The Mother of all anti-privacy bills [might] become law in the US

[CptStern]

Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography. To combat it, legislators have brought through committee a poorly conceived, over-broad Congressional bill, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. It is arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties now under consideration in the United States. The potential victims: everyone who uses the Internet.

under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you've been assigned.
[...]
As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 doesn't require that someone be under investigation on child pornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history -- being suspected of any crime is enough. (It may even be made available in civil matters like divorce trials or child custody battles.) Nor do police need probable cause to search this information. As Rep. James Sensenbrenner says, (R-Wisc.) "It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I'm not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...-could-kill-internet-privacy-for-good/242853/

 

[Acepilotf14]

Stern, just because it goes through committee doesn't mean it's going to become law.

 

[CptStern]

ya I read the article:

The good news? It hasn't gone before the full House yet.

The bad news: it already made it through committee. And history shows that in times of moral panic, overly broad legislation has a way of becoming law.

editted anyways so that that doesnt become the focus of this thread

 

[Xevrex]

Wouldn't this be liable for judicial review concerning the Fourth Amendment (protection against unwarranted search/seizure) and Fourteenth Amendment (the liberty clause saying liberty cannot be deprived without due process of law) to declare this law unconstitutional? It certainly seems that, if construed correctly (only because the Constitution does not provide specific liberties for digital privacy), the laws could be deemed unconstitutional because the federal government conducts a digital "search" of them without a warrant and thus violates the Fourth Amendment and, without due process of law, the Fourteenth Amendment as well. The only roadblock I can see is that child protection might blind right-wing judges' eyes and cause them to deem the law constitutional, even though it violates the constitution, only because it provides for the security of a "violated" party. A similar thing happened in the case New Jersey v. T.L.O. where an unwarranted search and seizure of marijuana led to indictment for possession and possible distribution, but was protected because it protected the school environment. But, if the Supreme Court can manage to see this law's over-generality, they can certainly strike it down.

stealth edit: only if it becomes law

 

[CptStern]

doesnt sound like they'd need a warrent:

As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 doesn't require that someone be under investigation on child pornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history -- being suspected of any crime is enough. (It may even be made available in civil matters like divorce trials or child custody battles.) Nor do police need probable cause to search this information.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Which is why it's a violation of our civil rights, and would be contested in court the moment it came up.

 

[CptStern]

search and seizure are protected however it doesnt seem like surveilance is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

 

[Bad^Hat]

So is America trying to reclaim their monopoly on depressing news after the Murdoch scandal nearly nudged them out of top billing, or what?

 

[Mr Stabby]

Does the 4th ammendment protect the series of tubes that gets data between private users?