A New Backdoor Around the Fourth Amendment: The CLOUD Act

Electronic Frontier Foundation ^ | 3/11/2018 | David Ruiz

[nevadapatriot]

There’s a new, proposed backdoor to our data, which would bypass our Fourth Amendment protections to communications privacy. It is built into a dangerous bill called the CLOUD Act, which would allow police at home and abroad to seize cross-border data without following the privacy rules where the data is stored.

This backdoor is an insidious method for accessing our emails, our chat logs, our online videos and photos, and our private moments shared online between one another. This backdoor would deny us meaningful judicial review and the privacy protections embedded in our Constitution.

This new backdoor for cross-border data mirrors another backdoor under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, an invasive NSA surveillance authority for foreign intelligence gathering. That law, recently reauthorized and expanded by Congress for another six years, gives U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA, FBI, and CIA, the ability to search, read, and share our private electronic messages without first obtaining a warrant.

The new backdoor in the CLOUD Act operates much in the same way. U.S. police could obtain Americans’ data, and use it against them, without complying with the Fourth Amendment.

For this reason, and many more, EFF strongly opposes the CLOUD Act.

[nevadapatriot]

Well this just stinks to high hell

[HiTech RedNeck]

And it’s going to happen anyhow, law or not... the temptations of power combined with the ease of technology are simply too great.

[SuperLuminal]

Those who rule us never pass up any opportunity to enhance their power...Just imagine if Mao or Stalin had had as much power & control as the U.S. government does...They were primitive and helpless in comparison...

[Billyv]

They had it, bugged phones, read mail, etc. their constituents weren’t armed. The only difference.

American government is designed like golf. It is for an honorable people that will self-govern requiring a minimalist form of government and government intervention.

It seems we have not been electing honorable people of integrity. Where have all the Statesmen gone?

[ptsal]

Biko computer

[DoughtyOne]

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...this is a general all-purpose message, and should not be seen as targeting any individual I am responding to...

Just $362.00 dollars to 90.00%

[reed13k]

And that’s why my personal stuff is stored on a hard drive and not in the cloud.

[Bratch]

It seems we have not been electing honorable people of integrity. Where have all the Statesmen gone?

Elected officials tend to reflect the electorate.

[TribalPrincess2U]

Cloud window keep popping up. I will not use it. It’s a big effin nusience. I drag the window to the bottom of my screen. Others pop up so I do the same. I will never never use the effin cloud!

[SunkenCiv]

The EFF has spoken -- it's still fighting for reimplementation of Net Neutrality.

[wbarmy]

Bingo, you win a kewpie doll.

I NEVER put anything on the cloud if I have a choice.

Several stand alone hard drives and extras sent to my widely dispersed family.

Family photos and yoga schedules, ya know.

[Gene Eric]

>> Several stand alone hard drives and extras sent to my widely dispersed family.

LOL, look dear, wbarmy just sent us another 2 pounds of hard disks... at least we’re no longer getting those 8” floppies.

If you’re geeky enough, you should setup a personal media server like Plex or Emby. And they will cast to Smart TVs and personals with the appropriate optimizations. Good for the widely dispersed, private family ;)

[Spitzensparkin1]

#InternetBillofRights (IBOR)

[wbarmy]

Sorry, we travel a lot and the kids want all of the photographs, and it ain’t two pounds, you can pt a lot on a small thumb drive these days.

And a personal server means the photographs still travel to somebody else’s server over the internet.

I promised the children they would have all of the childhood and family photos and documents. It doesn’t mean a whole lot to them right now, but when they are my age and start looking at all of the media, I am sure they will appreciate it. I certainly did when I got all of my families old photographs and films.

[JustaTech]

If domestic 3-letter wants to blackbag you and covertly clone your drives without cause or warrant, they just get a Five Eyes partner such as MI6 to generate some paperwork and then do the job “for them” in the name of “cooperation.” Basically just a way to launder whatever evidence is collected or fabricated so it can potentially be used against you.

One hand washes the other, and everyone gets dirty.

[Faith65]

bkmk for later

[Alas Babylon!]

And if ANY of the computers you connect to those hard drives also have a connection to the Internet, consider them read.

If you have a Windows computer, use BitLocker on every hard drive you own.

Always encrypt your data, in storage and in transmission.

[.44 Special]

Never say, do, or access anything online, or even on an offline computer, that you don’t want the world to know.

[DaveA37]

Never say never. Sounds like something the liberals would be pushing while keeping themselves exempt.

[Zathras]

But not your email or any cloud based software you might be using.
The last key is now in the the lock....all it requires is for someone to turn it.