Senate Bill Rewrite Lets Feds Read Your E-mail Without Warrants 403
concealment writes "A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law. [Sen. Patrick] Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge."
Re:Yay! Democrats! (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing those nasty old Republicans aren't running the show. They might force the Feds to get a search warrant or something.
Sadly neither side is the epitome of Liberty, but Democrats are no better, that is for sure.
Yep this is democracy (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between Western democracies and the old skool Communist regimes?
Difference #1: We call ourselves a democracy, so of course we are.
Difference #2: Instead of ONE party, we have TWO parties (note the huge quantitative difference), so everybody can freely pick the party that perfectly matches their views.
Difference #3: We wear more colorful clothing, so that means we have freedom.
Difference #4: Instead of a politburo to control lawmakers, we have gigantic corporations.
The list goes on.
(If you actually think democracy could be better then the farce we have now, then help change it [metagovernment.org] peacefully from the outside using open source tools and principles.)
Re:Yay! Democrats! (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, we could trust corporations to do this so much better. Libertarians - cut out the middle man in our plutocracy.
Libertarians are about a smaller federal government and expanded states' rights. Under a Libertarian Utopia, it would be up to your state to limit the power of big business... or not. Either way, your voice gets louder and your vote counts for more the smaller the election gets. In other words, your vote counts more in smaller, local elections than it does in large federal ones.