H.R. 4681 - Financial bill passes with free access to your personal information

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/226752-gop-rep-attempted-late-bid-to-kill-spy-bill

Essentially, a small bill that no one read and that Congress wanted to pass before Christmas ends up being the single greatest leak of personal privacy in the history of the country.

ISPs collect logs of every website your IP connects to, and are allowed to hold it for 2 years at most. Same with Google search results. This is personal information that belongs to you. Not anymore. For any reason, or no reason at all, your government can now access these files and see everything you've done online.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Arctic, KingofManga420, Shokew and 1 other person
Click to expand...
Null said:
ISPs collect logs of every website your IP connects to, and are allowed to hold it for 2 years at most. Same with Google search results. This is personal information that belongs to you. Not anymore. For any reason, or no reason at all, your government can now access these files and see everything you've done online.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure that has all been subject to subpoena (without a probable cause requirement) for years now. It's shitty they're still doing it, but I don't think it's anything particularly new. I'd have to see the specific provisions they're complaining about to be sure, though.

Edit: Scratch that, it's § 309, which states that intelligence agencies must adopt procedures approved by the AG for the retention of "incidentally acquired data", including where the data acquisition was done without court order.

I could go either way on this. I don't like the collection of data without a court order, but it's something that they've been doing for decades in one form or another under the aegis of "national security," and which they will only continue doing. It's the same as when they adopted the federal wiretapping laws: if they'd outright prohibited it, the agencies would just have continued to do it in violation of the law, as they had been doing before.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: Shokew
blackie toy said:
Pretty sure that has all been subject to subpoena (without a probable cause requirement) for years now. It's shitty they're still doing it, but I don't think it's anything particularly new. I'd have to see the specific provisions they're complaining about to be sure, though.
Click to expand...
Did you read my post? A subpoena is the result of a legal process. that is no longer a requirement.
 
So the Government is spying on its citizens. What else is new in Soviet America?
 
Null said:
Did you read my post? A subpoena is the result of a legal process. that is no longer a requirement.
Click to expand...
I did read your post. I also read the article and the Facebook page of the congressman. He's complaining about § 309 of the bill. That section states that within two years of the bill's passage, all intelligence agencies/elements must adopt procedures approved by the US AG for the handling of "incidentally acquired information" (the bill defines "covered communication" as "any nonpublic telephone or electronic communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to the communication, including communications in electronic storage"). It furthermore states that any such procedures must provide for the deletion of such data within five years unless a variety of exceptions apply (which include the usual catch-alls, such as "encyphered" communications and general national security concerns).

The whole part about not requiring judicial procedure comes in as follows: § 309(b)(2)(A) states that the requirement to establish the procedures discussed in the section apply to intelligence-gathering activity that is not otherwise authorized by court order, and goes on to specify that this includes FISA court authorized activity (the FISA court is technically not a court within the meaning of Article III of the U.S. Constitution, but it can authorize intelligence-gathering activity). FISA has existed for decades and has been authorizing intelligence-gathering activity without Article III court oversight for all that time. What this specific section changes is that it requires any intelligence-gathering activity and data retention—regardless of whether it is authorized by a court—conform to a plan that is approved by the Attorney General of the United States.

Don't take my word for it. Read Section 309 of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681/text

Edit: I should clarify that I believe FISA-authorized data collection is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I also think it violates international law, but that's another long discussion entirely. I don't think this particular provision does much to change the status quo—that the NSA can and does look at everything they can technically access.
 
Last edited:
  • Optimistic
  • Informative
Reactions: Shokew and Hyperion
lol he thinks the government follows the law

naive motherfucker
 
And people don't think something like '1984', or worse, The Hunger Games can't happen in our time. NOT TRUE when shit like this is allowed to be law. I hope people are ready to fight without excuses. Because we need to be fighting every last one of these 1% worshiping old person trash...
 
  • Agree
Reactions: spaps
Our personal information can now be accessed by the government for no reason? I guess there goes the Fourth Amendment.
 
We had any shred of privacy at all before now? That's the real news.
 
Anathe said:
We had any shred of privacy at all before now? That's the real news.
Click to expand...
That would mean the spying they did that was leaked by Snowden let us have some privacy then
 
Ification said:
Meh whatever, I'm not going to be worried about this until people who visit anti-american sites start to mysteriously disappear without a trace.
Click to expand...
This is the practical stance I take. Privacy violations like this don't have practical impacts on my life.

However, I encourage people to flip shit over this sort of thing because privacy's important. And the people trying to pull this shit should worry about angry mobs with torches and pitchforks. It'll solve privacy problems quicker if the people pulling this shit are afraid.
 
  • Agree
  • Winner
Reactions: KingofManga420, tehpope, Shokew and 2 others
When the time comes to riot over this - I better see some, too... We need to send a message here about how this royally violates any and all civil rights we are supposed to be blessed with!
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Marvin
Mechanism Eight said:
Further proof the world is fucked. Like we needed more of that...
Click to expand...
No, society is fucked. The world is just fine. Been here for a few billion years, still has a few billion left to go. Tide Goes In, Tide Goes Out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back