Tag Archives: ACLU

Wiretap Bill Passes

Posted on December 28, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Today, the Senate passed the re-authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA), a bill that gives the National Security Agency power to monitor the international phone calls and emails of Americans. The American Library Association asked library supporters to contact their legislators to advocate for amendments that would increase privacy protections to the law.

Prior to the vote on the provision, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) asked for more time for the Senate to debate and consider amendments that would increase privacy protections and add transparency requirements.

The FAA is the 2008 law that, among other things, legalized the Bush administration’s warrant-less wiretapping program. As it did in 2008, ALA opposed the warrantless wiretap program because the public is at risk of being needlessly spied upon with little or no legal recourse, as the law reads now.

Library advocates can stay informed with all legislative news by subscribing to the Dispatch or texting “library” to 877877.

About Jazzy Wright

Jazzy Wright is the Press Officer of the American Library Association's Washington Office. Email her at jwright@alawash.org.

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Posted in Intellectual Freedom, Library Advocacy, OGR

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Ask Your Senator for More Debate on Privacy Bill

Posted on December 13, 2012 by | 2 Comments

We the PeoplePlease contact both of your senators as soon as possible to request that the Senate take time before voting on re-authorization of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) during this Congress.

ALA asks all senators to support a group of their bipartisan colleagues including Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT), who are asking for more time for the Senate to debate and consider amendments that would increase privacy protections and add transparency requirements.  The FAA is due to sunset at the end of the year, so many in the Senate want to move quickly and just reauthorize it without any debate or consideration of amendments.

Please head to the Legislative Action Center to write your senators and ask them to ask their senate leadership to schedule time for debate and full consideration of reform proposals from Senators Wyden, Paul and Lee.  Do not merely reauthorize the FAA as it currently stands.  Reforms to better protect the public from warrantless wiretaps are necessary now.

This action is important to the library community because of our long standing principles of patron privacy and more recent concerns about online privacy and Internet freedoms for our patrons and the general public.

Background:   The FAA is the 2008 law that, among other things, legalized the Bush administration’s warrant-less wiretapping program.  Congress must now reauthorize the FAA before the January 1, 2013.  ALA is one of many organizations that continue to seek reform to the FAA and to urge that the warrantless wiretap provision include judicial review to obtain warrants.  As it did in 2008, ALA opposes the warrantless wiretap program because the public is at risk of being needlessly spied upon with little or no legal recourse, as the law reads now.

Many organizations, including ALA, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have signed onto a letter being sent to the Senate urging them to slow down and consider reforms.   While the time is very short, there is time for the Senate to address these issues in FAA.   Merely extending the existing FAA continues threaten the privacy rights of the American public.

About

Ted Wegner is the Grassroots Coordinator for ALA Washington Office's Office of Government Relations (OGR).

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Posted in Intellectual Freedom, Library Advocacy, OGR

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Protection of online privacy moves forward in bipartisan vote!

Posted on November 29, 2012 by | 1 Comment

The Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) took an important bipartisan vote today to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) and strengthen the privacy protection of emails and documents stored online in the “cloud.” Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the SJC, spearheaded an amendment to the existing law to require that the government seek warrants before law enforcement, or other federal regulatory bodies, may obtain personal online records from Internet service providers and third party providers. The current ECPA law allows investigators access to emails and other private online information through third parties without judicial approval.

ALA’s commitment to privacy grows out of the library community’s deep principles to protect library users’ reading and online records, unless there is judicial approval and probable cause. In the weeks leading up to today’s markup, the American Library Association (ALA) worked with allies including the Digital Due Process Coalition and the Vanishing Rights Coalition, to advocate for necessary ECPA reforms.  Since ECPA was passed in 1986, several changes in technology have occurred, such as the increasingly popular use of cloud technologies and third party storage services.

With only three weeks left in the current Congress, several steps need to be taken before the bill is completely amended. The bill will now go to the Senate for a floor vote. Additional steps require action in the House and signing by President Obama.  But the markup is a major step forward for the SJC to approve these reform provisions, even if the issue moves to the next Congress.

This current ECPA reauthorization is actually part of H.R. 2471, a reauthorization of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), also passed in the 1980’s.  The House bill started only as an update of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA.) The Committee passed an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) requiring customers to opt-in to any video sharing agreement, and that any advanced consent to share video viewing information must be renewed after two years – another good step to protect privacy of personal records.

“The American Library Association thanks Senators Leahy, Feinstein, Franken, Cornyn, Lee and others who recognize the importance of protecting personal information in online activities (ECPA) and pushing reforms for consumers’ video-viewing records,” said Lynne Bradley, director of ALA’s Office of Government Relations. “We are ready to work with these champions and others to move these reforms forward in the coming weeks and months.”

Senator Leahy’s statement is now available online.

For more information, visit:

About Lynne Bradley

Lynne works in the ALA Washington Office and is director of ALA's Office of Government Relations.

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Posted in Intellectual Freedom, Library Advocacy, OGR, Public Libraries, School Libraries

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Cybersecurity bill votes start in three days – Keep the pressure on

Posted on April 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Library and privacy supporters: Keep pressuring House members to vote NO on H.R. 3523 and other bills that will restructure our nation’s privacy policies and laws. ALA remains staunchly opposed to this bill.  Petition your elected representatives with the ALA Legislative Action Center.

The major problems remain:

  • CISPA would permit private “entities” (ISPS, utilities, etc.) to share huge amounts of information about our electronic communications with the government without a legal review or warrant;
  • CISPA permits these private providers to provide dumps of information without necessarily anonymizing or aggregating the information to protect personal privacy;
  • CISPA would authorize the National Security Agency (NSA) – an intelligence and military agency – to receive all of the Internet records to be used, not just for cybersecurity, but for other “lawful purposes” as well;
  • CISPA trumps all other privacy laws – state, local and national – if the sharing of the information is deemed “cybersecurity.”

The House of Representatives is still scheduled to address a number of troubling cyber bills during Cybersecurity Week, the week of April 23. One of the most troubling bills remains H.R. 3523, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, CISPA.

At this writing, the text of CISPA is still in flux and behind-the-scene discussions continue. Additional amendments must be filed next Tuesday, April 24, 2012. While things are in great flux, it could be that H.R. 3523 will hit the House floor next Wednesday or Thursday, April 25-26, 2012. This is the key time to keep your calls going into House offices.

Other privacy advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Constitution Project also remain in opposition to H.R. 3523. As the ACLU noted in their blog: “The changes are so underwhelming that even the Obama Administration issued a statement [April 18] that their privacy concerns persist.”

The mix of bills in the House emphasizes sharing vast amounts of electronic communications between private service providers (and other “utilities”) and the government. These bills would give immunity and permission to share the traffic on their systems if the information is deemed for “cybersecurity” purposes.

Tell Congress: No Cyber Spying! No CISPA! 

The one improvement we can report is that the specific term “intellectual property” was removed, although there is still too much ambiguity elsewhere in the bill to know for certain that copyright issues couldn’t be swept in with all of the other information sharing activities and purposes.

About Jacob Roberts

Jacob Roberts is the communications specialist for the ALA Washington Office.

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Posted in Cybersecurity, Intellectual Freedom, Library Advocacy, OGR, Telecommunications

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ALA proposes significant improvements to Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010

Posted on June 23, 2010 by | 1 Comment

In anticipation of a June 24th Senate mark-up on the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 (S. 3480), the ALA sent a letter, in conjunction with the Surveillance Coalition, proposing significant improvements to the legislation.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT.), chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, introduced the bill earlier this month.  Cosponsors, at this time, are Senators Thomas Carper (D-DE.) and Susan Collins (R-ME.)  The Surveillance Coalition includes OpenTheGovernment.org, the ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology and OMBWatch, in addition to ALA.

The bill’s sponsors propose creating an Office of Cyber Policy in the White House as well as a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS.)  The latter would be created to “enforce cybersecurity policies through the government and the private sector.”  Controversy has swirled around the bill because of what some critics describe as giving the president an “Internet kill switch” allowing the government to take over the Internet.

One such report quoted Lieberman as dismissing the notion that S. 3480 “would give the president access to an Internet kill switch…however, … the government needs to be able to ‘disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war.’ (PCMag reports in Mobile Meta on June 23rd)   Lieberman added: “The president will never take over — the government should never take over the Internet,” Lieberman said during CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to a transcript.

But the Surveillance Coalition remains concerned about many free speech and privacy problems in the bill.   The group’s letter emphasizes the need “to ensure that cybersecurity measures do not unnecessarily infringe on free speech, privacy and other civil liberties interests.”

The coalition asks Lieberman and his committee to “clarify the scope of the legislation by restrictively defining CCI [critical communications infrastructure] so that cybersecurity responsibilities the bill imposes fall only on truly critical network components.”   The coalition also asks that the bill include a strict First Amendment scrutiny test to discern that “the action must further a compelling governmental interest and must be narrowly tailored to advance that interest.”

Many people remain concerned about S. 3480 and the implications for information sharing and privacy.  The bill would require CCI owners and operators to share cybersecurity “incident” information with [the Department of Homeland Security] DHS, which will share some of that information with law enforcement and intelligence personnel.   ALA, like others in the coalition, remains concerned that personally-identifiable information could be included.   The letter goes on to ask that the bill be changed to “ensure that information sharing activities be conducted only in accordance with principles of Fair Information Practices as articulated by the DHS Privacy Office.”

The coalition also asks for more transparency and public reporting in its letter.  “While the bill includes several provisions requiring reports to Congress, including reports about cybersecurity emergencies about monitoring Internet traffic to and from government agencies for cybersecurity purposes, it should clarify that these reports must be made publicly.”

ALA will be closely monitoring the June 24th mark-up and will report on developments with this legislation as it moves forward.

Lynne Bradley, director
Office of Government Relations

About Jenni Terry

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Posted in Cybersecurity, OGR, Telecommunications, Washington Office News

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