Law forcing Feds to get warrants for email slurping is sneaked into US military budget The US House of Representatives has once again advanced a law bill that would always require the FBI and cops to obtain a warrant from a judge before forcing email providers to hand over people's messages. The latest incarnation of what was the Email Privacy Act comes in the form of an amendment to the National Defense …
Attaching unrelated legislation to important bills may or may not be corrupt. It has the effect of increasing support for bills that may have marginal support but considerable importance, as may be the case here. It also sometimes discourages an executive veto; that also may be true in this case, since the president would be strongly disinclined to veto the defense appropriation.
The practice is somewhat similar to logrolling - in which legislators agree to vote for bills about which they have no strong opinion in exchange for support of others that are important to them or their constituents. This practice common even in legislatures that operate under a single subject rule, and would be quite immune to a constitutional limitation of bills to a single subject.
I agree, and while we may applaud this particular result, the other nine times out of ten these riders are used to take away privacy rights / freedoms not grant them.
Next time I'm wishing for unicorns and rainbows, I'll wish for a constitutional amendment that bans bills from containing unrelated riders. i.e. a defense bill could contain a rider stopping a military base from closing, but not stuff to do with email privacy or immigration, or trade. Though I'm sure there would be a lot of tortured logic applied ("email searches prevent terrorist attacks", "immigration is national defense", "trade is war") so it might not do much good in the end.
"Especially in a disgusting pig's trough like the defense appropriations bill."
Isn't the entire point of the US military to get money from taxpayers to defence contractors quickly and easily, and in as large amounts as possible?
I certainly can't think of any other reason they need to spend so much on it.
"of what this new will do (if it survives), I do not approve of laws being sneaked in under the radar by being hidden in something else - that is not how democracy is supposed to work."
Isn't that exactly how the "patriot act" and other bills that effectively undermine the American imagination that you are in some way a democracy rather than the the reality that you are at the whim of whoever has the most money were enacted?
At that stage the USA is less democratic than you might imagine. Its a political elite that manoeuvre for their own ends which can be dogmatic, self serving, or simply undermining to a rival or previous incumbent.
Doing the right thing is almost lost at this point.
The proletariat are only important at election time - go figure.
At that stage the USA is less democratic than you might imagine. Its a political elite that manoeuvre for their own ends
It is worse than that, since their "end" is simply to be re-elected, or better yet move up to an even higher office like Senate or President. Since things have become so polarized they are required to vote in lockstep with their party, due to worries about challenges from the fringes during primary season should a republican dare to vote against the things republicans are supposed to vote for, or (to a lesser extent, so far, though some democrats seem to be pushing the party towards similar uniformity of position) a democrat vote against the things democrats are supposed to be for.
Well it's been going on since at least 1940, when RA Heinlein wrote about it in "Magic Inc."
This is what happens when you run a continent sized state in the 21st century with a political system designed to run a parish council in England in the 18th century.
The US would be a very different political environment with
1) Term limits for both houses.
2) Earmarks for mandatory funding inserted in bills which have nothing to do with the subject being funded
3) Amendments that are irrelevant to the bill title.
First, the US is no democracy. The founders were utterly opposed to it, and for excellent cause.
Second, there is no means to prevent this sort of behavior. One of the basic rules of negotiation is to figure out what the other guy wants more than what you are asking him to give up. There is no reason to expect that the two are related.
It certainly looks ugly, and I can understand that it might even smell corrupt. But attempting to prevent a basic rule of negotiation will only bring nastier actions into the arena.
"...of what this new will do (if it survives), I do not approve of laws being sneaked in under the radar by being hidden in something else - that is not how democracy is supposed to work."
True, but it gives hope to the rest of the world that there is an appetite for decent privacy laws in the USA, even if they do have to be sneaked through the system in spite of the high;y paid industry lobbyists. Now, if only they could manage to sneak some regulations through restricting lobbying....
The fourth amendment is a fairly general prohibition of certain types of government action. The full text reads
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The Constitution is not self-enforcing, and both the Stored Communications Act (18 USC 2701 - 2712) and the amendments to it that Representative Yoder proposes are laws that set limits on what courts are to consider "search" or "seizure." At present, the law implicitly seems to regard stored for over 180 days to have been abandoned, and therefore fair game, perhaps in much the way the contents of waste containers once they are placed on the street for collection. As Representative Yoder would have it, search or seizure would occur irrespective of the age of stored communications, and a warrant would be required in all cases rather than only for those stored for 180 or fewer days.
"...seems to regard stored for over 180 days to have been abandoned..."
Seriously! That pernicious nonsense is just plain evil.
When you pay for long term storage, it should be like a safe deposit box, not a bin on the street side. And, I thought there were laws about dumpster-diving thieves.
"And, I thought there were laws about dumpster-diving thieves."
There are, but -- at least in my part of the US -- they aren't what you may think.
The law says that if you put your trash out on the street for collection, you have abandoned it and taking it isn't theft. Taking the can the trash is in is, though. Ironically, the reason that's the law is because the police made that argument to support their ability to dig through your trash without a warrant, and the courts agreed with the argument.
If your trash or dumpster is on private property, then it's theft (as well as trespassing).
"Why would they need to write another law to say something that is already covered in the 4th amendment of the US bill of rights?"
Never underestimate the ability of politicians and crooked "gummint anyone/thing" to pervert what is in the Constitution, twist it to their own "definition", say it's "living/breathing" so they can interpret things INTO it, and so on, instead of looking at it in a common sense way, as intended, and ALLOW it to limit what gummint can do and how they must share power between the 3 branches.
Hence, you get a law that reads like "common sense" and basically re-states what the Constitution already says. And it gets "snuck in" with other important legislation that NOBODY wants to go on record as having NOT voted 'yes' on (no 'no' or 'abstain' allowed this time, re-elections are in a few months, primary elections underway).
The changes in the proposal from the current version of 18 USC 2703 - 2705 warrant analysis by a lawyer with experience in this area of the law. I am not such.
That said, the general effect of the proposed changes seems to be (a) to extend the warrant requirement in the existing version to cover communications stored for over 180 days, which now may be obtained with a subpoena; (b) to relax requirements on the government in requesting deferred notification to targeted individuals by increasing the maximum life of such delays from 90 to 180 days; and (c) to tidy up some language. Without knowing quite a lot about the government's current and historical practice in this area, it's hard to say whether the effect will be large or small.
The Senate, I think, has been a bit more supportive of the government in these matters than has the House, so this amendment may be omitted from the Senate version. If so, the House and Senate versions will go to a joint committee to be worked upon until there is agreement on the text, which might or might not include these revisions to the Stored Communications Act. The joint committee version will be referred to both legislative bodies and, with near certainty, passed.
"(b) to relax requirements on the government in requesting deferred notification to targeted individuals by increasing the maximum life of such delays from 90 to 180 days".
The Congress giveth, and the Congress taketh away. "We've been reading your emails for 3 - er, 6 months now. Have a nice day".
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