data. If you don't like it, we're likely to invade you, depose your little european dictators or whatever repressive government you have (I hear one country even has a queen, for gooness sake), and set up a modern democratic government, or, you know... to be honest we're most likely to destabilize the region and then leave an occupying force for a decade or so. No, no, don't get so upset, it's not a threat, it's just the way we are. You can't expect us to behave other than the way God made us. We here in the US are perfectly OK with invading and/or remotely bombing people in other countries; and, again I know this is going to sound like a threat, but, well, all the countries in Europe are *in other countries*. Look, I'm sorry, but you're *foreign*, OK? It's not that we want to invade you, it's just a thing that we do. Just give us the data, OK?
"Just give me what I want, and no one gets hurt."
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