Last week, the Senate voted to update two acts to “further protect Americans’ privacy”:

Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Website reports that

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation authored by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that updates the Video Privacy Protection Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, two of the nation’s premier digital privacy laws.

The bill updates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, first enacted in 1986, so that Americans will have added privacy safeguards for their email and other electronic communications. The issue of email privacy was the topic of two Judiciary Committee hearings in recent years, and today’s mark up comes 18 months after Senator Leahy introduced the measure in May 2011.

“Three decades after the enactment of ECPA, Americans face even greater threats to their digital privacy, as we witness the explosion of new technologies and the expansion of the Government’s surveillance powers,” Leahy said during the mark up. “Today, the Committee has an important opportunity to begin to address this privacy challenge.”

After the vote he said: “After decades of the erosion of Americans’ privacy rights on many fronts, we finally have a rare opportunity for progress on privacy protection.”

Leahy’s proposal requires the government to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause in order to obtain email content from a third-party service provider, and it eliminates the outdated “180-day” rule that calls for different legal standards for the government to obtain email content depending upon the age of the emails in question. The government must notify an individual whose electronic communication has been disclosed, and provide that individual with a copy of the search warrant used to obtain the information within 10 business days. To help with sensitive law enforcement investigations, however, Leahy’s legislative proposal provides that the government can seek a court order to delay notifying an individual for up to 180 days. An amendment from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), which was adopted by voice vote, modified this provision to permit a delay of notice for only up to 90 days for governmental entities that are not law enforcement agencies.

The measure also makes clear that the search warrant requirement for electronic communications content in the bill does not apply to any other federal criminal or national security laws.

Unfortunately for all of us, that measure comes waaay too late.

Rt.com has the story:

The FBI has the e-mails of nearly all US citizens, including congressional members, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. Speaking to RT he warned that the government can use information against anyone it wants.

One of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history resigned in 2001 because he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the constitution.

He asserts, that the FBI has access to this data due to a powerful device Naris.

This year Binney received the Callaway award. The annual award was established to recognize those, who stand out for constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?

William Binney: Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the e-mails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.

RT: And it’s not just about those, who could be planning, who could be a threat to national security, but also those, who could be just…

WB: It’s everybody. The Naris device if it takes in the entire line, so it takes in all the data. In fact they advertised they can process the lines at session rates, which means 10 gigabit lines. I forgot the name of the device (it’s not the Naris) – the other one does it at 10 gigabits. That’s why the building Buffdale, because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, e-mails are going to be stored there for the future, but right now stored in different places around the country. But it is being collected – and the FBI has access to it.

RT: You mean it’s being collected in bulk without even requesting providers?

WB:Yes.

RT: Then what about Google, you know, releasing this biannual transparency report and saying that the government’s demands for personal data is at an all-time high and for all of those requesting the US, Google says they complied with the government’s demands 90% of the time. But they are still saying that they are making the request, it’s not like it’s all being funneled into that storage. What do you say to that?

WB: I would assume, that it’s just simply another source for the same data they are already collecting. My line is in declarations in a court about the 18-T facility in San Francisco, that documented the NSA room inside that AST&T facility, where they had Naris devices to collect data off the fiber optic lines inside the United States. So, that’s kind of a powerful device, that would collect everything it was being sent. It could collect on the order over one hundred billion one thousand character e-mails a day. One device.

RT: You say they sift through billions of e-mails. I wonder how do they prioritize? How do they filter it?

WB: I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it. I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.

RT: Were you on the target list?

WB: Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my e-mail. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them.

RT: Do you think we all should leave messages for the NSA mail box?

WB: Sure!

So…the next time you feel like telling off somebody in an e-mail, remember Big Brother is watching you.

And, for goshsakes, don’t call President Obama a Muslim-sympathizing, Marxist/Alinskyite worthless excuse for a president, or, the next thing you know,  a Black Helicopter will be buzzing over your roof and the Men in Black will come and