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Bipartisan Proposed Legislation To Curtail Secretive Email Seizure (thehill.com) 23

Posted by BeauHD from the right-to-know dept.
"A bipartisan proposal in both the House and Senate would sharply limit the ability to seize emails without notice to the owner," writes longtime Slashdot reader hawk. "It places a six-month limit on the length of gag orders in warrants." The Hill reports: The Government Surveillance Transparency Act, sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers, puts limitations on gag orders that seek to block tech companies from altering users whose data has been seized. It targets a practice brought into the spotlight after journalists from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post all had their records seized by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The bill requires law enforcement agencies to notify surveillance subjects that their email, location and web browsing data has been seized, aligning with current practices for phone records and bank data.

"When the government obtains someone's emails or other digital information, users have a right to know," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a release. "Our bill ensures that no investigation will be compromised, but makes sure the government can't hide surveillance forever by misusing sealing and gag orders to prevent the American people from understanding the enormous scale of government surveillance, as well as ensuring that the targets eventually learn their personal information has been searched."
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Bipartisan Proposed Legislation To Curtail Secretive Email Seizure More

Bipartisan Proposed Legislation To Curtail Secretive Email Seizure

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  • That still seems far too long.

  • "block tech companies from altering users whose data has been seized."

    Well, that's good. But even better is if the users are /alerted/.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      Altering the users is far easier. Nothing an axe can't handle. Alerting them is a morass of legislation and alphabet agencies.

  • If it's not going to pass over the filibuster. Just because two senators from two parties supported doesn't mean a damn thing when one senator from either party can shoot it down. Instead of running stories about how there's a bipartisan bill which implies it's going to get fixed when there's absolutely no indication right now that it is if the hill cared they would run stories discussing how terrible and abuse of power this is.

    Instead we get feel-good bullshit designed to make the people pushing the bi
    • Burning the whole thing down and starting again, with a new system not designed and built in the 18th century would be a start.
      It won't happen though. The people who run America stand to lose too much to allow that.

      But yes, filibusters are a stupid thing to allow in your parliament.

    • Hey cmon! They UNANIMOUSLY voted to deliver us more sunshine! Does it get better than that? And now, they're gonna say that govt can't keep spying on you forever, only a piddly 6 months! See? They care about Americans, and aren't just in the job for the insider trading and lobbyist money!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jpyeron ( 456009 )

      You could, like me, write each of your elected officials in support of it. The more that write, the more the politicians worry about their jobs.

      you can read the proposed bill here: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/de... [govinfo.gov]

      If you think this is a better idea than nothing - write your Senator: https://www.senate.gov/senator... [senate.gov]

      If it clears the Senate, you can contact your representative: https://www.house.gov/represen... [house.gov]

    • One senator can't shut down the senate. There is a procedure in place to end a filibuster, it is called cloture. If 60 senators want to end debate, debate ends. https://crsreports.congress.go... [congress.gov]

  • Because members of Congress want to know when they are investigated so they can wipe thier files

    • No, it's because Project Veritas just revealed using leaked MS legal documents the government was using secret warrants to spy on them. This over the Ashley Biden diary in which she states that as a teenager her father took showers with her.

  • It places a six-month limit on the length of gag orders in warrants

    So fucking what? ALL of our emails, LITERALLY, are being capture by the feds, keyword matched, and stored FOREVER. Not if it goes through a local network of course, but all the rest of it is being scooped up. They are listening to your phone calls, they are reading your emails, they are watching your searches. PRISM, ECHELON, the list goes ever on and on.

    Limitations on search warrants do nothing whatsoever to curtail the feds' warrantless searches.

    • There's the dogmatic and the pragmatic. I don't know why the Fourth Amendment doesn't automagically apply, here, but, at the same time, I'm not panicking, because the vast majority of things I send, when I actually send anything, are so mundane and downright boring that I don't even really care if they know. What are they possibly going to do with my aunt Tilly's recipe for butter-brickel pie? Or my proctology appointment? Now, I'm not granting them a license for them to perpetually spy on me, but if I'

  • Now, I understand that dupes are a way of life around here.

    But this and the first one are off of the same submission!

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