Digital Due Process - overhaul US Electronic Communications Privacy Act

I saw this interesting post about updating the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which was written in 1986.  They are in favour of updating this and have begun lobbing the act through a group called Digital Due Process. It advocates modernizing ECPA in four ways:

• Better protect your data stored online: The government must first get a search warrant before obtaining any private communications or documents stored online;
• Better protect your location privacy: The government must first get a search warrant before it can track the location of your cell phone or other mobile communications device;
• Better protect against monitoring of when and with whom you communicate: The government must demonstrate to a court that the data it seeks is relevant and material to a criminal investigation before monitoring when and with whom you communicate using email, instant messaging, text messaging, the telephone, etc.; and
• Better protect against bulk data requests: The government must demonstrate to a court that the information it seeks is needed for a criminal investigation before it can obtain data about an entire class of users.

Then of course I read this!

Australia’s communications minister Stephen Conroy had some strong things to say about Google.  They haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye recently on matters relating to censorship. Google submitted a 24-page document (pdf), in which Google made the following point:

• “Exposing politically controversial topics for public debate is vital for democracy. Homosexuality was a crime in Australia (...) Political and social norms change over time and benefit from intense public scrutiny and debate. The openness of the Internet makes this scrutiny and debate all the more possible, and should be protected.”

On the assumption that internet filtering is likely to be introduced, Google then proposes in considerable detail how to minimise the harm it causes.