CNET journalist Declan McCullagh has lit up the Internets today with his reporting on a revamped Senate online privacy bill that would give an alphabet soup of federal agencies unprecedented access to email and other online communications.
Leahy’s rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies – including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission – to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.
This would be an astounding expansion of government authority to snoop. And it comes at a time when the public is getting wind through the Petraeus scandal of just how easy it already is to access our private communications.
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