That Was Fast: Leahy Drops Warrantless E-mail Surveillance Bill 107
Presto Vivace writes "Under the right conditions, online activism can be very effective. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has already abandoned his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill we discussed this morning. 'The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. ... A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved. Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the ACLU saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with over 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My Email!""
Oops, somebody noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Executive Order in 3... 2... 1... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No time like the present... (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem! We can just simplify the process by setting up a large number of so called "certificate authorities", who we will trust implicitly and pay yearly fees for little chunks of math! Nothing could possibly go wrong, and we can have a comforting little padlock symbol for noobs...
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:2, Insightful)
The people didn't like it, he changed his stance.
It's how it's suppose to work.
I know,it doesn't fit into your lazy ass whiny spoon fed view point.
But there you are.
Strange bedfellows... (Score:4, Insightful)
When the ACLU and a conservative group are loudly on the same side of something, you know whatever it is is bad.
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that he even considered it in the first place is disturbing on its own.
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oops, somebody noticed (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a behavioral scientist or a psychologist, and this might even be wrong, but I'm sure I've read before that our brain remaps our "personal space bubble" when we drive a car. I also believe that (beyond the obvious) reasons why we get angry at telemarketers/doorknockers, wear clothes, put locks on our doors and curtains on our windows is because we have a deep-down, hard-wired intellectual personal space that has evolved alongside our physical personal space.
Problem is, every unsolicited knock on the door, phone ring from a stranger or person peeking through the curtains rankles us in our lizard brain because an external force is attempting to wrest some control of our intellectual personal space. It's no different to a perfect stranger standing two inches from our face. It's wrong. Our lower brain connected to our higher brain sees "THREAT!!"
We feel the same way when the government pries into our communications, movements or histories. It's not about being ashamed of anything or having "something to hide", it's about a feeling of an exterior force violating our intellectual idea of personal space. We are being denied the control we desire over what we show the world. That is in my opinion the core issue governments will never be able to understand. That's the answer to the inevitable "Why are they protesting?" question.
Re:Strange bedfellows... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. ACLU shares many same beliefs as libertarians. So more correctly, when they do line up on the same side you know its a government versus privacy issue. In this particular case, I think they are correct. But I'll reserve my judgment for their future endorsements, as they both are kind of bizare at times.
Re:No time like the present... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does if you'd bother to look at the fingerprint and verify it's the same as last time. Which the browsers should do, but they don't because it cuts into their CA root key inclusion fees.