Are the FBI and IRS Secretly Reading Your Email Without a Warrant? Friday

[midnight]

The American Civil Liberties Union has obtained documents revealing that the FBI and IRS may be reading emails and other electronic communications of U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant. This comes just as reports have emerged that the Obama administration is considering approving an overhaul of government surveillance of the Internet. The New York Times reported the new rules would make it easier to wiretap users of web services such as instant messaging. "The FBI wants to be able to intercept every kind of possible communication," says attorney Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech Privacy and Technology Project. "The FBI basically wants to require all of these companies to rewrite their code in order to enable more government surveillance … And in order to accomplish that, they would make the whole internet less secure.”

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16299-are-the-fbi-and-irs-secretly-reading-your-email-without-a-warrant

&feature=player_embedded

1986 out dated electronic law allows govt. agency to do this...

[midnight]

1. More info..

There are, however, two obstacles looming directly in front of the Digital Due Process coalition. First, Leahy's proposal, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011, has no Republican support so far (in fact, it has no cosponsors at all).
That lack of visible Republican enthusiasm will make it difficult for the legislation to navigate its way through a bipartisan legislature. In June, Leahy told CNET that he hoped to gain GOP support: "I hope so," he said. "Otherwise we'll have a heck of a time passing it."
Second, the U.S. Justice Department has launched a concerted political attack on the principles behind the Digital Due Process coalition. James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, said in April that rewriting ECPA to grant cloud computing users more privacy protections and to require court approval before tracking Americans' cell phones would hinder police investigations.
When asked yesterday if the Justice Department had a position on ECPA changes, a spokesman referred CNET to Baker's previous statements. Department officials have indicated they believe the law strikes a reasonable balance between privacy and law enforcement as currently written -- and would be unlikely to drop their opposition unless they get something like mandatory data retention as a sweetener.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20123710-281/google-facebook-go-retro-in-push-to-update-1986-privacy-law/

[midnight]

4. I was hoping someone would of commented on this info... I was wondering who James Baker was....

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

[limpyhobbler]

7. Ugh, tell me about it...

Last edited Sat May 11, 2013, 07:12 PM - Edit history (1)

[DeSwiss]

9. HA!

Exactly. Trevor knows what's up!

- Another noted conspiracy theorist:

[AsahinaKimi]

3. Its kind of scary to think

That you can send out a email to someone, and there are other eyes looking at it. Than again.. with something like twitter.. its a public domain kinda thing...so you expect lots of people to see your tweets.. (I wish I was retweeted more.. I guess I don't have anything important anyone wants to read.. )

[DeSwiss]

8. Nothing is private.

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
~George Orwell, 1984

[20score]

5. Have to put some of the blame on the supporters of Obama that

have completely laid down on this issue, once he took office.

There was some push-back during Bush's terms, because the left rightly stood against this type of Big Brother intrusion. The right-wing, being more authoritarian by nature, will not fight this; and now far too many on the left have traded in their ideals for an illusion of political unity.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Important issue.

[Mnemosyne]

10. K&R nt