Warning from Electronic Frontier Foundation: the formation of a global surveillance police state.

[ancianita]

Soon, U.K. police will be able to target people for investigation, and gather their data from U.S. companies, without a judge’s approval—and without ever providing notice to the targets.

The data collected by U.K. police will include the private information of Americans and non-Americans alike. While U.S. persons aren’t supposed to be targeted, this deal won’t stop American communications with a targeted person from being swept up while foreign police investigate.

This deal even allows, for the first time, a foreign government to perform a wiretap on a conversation involving a U.S. citizen or resident. These wiretaps won’t have the normal safeguards that a U.S. person would get if they were subject to a wiretap authorized by a U.S. court.

The deal also allows police in the U.S. to bypass U.K. sovereignty. U.S. law enforcement will be able to search and seize data on territory located in Britain and Northern Ireland, without following privacy rules in the U.K.

The US-UK agreement is the first negotiated under the Cloud Act—a federal law that allows foreign police to negotiate agreements to demand data stored in the United States and about U.S. persons. This troublesome U.S.-U.K. agreement will set a terrible precedent for similarly bad Cloud Act deals that could be struck with other nations.

The DOJ should work on speeding up existing methods of getting data across borders while maintaining judicial oversight. The U.S.-U.K. Cloud Act agreement is a bad deal for citizens of both countries, and Congress should stop it.

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-oppose-the-u-s-u-k-cloud-act-deal?fbclid=IwAR2EBTYfKpFaGVy8Q4X-juxLYi7OLvSs2yK_AelgmlJyOUhAi2_Zh28bA2U

Other digital rights organizations support EFF's warning.

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=cloud+act

It's no secret many in the UK government want backdoored encryption. The UK wing of the Five Eyes surveillance conglomerate says the only thing that should be "absolute" is the government's access to communications.

The long-gestating "Snooper's Charter" frequently contained language mandating "lawful access," the government's preferred nomenclature for encryption backdoors. And officials have, at various times, made unsupported statements about how no one really needs encryption, so maybe companies should just stop offering it.

What the UK government has in the works now won't mandate backdoors, but it appears to be a way to get its foot in the (back)door with the assistance of the US government.

Congress, on behalf of The People's privacy and security, needs to stop this weaponization of surveillance upon Five Eyes populations. It's nothing but another bad faith pacification tool used against Western countries by leaders who want to preserve their power and control.

As I've said elsewhere, the alt-right moves to use any tools it can misuse to chill communications and even "thinking out loud" among Americans.

Tyranny maintains itself by controlling speech and thought -- excluding evidence, witnesses, CNN from a WH luncheon of TV networks, "criminally investigating" a political writer.

Rule #1 from Lessons On Tyranny: Do not obey in advance.

Please. Call at least one member of the House -- https://www.house.gov/representatives -- preferably a member of the House Intel Committee. Office: [phone]

[defacto7]

1. It was only a matter of time.

[ancianita]

2. Oh here we go with the politics of inevitability. Was it? Really? You can say that about

every bad thing that happens TO us.

It's like entropy, right? Moral systems inevitabily fall apart. The center cannot hold. That sort of thing, right?

[defacto7]

5. No, if you want to make it such a broad brush. I didn't.

I've worked in net security and development practically since the beginning. The potential for this outcome has always been there and understood. It's followed it's course and hasn't changed either technologically or sociologically from the earliest predictions. Yes, this outcome was only a matter of time. Of course one always hopes for some great discovery but there are no miracles in math.

[ancianita]

6. You left me no choice. You could have said why to begin with, then I wouldn't have had

to guess your attitude or experience.

Here's the thing about what's "always been there and understood."

We're trying to have an civilized society that does the greatest good for the greatest number.

Our Founders always understood what you or I or anyone have to act on. In both points of history, the potential for undermining what others build is always there.

We can state that ever-present problem, work it to death, wallow in the difficulty of the vigilance and the fight; or like the Founders, have our eyes on solutions that maintain futures for our children that are better than ours. Future Forging, my son calls it.

We cannot give up fighting for our First Amendment rights no matter how sold out to Money and Mammon any bad actors are. They'll always be there. But who will wall in whom.

We are not defined by our opponents. We are only who we answer to. And that should be each other, not global controllers.

Potential evil and serfdom will always be out there, they never have to become our reality.

We are agents of our collective future.

[defacto7]

7. I appreciate your answer. 'Read it twice.

I will never give up the fight; no one has that luxury. But I'm not one to fight blindly either by ignorance or self affliction. The last thing I want to do is undermine people's spirit but I also don't like to pretend. Thanks for the reply.

[SoCalNative]

3. Wasn't this a season of Homeland?

But Germany, not the UK

[ancianita]

4. No. None of this surveillance capability ever existed. We're in the reality of the 21st

Century and have no prior experience with anything but reality-based fictions.

Homeland is international spying. It involved Russia, not Germany, and how our FBI only had an inkling but never a clue about it.

Our situation is about domestic allies allowing foreign spies to help them control their populations' free speech and thought.

Orwell is about our present situation.