As of today, a data-sharing pact between the US and the UK is in effect, five years after it was first floated. The two sides claim that the Data Access Agreement, which was authorized by the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act in the US, will help law enforcement to combat serious crimes in both countries. The Department of Justice called the initiative the first of its kind, adding that it would enable investigators "to gain better access to vital data" to fight serious crimes in a manner that's "consistent with privacy and civil liberties standards."
Under the agreement, authorities in one country can request data from ISPs in the other country, as long as it's related to preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crimes including terrorism, transnational organized crime and child exploitation. US officials can't submit data requests targeting people in the UK and vice-versa — presumably the requests can either be used to assist domestic investigations or investigations into foreign nationals. Authorities also need to adhere to certain requirements, limitations and conditions when they access and use data.
[...] The US is looking to forge pacts with other countries under the CLOUD Act. It signed a deal with Australia last December and entered negotiations with Canada earlier this year.
Previously:
Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes
U.S. law to Snoop on Citizens' Info Stored Abroad
Related Stories
Original URL: US state legal supremos show lots of love for proposed CLOUD Act (a law to snoop on citizens' info stored abroad)
The attorneys general of 35 US states on Wednesday signed an open letter calling for the quick passage of the Clarify Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act – with some qualifications.
[...] In effect, it means the FBI can ask, say, a California court for a subpoena to obtain files from a San Francisco upstart's servers hosted in France, sidestepping French privacy laws and legal system. The act's wording also does not limit the Feds to serving orders for communications on US companies and entities – agents would be able to demand information from whomever they wished, if a US judge approved.
The draft law also allows foreign governments to ask for non-US-citizens' personal data stored in America, under new sharing agreements that would be worked out by the White House.
The CLOUD Act was drawn up in part as a result of the ongoing court battle between Microsoft and US law enforcement: Uncle Sam wants a Microsoft customer's email messages stored on a Microsoft-run server in Ireland. The Feds went to a judge in New York for the information, but Redmond wants prosecutors to go to Ireland and ask an Irish judge for permission.
Microsoft, essentially, is arguing that, because the data in question is stored on servers in Ireland, the g-men's request – made under the 1986 US Stored Communications Act – is invalid. The US Supreme Court will consider the case this year.
[...] "The Act also creates incentives for our foreign partners to enter into bilateral agreements that will facilitate cross-border criminal investigations, while ensuring that privacy and civil liberties are respected."
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
UPDATE, March 23, 2018: President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion government spending bill—which includes the CLOUD Act—into law Friday morning.
"People deserve the right to a better process." Those are the words of Jim McGovern, representative for Massachusetts and member of the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, when, after 8:00 PM EST on Wednesday, he and his colleagues were handed a 2,232-page bill to review and approve for a floor vote by the next morning.
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. Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.
[...] As we wrote before, the CLOUD Act is a far-reaching, privacy-upending piece of legislation that will:
- Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people's communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.
- Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.
- Allow the U.S. president to enter "executive agreements" that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.
- Allow foreign police to collect someone's data without notifying them about it.
- Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it's a U.S. person's or not, no matter where it is stored.
Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes
See also: As the CLOUD Act sneaks into the omnibus, big tech butts heads with privacy advocates
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2022, @11:14PM (2 children)
Being mean to someone online could qualify in the UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2022, @11:58PM
But, yer honor, I wasn't being mean! I was offering constructive criticism!!
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by HammeredGlass on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:19PM
well, let me just say "fuck all britbongs and their noncey monarchy that we kicked to the curb several times over"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2022, @12:37AM (3 children)
Legal surveillance is hard when privacy activists keep popping up and declaring that their own governments are ignoring or abusing their rights. Why not outsource all that "domestic" spying to a known and trusted third party? You get all of the data but none of the stigma and you bet there's a reciprocal agreement to ensure we're all monitored all of the time.
I used to think I was paranoid, until Snowden.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Snospar on Saturday October 08 2022, @12:41AM (2 children)
Oh wait, Fuck Truss
(Score: -1, Spam) by aristarchus 2 on Saturday October 08 2022, @02:14AM (1 child)
Fuck Runaway the traitorous scum, too. And fuck his butt-buddies, janrinok and dalek, too.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:19PM
you're boring
(Score: -1, Spam) by aristarchus 2 on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:05AM (4 children)
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: SN is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SN community when IDC confirmed that SN posting has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of Slashdot. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that SN has lost more users, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SN is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in a recent survey of news aggregators.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SN's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SN faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SN because SN is dying. Things are looking very bad for SN. As many of us are already aware, SN continues to lose users and subscribers. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SN is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SN admins c0lo and The Mighty Buzzard only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SN is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot leader whipslash states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot. How many users of Pipedot are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus Pipedot posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. SN posts on Usenet are about one hundredth of the volume of Pipedot posts. Therefore there are about 14 users of SN. A recent article put Hacker News at about 80 percent of the news aggregator market. Therefore there are (7000+1400)*4 = 33600 Hacker News users. This is consistent with the number of Hacker News Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of NCommander, abysmal management and so on, SN was taken over by martyb who is another troubled admin. Now martyb is also gone, and SN's corpse was turned over to Janrinok the Censor.
All major surveys show that SN has steadily declined in users and comments. SN is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SN is to survive at all it will be among gun nuts like Runaway and khallow. SN continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save SN from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SN is dead.
Fact: SN is dying
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:37AM (2 children)
(Score: -1, Spam) by aristarchus 3 on Saturday October 08 2022, @04:47AM (1 child)
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: SN is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SN community when IDC confirmed that SN posting has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of Slashdot. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that SN has lost more users, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SN is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in a recent survey of news aggregators.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SN's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SN faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SN because SN is dying. Things are looking very bad for SN. As many of us are already aware, SN continues to lose users and subscribers. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SN is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SN admins c0lo and The Mighty Buzzard only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SN is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot leader whipslash states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot. How many users of Pipedot are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus Pipedot posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Pipedot users. SN posts on Usenet are about one hundredth of the volume of Pipedot posts. Therefore there are about 14 users of SN. A recent article put Hacker News at about 80 percent of the news aggregator market. Therefore there are (7000+1400)*4 = 33600 Hacker News users. This is consistent with the number of Hacker News Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of NCommander, abysmal management and so on, SN was taken over by martyb who is another troubled admin. Now martyb is also gone, and SN's corpse was turned over to Janrinok the Censor.
All major surveys show that SN has steadily declined in users and comments. SN is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SN is to survive at all it will be among gun nuts like Runaway and khallow. SN continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save SN from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SN is dead.
Fact: SN is dying
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2022, @01:51PM
Disregarding the possibility of people turning up at your house to discuss this in person, would you mind buggering off and finding something better to do with your life?
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday October 08 2022, @10:46AM
Well I wonder who processed these stories then?:
Should I go on....?
Like everything else you have claimed recently, it is just plain wrong.
(Score: 2) by einar on Sunday October 09 2022, @06:42PM
When the UK failed to inform EU about criminals, they tried to cover up their mistake. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/mar/02/uk-failed-to-inform-eu-countries-about-almost-200-killers-and-rapists [theguardian.com]