Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants
Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans' e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files.
A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.
CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.
Revised bill highlights
Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge. (CNET obtained the revised draft from a source involved in the negotiations with Leahy.)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-575522....=news&tag=title
My 2 cents:
This will not conjure up anywhere near the outrage and groundswell of opposition that it should.
If there is one thing that the left has become extremely adept at, it's opposing this kind of violation of our rights and liberties... Unfortunately, the left has shown us, over the last 4 years, that they won't stand fast against these violations, so long as the buck stops with someone with a (D) behind their name.
The right will attempt to protest this, but they are so damn zealous when it comes to religion, that they cannot be taken seriously after a very short amount of time... Look at the tea party... A really great attempt by people to the right of center, to espouse their discontent... But eventually, the religious views crept too close to the surface, and made them seem like whack-jobs.
It's a scary time we're living in... I just hope a good leader, with the courage of his convictions, will step up and help us to right some of these wrongs.
This is serious stuff...
