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posted by martyb on Saturday May 03 2014, @03:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the privacy-proposal-proffers-protection-passage-possible? dept.

More safeguards for Americans' data and additional protections for emails are some of the recommendations being made by the White House as it asks Congress to pass new privacy laws. Six recommendations in total are being offered by President Barack Obama's counselor John Podesta, who posted the proposals on the White House website.

Following a 90-day review, at Obama's request, the president's top economic and science advisers looked at how both the government and private sector use large sets of data. The result is a report that suggests additional privacy laws, increased efforts to protect student and consumer data, make certain that such data cannot be used in discriminatory practices, and even provide non-U.S. citizens increased privacy protections.

(More details after the break.)

One such recommendation revolves around the topic of physical mail and email. When it comes to physical mail, a warrant based on probable cause needs to be issued by a judge if law enforcement wishes to gain access. But when it comes to email, access can be gained with a warrant without a judge's signature most of the time. To fix this, the White House recommends that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act be amended so that additional protections would be in place during a law enforcement investigation.

The White House is also asking for the passing of national data-breach legislation that would collect the assortment of state laws into one federal requirement that would address how data breaches should be reported to consumers and law enforcement. The proposal comes in the aftermath of hackers who stole personal data from millions of customers who shopped at Target.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by black6host on Saturday May 03 2014, @03:41PM

    by black6host (3827) on Saturday May 03 2014, @03:41PM (#39259) Journal

    No need to RTFA. The submission is the entire article.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:31PM

      by captain normal (2205) on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:31PM (#39279)

      Actually the FA is also just a summary. Best to go straight to the horse's mouth: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/05/01/findings -big-data-and-privacy-working-group-review [whitehouse.gov]

      The actual report sent to the Pres:
      http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs /big_data_privacy_report_5.1.14_final_print.pdf [whitehouse.gov]

      In any case we do not need new laws (we already have way too many laws on the books). This is covered by the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of The USA.

      --
      The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:37PM

        by davester666 (155) on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:37PM (#39295)

        It's pretty clear that this is to just start the legislation process, where a so-called 'privacy bill' will be created, and go through committee and various revisions, then right before it is voted on, a final revision doing the 'bit flip' changing the legislation from decreasing the gov'ts ability to access your private information to increasing it's ability to do so without a warrant.

        • (Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday May 03 2014, @10:13PM

          by tathra (3367) on Saturday May 03 2014, @10:13PM (#39332)

          you're exactly right. at the very last minute, sometimes literally, in the middle of the night a few hours before the approval vote, there'll be an unrelated "rider" attached to the bill for nefarious purposes, and if anybody tries voting against the new version (assuming anybody even knows its been changed), the opposing political party will start flinging shit, "you're against americans having x? you must be a terrorist!" which the public will gobble up without knowing any of the facts.

          its really disgusting that the process described above is standard procedure. that kind of shit should be illegal and the people responsible for those "riders" and last-minute-never-reviewed-or-approved edits should be at a minimum banned from any kind of government work for life, in addition to being put in prison.

        • (Score: 2) by dmc on Saturday May 03 2014, @11:07PM

          by dmc (188) on Saturday May 03 2014, @11:07PM (#39337)

          It's pretty clear that this is to just start the legislation process, where a so-called 'privacy bill' will be created, and go through committee and various revisions, then right before it is voted on, a final revision doing the 'bit flip' changing the legislation from decreasing the gov'ts ability to access your private information to increasing it's ability to do so without a warrant.

          This insight, and the parent comment it replied to, make me proud of the community here. My own further insight is that I wouldn't put it past the M.O. of said corrupt government to speak the truth suchly under a moniker suffixed with "666" precisely to marginalize those who know and understand the truth of the situation. 'Shaping the human terrain', 'exploiting prior beliefs'(see snowden jtrig document), and all that...

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 04 2014, @10:08AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 04 2014, @10:08AM (#39424)

            Veering dangerously close to tinfoil hat territory there. Not everyone you agree with is in psyops. Not everyone who disagrees is a shill.

            Then again keep the Moscow rules [wikipedia.org] in mind at all times.

            • (Score: 2) by dmc on Sunday May 04 2014, @07:15PM

              by dmc (188) on Sunday May 04 2014, @07:15PM (#39555)

              Veering dangerously close to tinfoil hat territory there. Not everyone you agree with is in psyops. Not everyone who disagrees is a shill.

              I eat danger for lunch. There is nothing tinfoil hat about it, today in 2014. In 2010 before we'd seen the jtrig and other snowden documents, sure.

              From a personal experience, I would only point you to my 53 page manifesto-

              http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-dr aft-2k121024.pdf [cloudsession.com]

              In it you will find good documentation of a truly interesting public conversation I had with active duty U.S. Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder on slashdot in late 2012 -

              http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&c id=41530745 [slashdot.org]

              Coincidentally, it was under a slashdot story authored by "clam666" titled "White House Confirms Chinese Cyberattack".

              Now, I was an atheist computer geek in my youth. I understand the disparate proportion of those who would play around with inflammatory logo on net message boards. My theories and suspicions however I assure you are grounded in many many years (approaching decades) of observation of 'the human terrain'. Dismiss and discount me as you wish, but seriously, have you read the snowden jtrig document? "The Art of Deception: Training For a New Generation of Online Covert Operations".

              These fuckers are out to own the internet and all of politics and 'free speech' political debate along with it. The Information War has come out from the darkness into broad daylight these days.

              http://cloudsession.com/dmc/stuff/gallery/fb2k14fi jaw/dmc-2k14fijaw-0301-002.html [cloudsession.com]

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 04 2014, @05:30AM

          by Reziac (2489) on Sunday May 04 2014, @05:30AM (#39395) Homepage

          I think you are right, even if everyone has the best of intentions... and even if no riders magically appear (which is a poor bet considering the track record of the legislative process) -- because the more complex the law, the more opportunity for loopholes and unintended consequences... flipped bits.

          Ya know, it's discussions like this that have turned me into a strict Constitutionalist.

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @04:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @04:17PM (#39264)

    under the guise of "protecting users privacy" the government requests the key
    to the kingdom ... so who's gonna watch the watchmen?

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:03PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Saturday May 03 2014, @05:03PM (#39271)

    I'm not sure how new laws are going to help when the NSA and others are ignoring them already, as well as the Constitution. This has to be purely to make people feel better.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:42PM

    by Horse With Stripes (577) on Saturday May 03 2014, @06:42PM (#39297)

    After the White House asked Congress for these new privacy laws to protect the public's privacy everyone in the room had a good laugh at our expense and had another round of drinks.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 04 2014, @03:33AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday May 04 2014, @03:33AM (#39375) Journal

    Trust is something that usually is hard to earn and easy too loose. Some organizations obviously lost theirs and no amount of weasel words or laws bear any credibility anymore.