No Cyber-Warrant Required?

stitzman writes: "Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ and Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY have co-sponsored a bill that would make it possible to investigate cyber-crime without all those pesky search warrants. Here's the San Francisco Chronicle story." Frightening quote: "law enforcers would no longer need to obtain a search warrant in every jurisdiction through which a cyber-attack traveled." And in a vaguely related story, jkujawa passes along this ComputerUser article in which the National Infrastructure Protection Center frets about (but offers no answers to) the ease of launching anonymous electronic attacks.

Contact information

[Weezul]

Well it's time to call the members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information and tell them that this bill is a bad idea. Here [legislators.com] is the contact information for the subcommittee. Actualy, you may as well tell the Judiciary committee that this is a bad idea too. Their contact information is here [legislators.com].

The following senators are members of the subcommittee:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. Chair (cosponcer)
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. (cosponcer)
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA)
Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Rnk. Mem
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-DE)
Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-WI)

Hardware up for grabs

[bmasel]

The bill also makes it easier for the Feds to sieze hardware, without the inconvenience of obtaining a criminal conviction.... Even as recently improved, the forfieture provisions of the Controlled Substance Act are lacking in due process. (d) CRIMINAL FORFEITURE- That section is further amended by adding at the end the following new subsection: `(i)(1) The court, in imposing sentence on any person convicted of a violation of this section, shall order, in addition to any other sentence imposed and irrespective of any provision of State law, that such person forfeit to the United States-- `(A) the interest of such person in any property, whether real or personal, that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of such violation; and `(B) any property, whether real or personal, constituting or derived from any proceeds that such person obtained, whether directly or indirectly, as a result of such violation. `(2) The criminal forfeiture of property under this subsection, any seizure and disposition thereof, and any administrative or judicial proceeding relating thereto, shall be governed by the provisions of section 413 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 853), except subsection (d) of that section.'. (e) CIVIL FORFEITURE- That section, as amended by subsection (d) of this section, is further amended by adding at the end the following new subsection: `(j)(1) The following shall be subject to forfeiture to the United States, and no property right shall exist in them: `(A) Any property, whether real or personal, that is used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of any violation of this section. `(B) Any property, whether real or personal, that constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to any violation of this section. `(2) The provisions of chapter 46 of this title relating to civil forfeiture shall apply to any seizure or civil forfeiture under this subsection.'.

Contridiction

[zenray]

When the fine people of law enforcement and the judicary come across highly encrypted files they attempt to force the passwords out of you by the analogy of the locked file cabinet. You must turn over the key to the file cabinet to them or face contempt charges. Well, IMHO, the same analogy should hold for my computer files as my unlocked file cabinet. 'THEY' cannot access my data without the proper search warrants such as our twisted due process system mandates.

1984

[Friendly]

The government is run by people who do not understand technology, or the reality of the world around them. They also have no interest in learning about these issues. These people are subverting the laws of the US, making us a despotic democracy. They know that the masses are just as ignorant as they are and can be easily swayed to their rehtoric about only wanting to protect them from the evils of porn and cyber terrorists. As long as the American people are stupid and lazy these assholes will keep getting elected to government. What can we expect of a government elected by less then 50% of the people. Do you even think that these congressmen (and women) can even grasp the concept of e-mail, for good sakes some of these people were around when airplanes were not yet invented. Given the chance the law enforcement community will collect DNA from every one and put it into a database. They will install video cameras that will cover all public areas (already installed in some cities). They will not have to read suspects their rights (they already tried to get this past the Supreme Court and the procecutor told the justices "two billion people already know about Miranda right why should we have to tell them"). They will require encryption chip in all computers, giving every one powerful encryption that the government can easily break. They will track your every move on-line. The bill of rights is not mean to specify what freedoms we have, but to protect us from the government taking those freedoms away. Unless people form our generation (18 - 30) start taking an interest politics and someone who actually can tell the difference between a intranet and the Internet runs for office we will be run by stupid people who will allow law enforcement trample our rights.

To quote Dr. Dre:

"mother fuck the police"

Sen. Leahy's substitute, S 2430

[bmasel]

Keeps most of Kyl's bill, but adds some long stalled privacy provisions, and gets rid of mandatory minimum sentences. Text and Leahy's coments here. http://cryptome.org/s2430is.txt