Legislators are considering attaching KOSA (the anti-LGBTQ+ censorship bill, aka the Kids Online Safety Act) to must-pass legislation authorizing the FAA. As EFF points out, the latest version of KOSA is still a censorship bill.
So if you're in the US, it's once again a good time to contact your Congresspeople. EFF's got an action here that makes it makes it easy, and so does https://www.stopkosa.com/
Legislators are considering attaching KOSA (the anti-LGBTQ+ censorship bill, aka the Kids Online Safety Act) to must-pass legislation authorizing the FAA. As EFF points out, the latest version of KOSA is still a censorship bill.
So if you're in the US, it's once again a good time to contact your Congresspeople. EFF's got an action here that makes it makes it easy, and so does https://www.stopkosa.com/
Legislators are considering attaching KOSA (the anti-LGBTQ+ censorship bill, aka the Kids Online Safety Act) to must-pass legislation authorizing the FAA. As EFF points out, the latest version of KOSA is still a censorship bill.
So if you're in the US, it's once again a good time to contact your Congresspeople. EFF's got an action here that makes it makes it easy, and so does https://www.stopkosa.com/
enate may vote Friday on expansion of FISA Section 702 warrantless surveillance – and maybe also a warrant requirement
enate may vote Friday on expansion of FISA Section 702 warrantless surveillance – and maybe also a warrant requirement
A controversial bill reauthorizing the Section 702 spy program may force whole new categories of businesses to eavesdrop on the US government’s behalf, including on fellow Americans.
if you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact your Senators. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the Senate directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.
> “Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. The House reauthorization contains the largest expansion of FISA Section 702 since it was created in 2008. Please oppose it -- and please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”
Congress appears ready to give the president — and future administrations — expansive new warrantless wiretapping capabilities.
I'm not wild about the headline -- it's the Biden administration that's pushing for this bill, so why let them off the hook? It's one of those rare issues that cut across partisan lines, with reformers and surveillance hawks in both parties working together. Still, the article makes some very good points.
> The legislation, which would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, includes a provision that would broaden the types of businesses that agencies can compel to help the government spy without a warrant..... The fact sheet says the change closes “a dangerous loophole,” and calls it a “carefully crafted and narrowly tailored fix.” > > But experts say the provision is extremely broad — and that it could potentially allow agencies to enlist office landlords, security guards, and cleaning crews as spies, without a warrant, and demand they help the government tap into communications equipment to facilitate data collection.
From the article:
FISA 702 warrantless surveillance purports to target only foreign subjects, but in practice sweeps in a huge amount of Americans’ communications. This allows intelligence agencies to exploit a backdoor search loophole: the FBI, CIA, and NSA conduct “U.S. person queries” of FISA 702 records to deliberately pull up Americans’ private messages, all without a warrant or any court approval. This loophole has led to systemic abuse, involving thousands of improper queries each year, including those directed at protesters, campaign donors, journalists, lawmakers, and — in one case — the online dating matches of an analyst.
The FBI routinely uses its authority under FISA Section 702 to get information on Americans without a warrant, ignoring the processes that are supposed to be put in place to protect people. This has nothing to do with the FISA Title III authority that was used to get information about Carter Page, no matter what you and Trump think. If you warrantless surveillance of Americans is good, then by all means you should indeed be cheering this vote -- because they extended the scope of what information they can get at without a warrant.
If on the other hand you think civil liberties are worth protecting, then you might take a moment to stop to think that there was bipartisan support, including progressive Democrats, for introducing reforms like a warrant requirement while still keeping the ability to surveil foreign agents in place. But opinions differ, there are plenty of people in both parties who don't think civil liberties are worth protecting, so if you're one of them you've got a lot of company.
(WASHINGTON) — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a two-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), a controversial warrantless spying authority, and in an extremely narrow tie vote, rejected critical reforms to stop rampant abuse of the law ...
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/15271710
> Not a good result. The good amendment to add a warrant requirement failed on a tie vote; bad amendments to expand the scope of warrantless wiretapping passed. Next step: a Senate vote.
(WASHINGTON) — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a two-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), a controversial warrantless spying authority, and in an extremely narrow tie vote, rejected critical reforms to stop rampant abuse of the law ...
Not a good result. The good amendment to add a warrant requirement failed on a tie vote; bad amendments to expand the scope of warrantless wiretapping passed. Next step: a Senate vote.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted against considering a largely bad bill that would have unacceptably expanded the tentacles of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with reauthorizing it and introducing some minor fixes.
EFF's update also has a handy form to contact Congress. Their summary:
> "Section 702 is Big Brother’s favorite mass surveillance law that EFF has been fighting since it was first passed in 2008. The law is currently set to expire on April 19. > > Yesterday’s decision not to decide is good news, at least temporarily. Once again, a bipartisan coalition of law makers—led by Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Jerrold Nadler—has staved off the worst outcome of expanding 702 mass surveillance in the guise of “reforming” it. But the fight continues and we need all Americans to make their voices heard. "
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted against considering a largely bad bill that would have unacceptably expanded the tentacles of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with reauthorizing it and introducing some minor fixes.
EFF's update also has a handy form to contact Congress. Their summary:
> "Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted against considering a largely bad bill that would have unacceptably expanded the tentacles of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with reauthorizing it and introducing some minor fixes. Section 702 is Big Brother’s favorite mass surveillance law that EFF has been fighting since it was first passed in 2008. The law is currently set to expire on April 19. > > Yesterday’s decision not to decide is good news, at least temporarily. Once again, a bipartisan coalition of law makers—led by Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Jerrold Nadler—has staved off the worst outcome of expanding 702 mass surveillance in the guise of “reforming” it. But the fight continues and we need all Americans to make their voices heard. "
Perhaps so, but as Howie Klein says on Down With Tyranny FISA Was Always Bad Legislation... It's Still Bad Even If Trump And MAGA Suddenly Oppose It Too
Yeah, all the scare tactics about how "oh noes national security is at risk if FISA isn't extended!!!!" are garbage; if Section 702 lapses, existing certifications are already approved for the next year, and the government has other authorities it can do the same kind of surveillance with. And the surveillance he's complaining about wasn't even under this section of FISA -- it's the Title III stuff which doesn't need to be reauthorized!
As Howie Klein says on Down With Tyranny FISA Was Always Bad Legislation... It's Still Bad Even If Trump And MAGA Suddenly Oppose It Too
They did -- FISA shouldn't be extended without reforms. All the scare tactics about how "oh noes national security is at risk if FISA isn't extended!!!!" are garbage; if Section 702 lapses, existing certifications are already approved for the next year, and the government has other authorities it can do the same kind of surveillance with.
As Howie Klein says on Down With Tyranny FISA Was Always Bad Legislation... It's Still Bad Even If Trump And MAGA Suddenly Oppose It Too
An attempt to reauthorize Section 702, the so-called crown jewel of US spy powers, failed for a third time in the House of Representatives after former president Donald Trump criticized the law.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/15183880
> Well it wasn't just Trump loyalists; it was 19 Republicans in the Freedom Caucus (who are indeed Trump loyalists) and almost all the Democrats voting agains bringing the current bill to the floor. Now what? > > "Congressional sources tell WIRED they have no idea what the next steps will be." > > Oh.
An attempt to reauthorize Section 702, the so-called crown jewel of US spy powers, failed for a third time in the House of Representatives after former president Donald Trump criticized the law.
Well it wasn't just Trump loyalists; it was 19 Republicans in the Freedom Caucus (who are indeed Trump loyalists) and almost all the Democrats voting agains bringing the current bill to the floor. Now what?
"Congressional sources tell WIRED they have no idea what the next steps will be."
Oh.
This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surv...
That's not good.
> This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surveillance dramatically: While falsely billing itself as a minor definitional tweak, in reality the amendment would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. It could be used to enlist an array of sensitive facilities — such as offices for nonprofits, political campaigns, and news organizations — to serve as hubs for warrantless surveillance.
if you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact Congress. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the House directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.
> “Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. OPPOSE the FISA amendment from Reps. Turner and Himes, which would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. And please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”
Back in December, they tried to get an even WORSE FISA extension bill through as part of the NDAA -- without even a vote on it -- and the pushback was strong enough that they abandoned the plan. In 2020 grassroots activism kept them from rauthorizing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act . In 2015 grassroots activism kept them from doing a straight reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. So there really is a track record of it being effective on this issue.
The key dynamic here is that both parties are split on the issue -- progressive Dems along with Libertarian and MAGA Republicans all favor reform. So even representatives in a district that one party always wins have to consider the politics: Republicans wanting to keep their MAGA cred against MAGA challengers, Democrats facing progressive challengers (or progressive Dems who need strong support from their base against centrist challengers). Plus there are a handful of centrist Dems in purple districts who might vote the right way if it can pick up some Republican votes.
This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surv...
That's not good.
> This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surveillance dramatically: While falsely billing itself as a minor definitional tweak, in reality the amendment would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. It could be used to enlist an array of sensitive facilities — such as offices for nonprofits, political campaigns, and news organizations — to serve as hubs for warrantless surveillance.
If you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact Congress. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the House directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.
> “Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. OPPOSE the FISA amendment from Reps. Turner and Himes, which would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. And please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”
This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surv...
That's not good.
> This week the House is set to vote on legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), along with a set of amendments. One of these amendments — put forward by House Intelligence Committee leads Mike Turner and Jim Himes — would expand warrantless FISA surveillance dramatically: While falsely billing itself as a minor definitional tweak, in reality the amendment would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. It could be used to enlist an array of sensitive facilities — such as offices for nonprofits, political campaigns, and news organizations — to serve as hubs for warrantless surveillance.
if you’re in the US, now’s a great time to contact Congress. You can either call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or use the House directory to look up your legislators’ contact info.
“Stop the FBI from expanding warrantless surveillance of innocent Americans. OPPOSE the FISA amendment from Reps. Turner and Himes, which would be the largest expansion of FISA since Section 702 was created in 2008. And please oppose any attempt to reauthorize FISA Section 702 that doesn’t include warrant requirements, both for Section 702 data and for our sensitive, personal information sold to the government by data brokers.”
The bill represents the culmination of a legislative trend on child safety that traces back to fall of 2021.
A long analysis by Quinta Jurecic
> "This story isn’t over yet. If KOSA passes in the Senate, the bill will still have to make it through the House—potentially a tall order given the ongoing dysfunction in that chamber. Meanwhile, reporting suggests that the bill’s path toward a Senate vote has already been delayed thanks to jockeying among senators seeking to move forward their own, separate legislative proposals for tech regulation and child safety. In that sense, at least, all of this is politics as usual."
> “The current plan is to run FISA as a standalone the week after Easter,” Johnson said during an interview at the GOP retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. That timing would put a vote the week of April 8, when the House is slated to return from a two-week recess. > > That commitment runs contrary to some fears that Johnson might attach a short-term extension of Section 702 to a government funding bill that leaders hope to clear next week. That possibility has caused significant heartburn for privacy hawks, who are hoping to make changes to the current law before reauthorizing.
A closed-door presentation for House lawmakers late last year portrayed American anti-war protesters as having possible ties to Hamas in an effort to kill privacy reforms to a major US spy program.
> At a private meeting about the reauthorization of a major United States surveillance program late last year, the Republican chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an allegation that was used to illustrate why surveillance reforms may prove detrimental to national security,
Choose your own FISA Section 702 adventure: End-run around lawmakers or business as usual?
Technically yes but judges get annoyed if there's absolutely no case, so they rarely do -- and if they threaten when there's no case, larger companies will look at it and say the threat's not real.
The law's defintion of harm is extremely broad. Charlie Jane Anders has a good discussion of this in The Internet Is About to Get a Lot Worse:
"This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don't even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people."
In practice, when the AG threatens to sue and the law makes it clear that they'll win (which KOSA currently does), companies will typically stop what they're doing (or settle if the AG actually launches a suit)
That'd be great. And there's precedent, too: back in 2005 Microsoft dropped support for a Washington state gay rights bill but employee pressure led them to reverse their stance. But all the tech layoffs tend to have a chilling effect on employee advocacy, so we shall see.
Yep. There's money to be made here!
Great point. Mike Masnick has said that he wouldn't be surprised if Meta also comes out in support, for similar reasons.
Totally agreed that it opens things up to censorship in general and doesn't actually make kids safer. Charlie Jane Anders' The Internet Is About to Get A Lot Worse sets it in the context of book banning. The LGBTQ part is in the headlines because one big focus of the advocacy against it is highlighting that Democrats who claim to be pro-LGBTQ should not be backing this bill. This has been effective enough that Senators Cantwell and Markey both mentioned it in the committee markup, although it's certainly far from the only problem with the bill.
Sec. 11 (b): Enforcement By State Attorneys General covers this. It's hard to find -- the bill text starts out with all the text removed from the previous amendment, and if you click on the "enforcement" link in the new table of context it takes you to the old struck-out text. It's almost like they want to make it as hard as possible for people to figure out what's going on!
They get to position themselves as looking out for the children.
Yes, exactly. For Senators who support LGBTQ+ rights and reproductice rights (or at least say that they do), focusing on the threat anti-trans AGs can be very effective; In Washington state, we put enough pressure on Cantwell last fall about the LGBTQ+ issues that she mentioned it in the hearing (as did Markey). 5calls and EFF's scripts and emails are written to appeal to legislators from both parties (so just talk about the harms to kids and threats from state AGs in general terms), which makes sense for a one-size-fits-all form, but customizing it to your Senators' priorities can make a lot of sense.
That's great! And a lot of trans people I've talked with on Mastodon say similar things, which is also great. But a lot don't. It depends a lot on the instance you wind up choosing. So the people who stay wind up as a self-selecting sample.
Thanks, glad you liked it. Agreed that blocklists (while currently necessary) have big problems, it would really be great if we had other good tools and they were much more of a last resort ... I'll talk more about that in a later installment.
It's tricky ... many people do use "queer" as an umbrella term, but a lot of trans people don't like being lumped under that, and some lesbian, gay, bi, and agender people don't consider themselves queer. There aren't great answers.
At some level you're not missing anything: there are obvious solutions, and they're largely ignored. Blocking is effective, and it's a key part of why some instances actually do provide good experiences; and an allow-list approach works well. But, those aren't the default; so new instances don't start out blocking anybody. And, most instances only block the worst-of-the-worst; there's a lot of stuff that comes from large open-registration instances like .social and .world that relatively few instances block or even limit.
If you're looking for more of a technical deep dive, check out Threat modeling Meta, the fediverse, and privacy
The Nexus of Privacy @lemmy.sdf.org The Nexus Of Privacy looks at the connections between technology, policy, strategy, and justice. We're also on the fediverse at @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.pub