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Crafty plan to give FBI warrantless access to browser histories axed

Email safeguards catch a bullet, too

A sly attempt to grant the FBI warrantless access to people's browser histories in the US has been shot down by politicians.

Unfortunately, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) Amendments Act of 2015, which would have brought in some privacy safeguards for Americans, was cut down in the crossfire.

The ECPA Amendments Act is very simple: it amends the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which gives cops and agents warrantless access to any email that has been read or is more than 180 days old.

That 30-year-old act made sense back in the day of 20MB hard drives and when we stored own emails on our own computers: if we deleted something to save space or to simply destroy it, it was gone. But in today's cloudy world, where we have no real control over our information, it has proven a privacy nightmare. (By the way, the ECPA was used against Microsoft by the Feds in New York in 2014 to demand emails from a data center in Ireland.)

The ECPA Amendments Act of 2015 would have eliminated the 180-day rule, and ensures investigators get a warrant for the contents of emails.

In a stunning display of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives voted unanimously for their version of the updated law, the Email Privacy Act, in April, and the President gave it his full backing. The ECPA Amendments Act was expected to therefore breeze through the Senate, and into the law books, but now it's been put on hold by its sponsors.

The reason for the halt is the amendment [PDF] tacked on by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) on Tuesday that would allow the FBI to obtain someone's internet browsing history and the metadata of all their internet use without a warrant. If Cornyn's amendment was passed, the Feds would simply have to issue a National Security Letter (NSL) to get the information.

Organizing an NSL is a lot easier than getting a warrant, and the FBI posts thousands every year with very little judicial oversight. In the past, the Feds claimed the letters granted them access to citizens' internet history, but this was ruled unlawful [PDF] in 2008.

The bill's sponsors, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT), told a session of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary that Cornyn's amendment had wrecked years of careful bipartisan negotiations and would seriously harm US citizens' privacy. As such, they weren't prepared to let the bill go forward.

"The Cornyn National Security Letters amendment is something that I cannot in good conscience have attached to this bill," said Lee. "We want to make sure that when we get this passed, it enhances rather than diminishes our interests protected by the Fourth Amendment."

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Responding to Senator Cornyn's claims that his amendment allows g-men to get their hands on "just metadata" cut no ice with people who understand how revealing this information can be. Lee also accused Cornyn of sharp practice by waiting until the last few days before a vote could be scheduled to introduce his controversial amendment, which would not be accepted by the House.

His cosponsor, Senator Leahy, was equally cutting, accusing Cornyn of introducing a "poison pill" amendment to the legislation at the last minute that wouldn't pass in the Senate or the House of Representatives. He accused Cornyn of trying to "tank" the bill.

"I worry about getting into what has been a slippery slope in the past with these National Security Letters," Leahy said. "We all know the real scandal in the FBI – even under good leadership – when National Security Letters were used by low-ranking members of the FBI for what appeared to be vendettas, sometimes destroying people's businesses."

That law enforcement promised that they would be used wisely wasn't reassuring, he said, because similar assurances had been given in the past. J Edgar Hoover had used his powers to make the FBI into an instrument of control and that could not be allowed to happen again, he opined.

But Senator Cornyn was unfazed by the furor and said he would carry on pushing for his amendment, saying it was critical in the fight against terrorism. He said getting access to this metadata was the "number-one legislative priority" of the FBI's director, James Comey, and that the House of Representatives would support it "whether they liked it or not."

"I've been in the Senate not as long as some members of the committee, but I don't know when we ever said that just because a bill passed the House that the Senate should stand down and swallow the House bill hook, line, and sinker, particularly when there's good policy reasons for amending it," he said.

So now the bill will lie fallow while the politicians argue about a single amendment. In the meantime, clean up your inboxes. ®

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