Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

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It appears that you're missing something. Read the act's reference to subsection (c)(2) carefully. You see, there is no subsection (c)(2) in the proposed bill. It's a part of the law this would have amended, 18 USC § 2703.

And 18 USC § 2703(c)(2) requires no more than an administrative subpoena (though there are other ways to get it as well). And an administrative subpoena is not a warrant at all. But don't take my word for any of this, read it for yourself:

"(2) A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall disclose to a governmental entity the [long list of customer info skipped] of a subscriber to or customer of such service when the governmental entity uses an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena or any means available under paragraph (1)."

Ref: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2703

It's like we have a software patch and everyone is reading only the patch, without considering what the existing code does.

It would appear there's more to the story than I was aware.

Certainly administrative subpoenas that are not based on a grand jury hearing would be susceptible to appeal?

It's easy to miss and it's been getting lost in all the noise, I fear. You don't appeal subpoenas, you try to quash them and prevent the information from being disclosed to begin with. I mean, you can't very well have them un-share your identity or personal information after the fact any more than you can un-ring a bell.

Here's one nice little article about how they work in practice:

http://privacysos.org/admin_subpoenas

You will note that they commend Twitter for giving the user notice of the subpoena, even though Twitter is not required to. That's an important point, too: companies may go above and beyond what they're required to. So, assuming you use services that do that, you might get notice even when the company wasn't legally required to provide it.

Finally, here's the Justice Department's own report to Congress on the use of administrative subpoenas:

http://www.justice.gov/archive/olp/rpt_to_congress.htm

Appendix A1 is probably the most relevant part of that, specifically the column labelled "Notification Req. and Privacy Protections."

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