Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) wants Facebook to tighten up their privacy protection for users. He wants to ensure that third parties, particularly malicious ones, not have access to user's personal information. Franken signed a letter along with Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mark Begich (D-AK) today.
"Every day, more and more Minnesotans, young and old, are joining social networking sites like Facebook," said Sen. Franken. "People give these sites their personal information because they assume it will be used to connect them with their friends. But Facebook is taking its users' information, giving it to third parties, and letting them keep it indefinitely. I'm asking Facebook to better protect its users data and make sure that users know who is getting it."
The Senators said the recent changes by Facebook fundamentally alter the relationship between users and the social networking site. Previously, users had the ability to determine what information they wished to share publicly and what information they wanted to keep private. In their letter, the Senators urged Facebook to adjust its policy so that users' information stays private by default and can only be shared with third parties if the user opts in.
(Franken email press release)
Update: One of the data practice defenders is Republican, so I have been rightfully criticized that this is a non-partisan issue and so I have removed the partisan references.
The check and balance of government data collection is public oversight. To accomplish public oversight, the public needs to have access to information of what the government is doing, which is protected by the data practices law. Yesterday, I went to a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension(BCA) group meeting that is meant to overcome opposition on a bill, specifically allowing data to be declared secret (ahem, "confidential") to elude public oversight, specifically H1499. My testimony had helped table this bill.
Minnesota has some of the best data access and data oversight, BCA representatives are dedicated to destroying one more piece of good government. The proposers of this bill mean to replace public oversight with internal agency oversight - self oversight. (Heavy Sarcasm fully intended) Because self-oversight works so well with secret federal military spending. Because self-oversight worked so well with our too-big-to-fail banks. Because self-oversight worked so well with all of the ponzi-scheme investors that we discovered during the financial downtown. Because self-oversight works so well, one really wonders why we have law enforcement at all. (end of sarcasm).
It was somewhat confusing in the presentation, when one of presenters Russ Porter (uncertain of spelling) from the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center gave a long history that basically showed how secret data becomes heavily biased and unreliable. I think this was meant to be a form of inoculation persuasion, where the BCA presents the bad information so we can't use it against them.
A "fusion center" is the new federal development of sharing data. There are fusion centers with a huge amount of funds. And now I think these "fusion center" people are in a major game of growing their power! In fact, the hard sell wrap up speeches were going toward the theme of being very afraid of what could happen if you don't give us all this power over data. So I asked when the 50 goriest crime scene photos were going to be handed out?
So the argument shifted to "WE MUST PROTECT PRIVACY" by having secrecy (ahem, confidentiality). So secret incorrect data could be preventing from getting a gun-permit, which already happens with Ramsey County Fletcher's CrimeNet database. And why would a person know why they are being rejected from government jobs. The potential for damage here is huge.
All the phone companies are off the hook for listening to all of our phone conversations, even before 9/11. Anyone who thinks email or phones are private conversations is not living in the US!
In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Walker said the legal protection carved out by Congress for the phone companies appeared unique in immunity law. "It creates a retroactive immunity for past, completed acts committed by private parties acting in concert with government entities that allegedly violated constitutional rights," he wrote.
New York Times
Now if you are a corporation, then you can buy the law even after breaking it. If you are the government, then you can ignore the law. If you the Republican National Convention, then you can use pre-emptive arrests to stifle free speech. Liberty is now just a marketing word that Republicans use.
Amendment IV - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Of all of the egregious excesses during the reign of Boy Blunder And The Plunderers - and there were a whole bunch of 'em - none stood out as much as the blatant and wanton abuse of the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution.
And I was highly critical of republiCon bootlickers with their "if you got nuthin' to hide, what's your problem?" attitude; their fealty to the misAdministration simply because it was their party that was basically wiping it's (posterior) with the Constitution.
Candidate Obama was highly critical of Boy Blunder's inJustice Department; as a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, he knew there was good reason to be critical of a misAdminstration that felt the law didn't apply to them - that justified their excesses with essentially a dismissive "we're at war with terrorism, so sit down and shut up - oh, and by the way: why do you hate America?" attitude.
Boy Blunder's illegal wiretapping was wrong. It wouldn't happen during Obama's tenure. Period. End of story. Or, so I thought.
The problem with a Presidency that usurps powers - any presidency - is future Presidents are loath to relinquish said powers. Candidate Obama's transformation to President Obama clearly demonstrates this, as now-President Obama has done a complete flip-flop from his then-candidate position. Keith Olbermann and his guests on Countdown explain:
I've been following two bills at our legislature. One in the House and another in the Senate. They both concern criminal intelligence data. The bills worried me because of the possible privacy invasions that would be allowed. The good news I have to relate to you is that HF1449 and SF1103 are dead. The House and Senate are past the stage where every viable bill needs to be out of Committee. These two gems haven't even had hearings.
The bills terms are so vaguely defined that law enforcement could pull any kind of information they want about anybody they want for any reason.
As I've said before, I'm all for gang task forces having the ability to track gang activity. I'm opposed to law enforcement tracking law-abiding peace activists because they disagree with our governments policies and intend to peacefully protest.
I'm glad to see these bills forgotten. If these reappear, I sure hope they are rewritten to include privacy protections.
At the beginning of this month, I wrote about a criminal intelligence data bill going through the Senate. I wrote about it because of how vaguely defined its terms were. I am alarmed that this bill would legalize the Big Brother monitoring of anyone our law enforcement wanted to. Now this bill has been introduced in the House ... HF1449. It will also have a hearing this Friday.
Rep. John Lesch (DFL-St. Paul) is the author of this. Lesch is a prosecutor by trade so that explains why he'd be involved. Also, I know him because we're both active in the DFL. He's a progressive. So maybe it alarmed me doubly that he was carrying this bill.
"The bill was proposed by the BCA," John told me (BCA = Bureau of Criminal Apprehension). John explained that his bill would allow law enforcement to better keep track of criminal activity.
I'm all for law enforcement tracking gang activity. However, this bill has no oversight and no limitations to protect civil rights. Basically, there's nothing stopping law enforcement from compiling this kind of evidence anyway. Look at what Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher did surrounding the RNC. Consider what happened in Maryland.
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
"It's okay to call me on the carpet," Lesch told me. He is waiting to hear more from both sides at the bill's first hearing this Friday before reaching a judgment on this bill. I hope he will at a bare minimum amend it to add some civil liberties protections.
Sen. Don Betzold (DFL-Fridley) introduced SF1103, The Criminal Intelligence Data Classification bill, today. This bill strikes me as a distinctly Big Brother type of bill. The wording is vague and allows MN law enforcement to collect any information on anyone they want.
It seems to me that Betzold has defined terrorist activity broadly enough so that peaceful civil disobedience would fall inside the purview of this bill. In other words, our law enforcement could pull credit information, employment information, Facebook friend lists (for more people to investigate) and etc. on anyone for any reason they want. There is absolutely no recourse to determine if our state's law enforcement is compiling criminal data on you under this bill.
"Terrorist activity" means acts dangerous to human life that violate the criminal laws of this state or the United States and appear to be intended to:
(1) intimidate or coerce the civilian population;
(2) influence the policy of the state by intimidation or coercion; or
(3) affect the state by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.
(h) "Threat of imminent serious harm" means a credible impending threat to the safety of a person, government entity, or property.
(SF1103 Summary)
I contacted Sen. Betzold asking him to explain his bill or provide a press release. Here is his response.
This is an agency bill which was suggested by a data practices task force over the legislative interim. Right now, investigative data is confidential. However, there is no classification for intelligence data, which means that it would be public.
I would guess that your concerns will be discussed at a hearing in the Senate's Data Practices Subcommittee. A bill as it is introduced is not necessarily how it will look as it goes through the process.
I would like to thank Sen. Betzold for his quick response and I will be keeping an eye on this one. I hope that someone changes the bill. There needs to be a balance between law enforcement's need to track gang activity and protecting my civil rights.
I'm simply disgusted, after reading Big E's post, and the links in it, entitled "Obama Administration complicit in rendition and torture". Apparently, the new boss agrees with the old boss that kidnapping and torture and other activities the rest of the civilized world refers to as "crimes" is fine, just fine. Apparently, to the new boss, the statute of limitations expired for the old boss and the old boss' cronies on January 20th, 2009. "Change"? Yeah, "right."
Those that have received e-mails from me may have noticed the disclosure, at the bottom. Due to the recent actions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the new notice now reads as such:
NOTICE: Due to policy instituted during the Bush Administration, the National Security Agency ("NSA") of the United States may have read this email without warning, warrant, nor notice, nor legislative or judicial oversight. You may not review the secret file so derived nor challenge actions resulting from it. The US President, through the use of "signing statements", further reserves the right to circumvent any legislation restricting this exercise of executive authority or assigning executive accountability. The current US President shows no inclination to change this policy. For this reason the owner of this email account cannot ensure the privacy of this communication.
To be quite frank, I was mighty p*ssed off after the 2006 elections, when Pelosi declared, unilaterally, that impeachment was off the table. And I watched with loathing as Reid rolled over for senate obstructionists and their mere threats of filibusters. They want to be obstructionists, and filibuster? Go get 'em some hots and some cots and some phone books and let 'em. Make sure ya film 'em; put 'em on record for their obstructionism. But make them WORK for their obstinance.
That's what a guy with a spine would have done; but no, that's not Reid. "Please don't filibuster, pretty please!" was his response to a mere threat - a threat they used an unprecedented number of times.
And I thought January 20th, 2009 would put an end to that kind of cr@p; I thought January 20th, 2009 would bring "justice" back to the Department of Justice.
