National Security Draft For Fining Tech Company "Noncompliance" On Wiretapping 165
Jeremiah Cornelius writes with what looks to be part of CISPA III: Children of CISPA. From the article: "A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur. ... 'The importance to us is pretty clear,' says Andrew Weissmann, the FBI's general counsel. 'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept." Other countries have that.' Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 'This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs,' said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 'They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act.'"
FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept."...
Can this guy be serious? The FBI doesn't have the ability to go to court and ask for a court order allowing them to listen in on conversations? Wow. Just utterly wow.
Rights are inconvenient (Score:5, Insightful)
The 4th Amendment is getting in the way of FBI evidence-gathering.
Good; that's what it's for.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept."...
I think he means, "Without a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, we don't have the ability to go to court ..."
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept."...
Can this guy be serious? The FBI doesn't have the ability to go to court and ask for a court order allowing them to listen in on conversations? Wow. Just utterly wow.
That leads me to believe that the FBI just says this stuff so that a good chunk of the population, which does not understand the 4th Amendment or Court Orders in general, just buys into what they are saying, just so they can get it.
How the FBI intercepts anything without a warrant or court order and the evidence is not thrown out of court, is beyond me.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its really amazing what has happened in the last 30 some odd years, to see a nation which used to truly be one of the freest in the world to now only paying lip service to freedoms. It used to be that if you wanted freedom, you came to the US, now its becoming increasingly obvious that if you value freedom, moving out of the US is the way to go.
Re:The bill is doomed to fail (Score:4, Insightful)
The average American doesn't care about freedom anymore. Sure, they love the -illusion- of freedom, they love the -illusion- of their rights, but when it comes down to it, the average American is perfectly content and even applaud rights violations as long as they think that it won't apply to them. I mean, look at the outright celebration of essentially martial law in Boston, look at the lack of outrage against drone strikes, heck, even look at the widespread cheers for the horrible conditions at Guantanamo.
The average voter doesn't care about freedom, as long as they have their welfare checks, government jobs, medicare and social security. As long as the media can maintain the illusion that the US is the freest country in the world, there won't be any outrage.
translated (Score:4, Insightful)
"What's the point of a warrantless wiretap if we have to go to court to get compliance?"
Meanwhile, a workplace death = $1000 (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a reminder that OSHA and EPA fines, when they happen even under the most egregious circumstances, typically result in fines that barely break four digits.
"Other countries have that". (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course.
This is what is called "a limited hangout". They are already doing worse. This is to distract from that, and to send a discreet message to Google and Twitter that they function as outsourced, privatized intelligence bitches -- or else.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do they need a court order anyway? I thought the NSA was tcpdumping (or flushing) the entire flow of data on the Internet into their multi-bazzillion dollar datacenter. This is what happens when peoples jobs depend on the lawmaking industry.
Problem is, companies like Facebook and Google (the two mentioned in the summary) have been migrating to SSL over that past few years. https is the default means for connecting to Facebook now, and it has been an option for Google now for a couple of years. The more people use SSL, the less these "tcpdumps" are effective. This is why the feds need to go to Google or Facebook to get this information. Interesting that Skype wasn't mentioned.
I can't wait for Obama to take office (Score:3, Insightful)
Then we'll see all this Bush/Cheney crap reversed.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The police walk into your telephone switch room with a warrant, you let them listen. That's much much older than CALEA, that's only 20 years old."
That's pretty irrelevant, though, because with telephones, tapping is pretty darned easy. But with other technologies it has NEVER been possible to "just listen in"... it just wasn't built in.
That's not "refusal", it's simply not building something in a way that expressly caters to the police. And I don't give a damn. The police don't have a right to run the tech world.
If they can't keep up, tough shit.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
the FBI's general counsel. 'We don't have the ability to go to court and say, "We need a court order to effectuate the intercept." Other countries have that.'
Last time I checked, that was always a selling point of this country
Re:Amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Amazing... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The situation is unprecedented, so unprecedented extreme measures need to be taken" is a standard ploy for those seeking to exercise extreme state power.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, just so I'm clear: you're saying that law enforcement has the ability to do one of the following:
1. Generate an SSL certificate trusted by the browser (i.e. using a CA which is trusted by the browser) and 'MITM' the connection
2. Use an SSL certificate which doesn't derive trust from a trusted CA, but prevent the browser from notifying the user that the certificate is invalid
3. Has the actual certificate of the server the traffic to which they want to interept
I guess they could also just be intercepting using untrusted certificates and hoping people ignore it - and most probably would.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but targeting the end point of communications is just way to big a reach. What's to stop targeting of Banks, of online retailers, of typical business and how about the typical user. Once you attempt to force end point communications how do you write the law to limit how far that goes. The FBI wants the right to force everyone to become a spy on everyone else, sorry but fuck off. I remain honourable in my communications and spy and deceive for no one. This directly attacks the morals of any administrator of a system and attempts to force people against their will to deceive others.
Re:FBI's general counsel - having a laugh? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is quite possible to classify and regulate Cable companies and other ISPs as Title II Common Carriers. In fact, the FCC has wanted to do it for decades. But lobbyists got Congress to pass a law specifically excluding ISPs from Common Carrier status. That was one of the biggest mistakes of the last few decades.
Sigh. How could you get everything else right, and get this so very wrong? There was no mistake involved. They did precisely what they wanted to do. They saw that all communications would eventually move to the internet, so they gave themselves broad-reaching control over it so that they could perform warrantless wiretapping and exert other forms of control as well.
Make no mistake. Exclusing ISPs from common carrier status was not a mistake. It was a deliberate and evil decision specifically intended to support warrantless wiretapping and suppression of free speech.