Senate Can't even Pass a law to stop the GOVT from using our emails

phobicsquirrel

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/senate-drops-effort-to-prevent-warrantless-email-monitoring/266646/

As the week wound down before the holiday break, the senate sent President Obama a bill that gives sites like Netflix the option of allowing users to automatically share their viewing history with their social networks on Facebook.

This was relatively uncontroversial, making video sites no different from other services (like Spotify, say) that already have this kind of easy sharing. In fact, the prohibition only existed in the first place because Congress singled out video-rental history as particularly private following an incident in 1987 when then-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video-rental history was leaked to the Washington City Paper.

But the bill was only so uncontroversial because the Senate stripped it of a much more significant proposal: amendments offered by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, which would have required a warrant for law-enforcement agents to access the contents or metadata of emails that have been stored remotely for more than 180 days. Current law only requires a warrant for obtaining more recent communications. Once emails are older, government agents can obtain them with mere subpoenas, which require only a demonstration that the information would be useful to an ongoing investigation.

Though the Leahy amendments were not expected to pass, they did get out of the Judiciary Committee with only one vote against (Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama) and lay the groundwork for a more concerted push during the next Congress.

So, for now, the task of establishing greater email privacy lies ahead. "If Netflix is going to get an update to the privacy law, we think the American people should get an update to the privacy law," the ACLU's Chris Calabrese told Wired.

...So things like the patriot act can pass then get re-authorized, the TSA are still allowed to practically rape people and we as surps can't even get our email privacy. Freaking weak.

Amos_Umwhat

I wonder, how many folks realize, or ever will realize consciously, that the PATRIOT act stripped us of all those "rights" we were taught about in civics and government classes when we were in school?
Poof!
Gone

Vulchor

No govt. can give us rights....they can only take our rights away.

webmost

Vulchor:

No govt. can give us rights....they can only take our rights away.

Eggs Ackley.

Amos_Umwhat

webmost:

Vulchor:

No govt. can give us rights....they can only take our rights away.

Eggs Ackley.

Not to argue with the sentiment, but we're supposed to have a government formed for the express purpose of protecting our inalienable rights.
Sadly, it doesn't seem to happen equally across the spectrum, but rather often seems to go to the highest bidder, or to the group with enough votes to insist their own view is "right", therefore everyone else must obey the particular mores of the voting bloc, whether sensible, sane, or not.
Still, the original intent remains worthy of pursuit. And the losses encountered in that pursuit continue to bring grief to men of worthy character.

Vulchor

I wasnt trying to argue with you Amos, just make a philosophical (if it is that) point that we are all born free and in "nature" we have the rights of doing as we want. Governments exist to restrict those rights----in good ways like not being able to kill me or steal my car........But also in bad ways, as your post above illustrates very well.

Amos_Umwhat

Vulchor:

I wasnt trying to argue with you Amos, just make a philosophical (if it is that) point that we are all born free and in "nature" we have the rights of doing as we want. Governments exist to restrict those rights----in good ways like not being able to kill me or steal my car........But also in bad ways, as your post above illustrates very well.

No, I didn't think you were arguing at all! Nor am I arguing with you, I just wanted to complete the thought, that's all. No disagreement, you're exactly right. I'm just illustrating governments useful function, perhaps their only useful function, and wishing that ours would get back to that business. What I'm getting at is the intent behind the Constitution, and the deviations that have occurred since the inception. I think that you, Vulchor, are very much one of those men of good character who see this in much the same way I do.
On a side note, this is one of the odd things about this two-dimensional medium of ours, the Forum. It's very easy to be misunderstood, and to misunderstand the intent of others. A hazard of incomplete information, or expression, I guess.

Vulchor

Well said all the way around my friend.

webmost

Nihilism would be the only thing that makes any sense at all if only nihilism was a thing that made any sense at all. The bottom line is: Power Corrupts, yet the world is corrupter without it.

Vulchor

Not sure about being a Nihilist...."I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism but at least its an ethos".

phobicsquirrel

webmost:

Nihilism would be the only thing that makes any sense at all if only nihilism was a thing that made any sense at all. The bottom line is: Power Corrupts, yet the world is corrupter without it.