Patriot II Bill - News Report
From http://www.securityfocus.com
Full Article: http://online.securityfocus.com/news/2296
Quote:
Other provisions in the bill would:
-Allow a federal judge in one part of the country to issue a search warrant for a location in another part of the country in cases involving the suspected financing of terrorist -organizations, attacks on critical infrastructure, or computer crime. The USA-PATRIOT Act allowed such inter-jurisdictional searches only in terrorism cases.
-Eliminate the requirement that federal agents issue a subpoena or obtain a court order to access someone's credit report. Under the bill, agents would only need to certify that they will use the information "in connection with their duties to enforce federal law" to secretly gain access to a consumer's credit profile.
-Expand grand jury secrecy rules to apply to witnesses, allowing prosecutors to order ordinary citizens not to divulge the existence of a grand jury investigation, or their own testimony, to anyone except an attorney. Current grand jury secrecy rules apply only to jurors, prosecutors and courtroom staff.
-Permit federal agents to monitor both voice and Internet communications from a target's Web-enabled cell phone, and to access the contents of the device's memory, with a single court order
-Expand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that governs U.S. spying on foreign nationals, and make it easy for agents to share foreign intelligence information with criminal investigators.
We've heard a lot about this sort of thing coming. The magazine 2600 (www.2600.com) last issue had most of it's material on freedoms being revoked in the name of national security and so on. This sort of thing is really scary. If/When it hits Capital Hill I hope that it doesn't pass, that would be a terable day. Use of encryption illegal? Ech, bad stuff.
Also there has been a lot of mentioning of judges and businesses being given the right to affect people outside of their normal jurisdiction (outside of their state). For example Security Focus also did a piece on how if a business has any clients in California and they have a computer security breach that they are required to report it to those people,
Quote:
A new California law requiring companies to notify their customers of computer security breaches applies to any online business that counts Californians as customers, even if the company isn't based in the Golden State.
That article can be found here: http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1984
I HIGHLY dislike the idea of giving national reach in these areas to any government agency or otherwhise. It seems like the checks and balances system doesn't really have much of a point then.
