Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog [4],
This is how the corporate state rolls. They remove all the important stuff at the last minute, you know, like provisions that might actually protect constitutional rights. This is exactly what they just did with the NDAA, which I outlined in my post The Section Preventing Indefinite Detention of Americans without Trial Removed from Final NDAA Bill [5]. Now we find out from Wired that:
The Senate late Thursday forwarded legislation to President Barack Obama granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they’re watching on Netflix. While lawmakers were caving to special interests, however, they cut from the legislative package language requiring the authorities to get a warrant to read your e-mail or other data stored in the cloud.
But another part of the same Senate package — sweeping digital privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud — was removed at the last minute.
Currently, the government can obtain e-mail or other cloud documents without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. The authorities only need to demonstrate, often via an administrative subpoena, that it has “reasonable grounds to believe” the information would be useful in an investigation.
Leahy has repeatedly sought to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, but he finds little support for it among fellow lawmakers or with the President Barack Obama administration.
Repeat after me: Your Government Loves You. Now go back to sleep.
Full Wired article here [6].