H.R.387 – Email Privacy Act | Hacker News Reader

H.R.387 – Email Privacy Act

congress.gov

124 pointsericcumbee34 comments

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So frustrating that there is no easy way to apply the bill ‘diff’ to the underlying statute and then read the result.

Legislative workflow is in serious need of some better tooling.

That's why they hire a billion aids and clerks

You could diff it with previous versions of the bill using govtrack.us: *

* last year: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr387/text#compar...

* year prior: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr387/text/ih#com...

But that would be a diff between two diffs. Not sure that helps in understanding the effective change.

there is no magic for that... yet

sounds like a cool coding challenge!!

> Legislative workflow is in serious need of some better tooling.

The CT legislature already has diffs on all of their legislation. So the tooling exists, congress.gov just hasn't implemented it.

yeah, I've been thinking of this tool for about 7 years!

First the entire US code would have to be on a git repo. And all the approved pull requests would also be there and you could roll it back to the very beginning.

All the contributors would be the politicians. And all proposed bills would show what they modified. And the branch they came from would have all the other things.

I like it because it would also be open to discussion and scrutiny. But transparency means a different thing to those people.

That is a fantastic idea. I'm not even American and I'd be fascinated by that. Every country should have this. During election time you could put in a candidate's name and see their history, what they voted for, any legislation they implemented etc. Truly open government.

There probably is something like this for the EU Parliament but buried somewhere that nobody can find

I'd be surprised if this wasn't already done in most countries. Checked my own out of curiosity, and they log all proposals, all votes on them, and provide the amendment text including how the new text would look with the changes applied.[1][2]

Granted, it's not as easy to go back and see all the changes to a certain law, but the data is there.

1 - http://www.psp.cz/sqw/historie.sqw?o=7&t=964

2 - http://www.psp.cz/sqw/phlasa.sqw?o=7&s=54&pg=17

Yeah it really is not.

Should also be standard affair for state and municipal governments and all regulators.

This exist for (part of) the french legal code: https://github.com/steeve/france.code-civil, https://github.com/Legilibre/Archeo-Lex

This uses open data published by the governments at https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/

Hmm I was thinking about La Fabrique de la Loi[0] which uses GitLab and dataviz, didn't know about that GitHub one.

[0]: http://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr/articles.html?loi=pjl12-689

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841067

If we had that, I'd like to see the real authors of the bill i.e. so you could see that Monsanto or G.E. or even the lobbying organization made the first draft or at least have it listed in the references.

Any analysis or summary on this for those who don't want to read raw bill text?

According to the bill, the purpose is to, "To amend title 18, United States Code, to update the privacy protections for electronic communications information that is stored by third-party service providers in order to protect consumer privacy interests while meeting law enforcement needs, and for other purposes."

Most of the changes appear to be related to how government and law enforcement access email data.

"and for other purposes", loved that part.

Spend even a small amount of time on congress.gov/bill, and you notice every bill has this tacked on. It's to leave wiggle room for the inevitable backroom dealing and amendments that it takes to get legislation passed nowadays.

Don't like it? Call your Congress people and voice your support for:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-res...

and

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/395/... Note the irony here in the bill text

I wonder if that's irony or humor.

All they (congress) would have to do is vote to 'deem' that only one subject was in the law. Just like they voted to 'deem' that Obamacare originated in the House, when it actually originated in the Senate. They did this to get around the Constitutional requirement that all spending bills originate in the House.

Would it be up to Congress? I am not a lawyer, but my reading of the bill is that it would give courts the authority to void any act that they deem non-compliant.

It would require a warrant for grabbing email versus today's law which only requires a simple subpoena after 180 days.

A warrant for who? The NSA apparently can just run roughshod over any laws.

Regular law enforcement, in cases that don't warrant (not intended) "parallel construction", presumably.

Mostly, it seems to be tightening the requirements for protection for stored data (including expand the scope of the warrant requirement), but some is loosening by expanding the scope of authorized disclosures (in a way that may or may not be reasonable; I can see an obvious reason for it in the case of cloud services where the host isn't the service provider, but it may also create a big loophole.)

There's also some seemingly gratuitous wording and word order edits that I'm not sure if they are technical corrections or have some non-obvious purpose.

I wish Genius hadn't gone evil, because this would be an excellent application of that.

Your comment caught my attention - I am not aware of what this might mean. Genius went evil? Will you explain? Thank you! I haven't used the site in a long time and the last time was only to look up some song lyrics.

Scummy SEO: https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/25/google-rap-genius/

I thought I saw a story about a founder doing something else sketchy as well, but I can't find it.

That was 3 or 4 years ago, and they apologised for it and they acknowledged that it was pretty scummy.

I think that we can move on from one incident several years ago, it's not like they've made a habit of dodgy business decisions since then.

> by striking “divulge” and inserting “disclose”

That appears frequently. Not sure what legalize there is between the two words.

There are many inclusions which sound like they are giving the government unlimited rights -- "nothing shall limit" --

> “(i) Rule Of Construction Related To Legal Process.—Nothing in this section or in section 2702 shall limit the authority of a governmental entity to use an administrative subpoena [..] to

> “(1) require an [..] intended recipient of a wire or electronic communication to disclose a wire or electronic communication (including the contents of that communication) to the governmental entity;

So, no restrictions on obtaining a warrant to look at emails. Free warrants?

> “(j) Rule Of Construction Related To Congressional Subpoenas.—Nothing [..] shall limit the power of inquiry vested in the Congress [..] including the authority to compel the production of a wire or electronic communication (including the contents of a wire or electronic communication) that is stored, held, or maintained by a person or entity that provides remote computing service or electronic communication service.”

This sounds like Congress is giving itself no restrictions to obtain the contents of any email or electronic communications.

And then there is the "you cannot tell anyone about this warrant" clause:

> “(a) In General.—A governmental entity [..] may apply to a court for an order directing a provider [..] to not to notify any other person of the existence of the warrant, order, subpoena, or other directive.

> for delayed notification of up to 180 days

I understand the bits at the bottom to mean, "no weird interpretation of this act can be made to seem like the US Gov't cannot have access to your communications":

> Nothing in this Act or an amendment made by this Act shall be construed to preclude the acquisition by the United States Government of

> (1) the contents of a wire or electronic communication pursuant to other lawful authorities, including the authorities under chapter 119 of title 18 (commonly known as the “Wiretap Act”), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978

Without having read the prior text, this sounds like it is giving the government fewer restrictions for accessing stored communications.

>So, no restrictions on obtaining a warrant to look at emails. Free warrants?

You're misreading a lot of the bill, it says that "nothing in this section or the one preceding shall limit the already existing laws for warrants." Similarly, the "you can't tell anyone" clause already exists, this just isn't changing it.

This bill is removing a section in the existing law that considers data stored on a server for more than 180 days abandoned, requiring only a subpoena to access. It's a good bill, though it only addresses a tiny part of the problems, which is why I expect it can get passed.

Is this politically feasible?

Looks like it was proposed by a republican, so if they've got their parties buy in it could be. Could be related to Trump's tussle with the intelligence community?

I think an earlier variant of this already passed the house near-unanimously. It's the senate that balked last time round.

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