Please read:
- https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/cloud_act_spending_...
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect...
I personally believe the Facebook “scandal” is/was a smoke screen to draw the media attention away from this (4 or 5 year old scandal with regards to data collected for the Government to begin with). No private information was leaked (private messages, chats, etc) from Facebook as far as I am aware. I am not saying Facebook is innocent here – they are far from it, but I can’t stop thinking that the timing is too convenient and too much of a coincidence. Also recall that Zuckerberg liquidated around $500 million of Facebook stock in February.
All of the major tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc) co-authored a letter supporting this legislation saying that it represents “notable progress to protect consumers’ rights.” despite the fact that it does the exact opposite. I think it will save them money from drawn out legal battles, legal fees, and the possibility of having to build additional data centers in other countries/continents to replicate and provide access to customer’s data for law enforcement agencies.
The CLOUD act allows access to ANY data including emails, private messages, etc. without requiring a warrant or having to inform the person that it is being collected. It gives additional power to the executive branch as the attorney general and certain members of the cabinet can access data on unsuspecting individuals without having to notify Congress or the Judicial branch. Also data collected from another party interacting with someone else could be used to criminally prosecute them even if they were not under any suspicion or investigation to begin with.
>no mention in mainstream media
Terrifying and surreal
Source? I only see that it allows foreign governments to get information on their own citizens, even if that information is stored on US soil.
It makes citizens sound like property / cattle.
“I believe my cow pooped on your lawn. I demand the right to inspect your lawn for my cows poop to retrieve the poop. Expect further consultation if we decide you illegally benefited from that poop. I don’t care that you are ok with the poop or that the cow came to your lawn and pooped there of its own valition. In Cowville pooping outside of your allotted pen is illegal.”
Of course when you take that argument to its logical conclusion I may find that I’ve just argued for a firewall / vetting system that would prevent data leaving the national networks ‘illegally’. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m arguing the other way, that national borders make less sense than ever and freedom of people, ideas and data requires a completely different take on national soverignty.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...
It's only hindsight being 20/20 that they go, oh fuck that was a bad idea, how did we get here? Complacency.
No one said democracy was easy. It requires constant vigilance. And people are too happy to be entertained by other things. Of course the better system would be the benevolent dictator for a push button operation, the small problem is they're not benevolent for very long.
Would it be possible to appoint a dictator, who has no other incentive other then serve the people. For ex, they ll sever every human relation, cannot own property, will have zero privacy, cannot reproduce and have children etc. But they ll be held to the highest honor and their every needs taken care of...
In short, something like the life of a religious saint or a nun.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/microso...
It's also the second time in the last few months that Microsoft has settled with the government instead of pushing forward the privacy fight. The government pinky-promised that it wouldn't abuse the gag orders anymore, and that's all it took for Microsoft to give up:
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/10/23/doj-act...
It was starting to look like Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith was starting to care a bit about privacy with all the things he was proposing (like the Digital Geneva Convention) and these recent lawsuits he pushed the company to start against the government. But it looks like that fight was very short-lived and the pro-surveillance people in the company (Nadella, probably, going by how they implemented law enforcement's whole wishlist into Windows 10) won that debate.
So I guess we can no longer trust Microsoft to fight for privacy at all anymore. And with the CLOUD Act, nobody should trust any US-based company anymore anyway.
The law changed and the case now lacks merit. The legal question at issue in the SCotUS case can't magically include the CLOUD Act. That's not how the courts work. Microsoft will have to start over and file complaints against data requests under the CLOUD Act, but since that involves a different question of law this case before SCotUS is moot. Regardless of the decision in this case, the Federal government could just make another request under the CLOUD Act.
Microsoft has not been trustworthy since the mid 90s, at the latest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect...
The bill (passed as part of the spending bill a week ago):
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4943
First Mondays (http://www.firstmondays.fm) did an interview with Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer about the Supreme Court case and the CLOUD Act.
The combination of these sources made both the CLOUD Act and this call for dismissal somewhat unsurprising. It was pretty clear that the Supreme Court wanted congress to clarify the now antiquated Stored Communications Act.
For the oral arguments, check out Oyez (https://www.oyez.org). I like it much better because it:
* has argument audio from cases going back 50+ years (as compared to 8 yrs on scotus.gov), so you can listen to big cases from before 2010 (e.g. Citizens United), and when modern cases draw heavily on prior decisions, you can go back and listen to the reasoning in the previous case (e.g. Vieth for Gill/Benisek, Bakke for Fisher).
* has the audio synced to the court transcript, which helps identify voices and follow when there's poor audio quality.
* has audio of opinion announcements when they're given (so you know the outcome and reasoning of the decision without looking it up)
* lets you sort by popularity, which makes it easier to find the cases that are important and interesting rather than merely politically charged.
New law -> new warrant -> no reason to continue wasting government $$ on fighting a court case that now has federal law clarifying the issues. Microsoft gets to save some money as well.
I have no need for such a thing. However it’s not hard to imagine drug cartels or similar organizations using this right away.
Pretty exciting new feature. Surprised they buried it in the patch notes.
Hopefully this starts the ball rolling on Windows being completely unacceptable for use by all non-US goverments and business. Giving your docs to an unfriendly foreign state isn't cool. ;)
What does this mean?
Does Windows 10 automatically upload randomly-selected Word documents to Microsoft? Or something else?
To bad if those docs happen to be medical records - or anything else sensitive. :(
Note - that's just one example. Win 10 really is a privacy shit show.
Now, maybe in this case the 9 will claim it does require an amendment, but so many current exceptions and weird interpretations have been allowed that I can't have faith in the decisions of the 9.
