Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes

by raleighm • 8 years ago

259 58 8 years ago

jakeogh5• 8 years ago

This could be an excellent use of the Presidential veto. Whatever your political leanings, omnibus bills are a terrible outcome of the false left right paradigm. Everybody gets to toss in the stuff they "want" to support but know their constituents do not.

EFF: You wrote pages about it, but failed to mention the president still needs to sign it. It's a pretty glaring omission...

Teeer• 8 years ago

Except Trump probably supports the CLOUD Act.

jakeogh5• 8 years ago

If there is anyone sticking up for sovereignty (aka borders) it's President Trump. Remember the TPP? How about his UN speech?

iamthirsty• 8 years ago

That's assuming he even read the briefing on it.

dragonwriter4• 8 years ago

The Administration has backed the push for it (in part, to resolve an ongoing legal dispute with Microsoft, who also supports it), so it's pretty hard (though given Trump's other rapid reversals, not impossible) to see Trump causing a shutdown by vetoing the omnibus spending bill over it's inclusion.

saas_co_de• 8 years ago

It was sponsored by sessions so I would guess yes

dragonwriter4• 8 years ago

This could be an excellent use of the Presidential veto.

It would be insanity for the President to veto a spending bill needed to avert a shutdown because it included a provision the Administration has publicly supported and actively sought.

Whatever your political leanings, omnibus bills are a terrible outcome

Omnibus spending bills are fine — the particular financial provisions of any one may be good or bad, but the concept is fine; they are a completely sensible way to set government finances rather than doing it piecemeal.

Non-germane law changes tacked on to an omnibus spending bill, especially one being passed shortly before the expiration of current spending authority, are, OTOH, a different issue.

syshum3• 8 years ago

but the concept is fine; they are a completely sensible way to set government finances rather than doing it piecemeal.

No they are not fine, not has they are used today. Congress as normal has abused the power of these bill this being a prime example.

This is why we need a Constitutional Amendment to bring the US Constitution in line with 41 US States where the Single Subject Rule is enforced.

We also need to bring back the Line Item Veto

We also need a mandatory Public Comment period, I propose 1 day for every 10 pages of Text... so for this bill it would have required 223 days of public comment before a vote would have been allowed, instead of what 12 hours this one got from the time it was submitted until it was being voted on

brianzelip• 8 years ago

EFF: You wrote pages about it, but failed to mention the president still needs to sign it. It's a pretty glaring omission...

Maybe you missed this line from the OP:

All the bill requires now is the president’s signature.

jandrese• 8 years ago

If the president vetoes this bill it won't be over the CLOUD act, it will be because it doesn't fund his insane border wall.

kyrra• 8 years ago

Which he is considering doing right now.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/97716688749379993...

"I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded."

(edit: updated link to Trump's twitter post)

neuronexmachina• 8 years ago

Or the new bipartisan Russian sanctions in the bill: https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-snuck-new-russia-sanc...

mnm1• 8 years ago

Of course we lost. The people always lose. I stopped using cloud services without end to end encryption, except email/sms, years ago, soon after Snowden's revelations. I simply don't see any other solution. I just wish more people cared, that we could do a real boycott and hurt some companies. A few corporations going out of business would be a miniscule price to pay for privacy. Not enough will ever care though. It's sad but true. Convenience trumps everything.

lwhalen• 8 years ago

So, here's a question. I'm a small self-hoster, US-based. If the "London police" come calling asking for my data, what repercussions do I face if I just say "No"?

rschulman3• 8 years ago

Only the repercussions that the UK government could exact upon you. If you have no assets in the UK and don't plan on going there, there is relatively little they can do to you.

It's important to note that the CLOUD Act does not compel you to respond, it permits you to do so where you were prohibited before under US law.

I am a lawyer, but certainly not yours.

AFNobody3• 8 years ago

If you had no assets in the UK and you accept you can never enter the UK....

You could get away with saying No. As long as the UK doesn't talk to the US and ask them to turn you over (which likely requires some serious criminal activity rather than curiosity).

ManFromUranus• 8 years ago

The UK government can compel you to give them whatever they want by indirectly acting via the US Govt. They will pressure the US Govt the US Govt will act on you. So even though on paper they can't directly act against you, rest assured, they can. Lets pretend that the US government would not comply with requests to compel you to give them something, you can still be sued or otherwise acted upon in such a way that you would have to expend time / resources to fend off the request / lawsuit or whatever. So to say that the UK Govt can't do anything to you because you don't have any assets there or don't want to go there is kind of silly IMO.

rschulman3• 8 years ago

This is incorrect. The US government has no interest in turning over their citizens to the UK government. The UK government is unlikely to sue a US citizen in US court to assert their jurisdiction.

The most the UK government would probably do is issue a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request with the US government, who would then go get a warrant and serve that on you, which you would have to respond to.

chopin3• 8 years ago

I am certainly no supporter of the CLOUD act but the examples given on OP are not convincing to me. What would prevent Slack from notifying all parties of the request (the Londoner and her friends)? As well I'd expect that there are barriers in UK which would require a warrant to get the data.

walterbell• 8 years ago

From https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/cloud-act-dangerous-ex...

"The legislation still:

- Includes a weak standard for review that does not rise to the protections of the warrant requirement under the 4th Amendment.

- Fails to require foreign law enforcement to seek individualized and prior judicial review.

- Grants real-time access and interception to foreign law enforcement without requiring the heightened warrant standards that U.S. police have to adhere to under the Wiretap Act.

- Fails to place adequate limits on the category and severity of crimes for this type of agreement.

- Fails to require notice on any level – to the person targeted, to the country where the person resides, and to the country where the data is stored."

chopin3• 8 years ago

I've seen that. However the London police may require a warrant under UK law, nevertheless. And Slack may notify, nevertheless.

I think EFF could come up with better examples. At least, most of these examples are not threatening for US persons. I'd think better examples would involve what US LEO can do unwarranted. In that case people may be inclined to exert more pressure on their representatives.

The law is bad but I think it could be painted in worse light.

mtgx• 8 years ago

Slack doesn't even tell you when your employer is looking at your private chats. Do you think it will tell you when a government's law enforcement arm asks them not to tell you?

https://thenextweb.com/apps/2018/03/22/slacks-new-policy-let...

drawkbox• 8 years ago

This bill is the CLOUD Act. It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill. Congress has a professional responsibility to listen to the American people’s concerns, to represent their constituents, and to debate the merits and concerns of this proposal amongst themselves, and this week, they failed.

The 4th amendment is gone and it wasn't terrorists that killed it, it was fear and representatives of the people that don't represent people that killed it.

These freedoms were given up on page 2,232 of a budget bill with no debate.

History will not be kind to this time or everyone that lived during this backslide. Freedoms are hard to win, we are giving them up easily.

As an aside, these 'pro-business' representatives just made US cloud products less valuable to foreign companies/countries and US competitors.

When will people realize that surveillance can be abused and it is usually for political or corporate espionage, has nothing to do with making anyone more secure or safe.

Business plans, data and ideas are going to be a top target to theft as they can get to it through a fake or associated threat, have some rogue actor email or send info in, extract all business data and information.

AFNobody3• 8 years ago

Yup. No secret, once recorded, stays secret forever and the surveillance state's expansion is making it worse. It'll just be a bigger pot to steal and no one bothers to pay for security because they don't have to.

Equifax made money off its security breach ffs.

zdkl• 8 years ago

Equifax made money off its security breach ffs.

Source?

ionised• 8 years ago

When will people realize that surveillance can be abused and it is usually for political or corporate espionage, has nothing to do with making anyone more secure or safe.

Throughout history, surveillance of a population has never been in the interests of that population.

mxuribe• 8 years ago

Well, I guess the erosion of our most basic rights is in fact happening. Ugh, makes me sick to my stomach.

clarkmoody• 8 years ago

To be fair, the erosion of our basic rights has been happening for a long time.

tzs2• 8 years ago

London investigators want the private Slack messages of a Londoner they suspect of bank fraud. The London police could go directly to Slack, a U.S. company, to request and collect those messages. The London police would not necessarily need prior judicial review for this request. The London police would not be required to notify U.S. law enforcement about this request. The London police would not need a probable cause warrant for this collection.

Is the implication that before the CLOUD Act, if London police wanted to ask a US company for information they had to notify US law enforcement?

Sure, if they wanted to force a US company to give them information they would have to get the US legal system involved, but as far as I am aware US law enforcement is not a gatekeeper over foreign access to talk to US entities, at least when those foreigners are not from countries that the US restricts contact with in general.

charred_toast• 8 years ago

I guess we learned nothing from the 20th century. While our country, at least used to, pride itself and base it's image upon excoriating unjust governmental overreach abroad (East Germany), it has become exactly what it once bemoaned.

dragonwriter4• 8 years ago

No, our government still prides itself on excoriating unjust governmental overreach abroad.

Of course, that's often a good distraction from unjust governmental overreach at home. But if you think that wasn't just as true at the Cold War time you point to, you are sadly mistaken.

shiado• 8 years ago

Hopefully with all these recent transgressions against digital rights we will see the emergence of some hybrid of Zeronet, TOR, I2P, IPFS, BitTorrent, etc... All these technologies have some serious usability/UX problems. We need something so easy to use and so ubiquitous that it will make nations feel like Metallica going up against Napster.

mulmen• 8 years ago

From my perspective this is a legislative issue and not a technology problem. The solution here is still to participate in democracy and preserve our rights.

How will putting the government on the defensive result in better lawmaking? That’s exactly the situation we are in now. Lawmakers are afraid of technology and make ill advised laws to try and control it.

cryoshon• 8 years ago

implying they listen to us and not the people who have money

you should know better than that by now, come on. vote, do whatever. i sure do. but until you're disrupting things, they won't listen.

thrillgore• 8 years ago

What are our legislative options now? Let's assume we're already exhausting all technical options.

wmeredith• 8 years ago

When the legislative branch screws up, it's on one of the others to keep it in check. Usually the judicial. This will be fought in the courts once a defendant is incentivized enough to spend the money to do so.

nickpp• 8 years ago

This bill is the CLOUD Act. It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill.

And this, gentlemen, is why you NEVER trust a government. Any government.

Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes

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