This would be one positive consequence of Ed Snowden’s revelations:
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pushing to fast-track legislation that would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and other private online messages.
Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) goal is for the Senate to unanimously approve his bill before the August recess, according to one of his committee aides. Any opposition could delay a vote until after Congress returns in the fall.
He has secured unanimous support from his fellow Democrats and is in negotiations with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, and other Republicans to address their concerns.
Sen. Leahy was already working on this bill, which he passed through his committee in April. But the controversy over Snowden has given the bill momentum. However, it would not impact NSA programs, only local and state law enforcement. So, the Snowden effect is only indirect.
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, police only need a subpoena, issued without a judge’s approval, to force Internet companies to turn over emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old.
This is the best direction this issue could go in: amending the obsolete laws regarding electronic communications.
The FISA law needs another look, too.
But it’s local law enforcement that worries me most of all. I don’t think the NSA is interested in the pot some dude is selling out of his basement, but the local cops sure seem obsessed with that.
Gee, opposing all that Homeland Security got Leahy an envelope of white powder. He still doesn’t get it?
Claims Leahy is one of the congressional targets of NSA eavesdropping, among others. Here’s the whole interview as MP3 from Sibel Edmond’s site; it is a jaw-dropper. Well worth an hour of your freeway drive-time to listen to, you won’t hear this on the radio, nosiree.
Does it repeal the PATRIOT Act? The AUMF?
Does it include the Grayson Amendment language?
I’ll cheer when the ink of the President’s signature is dry and what appears as Public Law matches Leahy’s promises.
Just for the record, Glenn Greenwald’s take:
We already have such a law, it’s called the Fourth Amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 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.”
“papers” obviously includes electronic communications which had not been invented in the 18th Century but are fully analogous to physical letters.
Yes, let’s see who votes for the language in the Grayson amendment and who opposes it.
THD, do you have a link handy for the Grayson Amendment?
Look on his web site, but essentially it inserts verbatim the language of the Fourth Amendment into the National Defense Appropriation Act, which includes NSA funding.
“but essentially it inserts verbatim the language of the Fourth Amendment into the National Defense Appropriation Act,”
if that’s true, then it’s useless grandstanding.
The Supreme Court has been using “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard since 1967 which gives the government broad powers such intercepting wireless communications and requesting 3rd party records without warrant. Just 2 months ago a federal court ruled the government can track you using the GPS on your cell phone without warrant. The Court just ruled the government can also take your DNA without warrant.
Since Grayson is a Harvard trained attorney, I expect him to know this. A simple recitation of the 4th amendment is useless. That he didn’t proscribe specific language limiting government powers tells me this just yet another one of his fund raising ploys.
No it’s not useless, although it is grandstnding. It produces a litmus test of members of Congress who oppose the Fourth Amendment, a very useful piece of knowledge in an election campaign.
And if it passes, it specifically and explicitly constrains a national defense bill, which is presumed outside of explicit constraints to have a whole bunch of “national security” exceptions.
so they all vote yes, how does it change anything?
name one thing.
Provide a means of overriding the “national security” exception in court. If a judge follows the law.
How can the language of the Fourth Amendment override the national security exception, when the national security exception has been upheld again and again when challenged on Fourth Amendment grounds?
as long as you mentioned Grayson.
Just went to his Twitter feed and web sites– not one word on the Zimmerman verdict.
https://twitter.com/AlanGrayson
http://grayson.house.gov/
http://www.congressmanwithguts.com/
I guess he couldn’t find a way to monetize the tragedy.
Might be a hazardous political position to stake out either way in his district.
I’m no fan. He’s fundamentally a grandstander using his position to raise a campaign chest to keep him going in a tough district.
He’s been MIA on a number of issues.
But I don’t go in for halo effects or the reverse.
People are people and in a rotten system, they all become fallible.
Yes, let’s see how many. I recall in the late ’50s, WGN-TV stopped pedestrians on Michigan Avenue near the Art Institute in Chicago and read them the Bill of Rights in modern language. Only a few said they agreed with that. Most said something on the order of “subversive”, “sounds like Communism to me!”, and similar statements. It was an eye opener for me as a pre-teen or early teen. It was my first suspicion that most adults were idiots.
My reaction exactly.
But I guess if the Supreme Court won’t enforce any amendments except a very distored view of the 2nd and 10th then Congress has to step in and do it.
It’s a nice gesture, but it’s just a gesture.
States don’t have to follow it unless it’s tied to federal funds. And as you saw with ACA, SCOTUS struck down the Medicaid expansion as coercion.
Ultimately it would be up to SCOTUS’ to decide if forcing states to follow federal law in areas of authority normally reserved to the states is coercion and whether emails are 3rd party documents not subject to reasonable expectation of privacy.
Even then, even if the court ruled in favor of the law, how often does a local DA subpena emails without probable cause – considering their limited budgets, I would think rarely.