Tag Archives: Spending Bill

Civil Liberties, Featured, Politics, Privacy, Technology, US

Civil Liberties Groups Warn CLOUD Act In Spending Bill Erodes Privacy

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Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed the controversial $1.3 trillion government spending bill into law, despite opposition from concerned citizens and senators who complained the public did not have adequate time to read the 2,232-page bill. The massive bill was handed to representatives on Wednesday night and put to a vote the following morning. The bill passed the House with a 256-167 vote and the Senate with a 65-32 vote, before being sent to Trump.

The vast majority of the funds— about $700 billion— will be going to the Department of Defense to continue funding America’s expanding empire. However, as is typical in Washington D.C., the bill was not only focused on government spending.

“In the final pages of the bill—meant only to appropriate future government spending—lawmakers snuck in a separate piece of legislation that made no mention of funds, salaries, or budget cuts,” The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported. “Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.”

The bill in question is The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or CLOUD Act, and its stated goal is to establish new standards for how the government acquires data outside of its jurisdiction. The CLOUD Act was heavily supported by the Department of Justice and major tech companies who stated the bill would advance consumer rights.

[RELATED: Trust Lost: How Social Media Users’ Data Should Be Protected]

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) released a joint statement demanding the CLOUD Act not be included in the spending bill, and a coalition of 24 human rights and privacy advocates led by the American Civil Liberties Union condemned the bill. However, as the EFF noted, the bill was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in the House or the Senate before being put to a vote. Instead of being given time to debate the nuances of the bill, lawmakers voted on the bill as part of the trillion-dollar spending bill.

The EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union have both come out against the CLOUD ACT, with the EFF stating that the bill will give U.S. and foreign law enforcement “new mechanisms to seize data across the globe.” Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the ACLU, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill that the bill “would allow countries to wiretap on U.S. soil for the first time, including conversations that foreign targets may have with people in the U.S., without complying with Wiretap Act requirements.”

This includes private emails, instant messages, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and any other communications or photos individuals have shared on the internet. The CLOUD Act will also allow foreign nations to access personal data that is stored on servers in the United States without approval by a judge. Finally, the bill grants the U.S. president the authority to sign “executive agreements” which give foreign agents access to data in the U.S., regardless of U.S. privacy laws.

The EFF outlined how the bill might work in real time:

London investigators want the private Slack messages of a Londoner they suspect of bank fraud. The London police could go directly to Slack, a U.S. company, to request and collect those messages. The London police would not necessarily need prior judicial review for this request. The London police would not be required to notify U.S. law enforcement about this request. The London police would not need a probable cause warrant for this collection. Predictably, in this request, the London police might also collect Slack messages written by U.S. persons communicating with the Londoner suspected of bank fraud. Those messages could be read, stored, and potentially shared, all without the U.S. person knowing about it. Those messages, if shared with U.S. law enforcement, could be used to criminally charge the U.S. person in a U.S. court, even though a warrant was never issued.

What are the implications for digital privacy and security? How might the CLOUD Act impact privacy protections guaranteed by the 4th Amendment?

Drug War, Featured, Health, Politics, US

Congress Takes Steps Toward Ending War on Medical Marijuana

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On Saturday, the United States Congress approved a landmark $1.1 trillion spending bill in a 56-40 bipartisan vote. The bill, which was created to avoid another government shutdown, and to allocate funds for the next year, grants a new form of security to medical marijuana in states where it is legal.

The Huffington Post reported that the spending bill “includes an amendment that prohibits the Department of Justice from using funds to go after state-legal medical cannabis programs.”

The spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Erik Altieri, told VICE News that he was “very encouraged to see Congress begin to take some legit steps to resolving the state and federal conflict with marijuana law.”

“There are issues that still need to be resolved with banking and taxation, but this at least shows they can come together in a bipartisan way and stop raiding state-approved medical marijuana,” Altieri said.

Mike Liszewski, the Government Affairs Director from Americans for Safe Access, an organization working to ensure safe and legal access to medical marijuana, released a statement saying that by passing this bill, Congress is acting in favor of the majority of Americans.

“We applaud this Congress for doing the right thing by protecting the rights of patients, and ending a years-long attack on the medical marijuana community,” said Liszewski. “By approving this measure, Congress is siding with the vast majority of Americans who are calling for a change in how we enforce our federal marijuana laws.”

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, sponsored the amendment, which first passed in the House in May. It prohibits “funding for DOJ to prevent states from implementing state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

The Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Neill Franklin, released a statement saying that this legislation was great for both patients and public safety.

“Congress has finally listened to the vast majority of Americans who believe the federal government has no right to interfere in the personal decision to use medical marijuana made by a patient in consultation with his or her doctor,” Franklin said.

VICE News reported that while the measure will not go into effect until the end of the present fiscal year, which is on September 30, 2015, medical marijuana advocates are currently working to “formalize the policy with standalone legislation,” such as a bill titled the “States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act,” which would “remove marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances, and allow funding for therapeutic research.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 23 states and Washington D.C. have legalized the use of medical marijuana. The states include Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

In a recent episode of Truth in Media, Investigative Journalist Ben Swann looked into the government’s involvement in the field of medical marijuana, and discovered that while the U.S. government claims that cannabis is not medicine, it currently holds the patent to cannabis as medicine. Watch the episode below: