SESTA-FOSTA and the CLOUD Act — the 1-2 Punch to End Online Escorting

[Drukpa Kunley]

SESTA-FOSTA and the CLOUD Act — the 1-2 Punch to End Online Escorting


What you need to know about the Clarifying Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD Act)


While most of the attention of the adult industries (escorting, pornography and web cams) have been focused on SESTA-FOSTA, little attention has been paid to a hastily passed bill known as the CLOUD Act – Clarifying Overseas Use of Data. This bill was tacked on to the Omnibus spending bill that was passed by Congress and signed by Trump on March 23, 2018. It was never debated by members of Congress, and there were no public hearings held in regards to this law. In all actuality, this law should have been named “How Do We Get Around the Constitution” Act.

That is exactly what it enables the U.S. (and foreign governments) to do.

Usually when the U.S. government wants to secure online information about a U.S. citizen stored on servers overseas, they have to follow a treaty, more specifically a (MLAT) Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, to secure that information. In short, if the FBI wants communications from your profile stored on a server outside the U.S., they must send a request to the U.S. State Department, who in turn sends a request to the State Department of the country where your communications is stored, who then sends it to a local law enforcement agency so they can go to the court and secure a subpoena signed by a judge for the information the U.S. government wants.

The reason for the CLOUD Act has to do with the DOJ fighting Microsoft for information they wanted on a particular alleged criminal stored on Microsoft servers in Ireland. Except the DOJ was too either lazy to go through the MLAT procedure or they wanted to test the law that says a U.S. subpoena on a U.S. company for data held overseas is not sufficient due process under the Constitution.

Either way, Microsoft fought, and the case was going to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court shortly.

But now the Microsoft case is moot since the CLOUD Act has become law. And the way the CLOUD Act was passed is a story within itself.

So how does this relate to SESTA-FOSTA ? Very simple, moving escort ads and escort listing websites overseas does not protect you, either as an advertiser or as a business. With the CLOUD Act, now all the U.S. government has to do is to request that the foreign government provide them with the requested information about a U.S. citizen and they will serve the subpoena on the local company, never providing you notice that your information is being subpoenaed and that information will be handed over to the U.S. government.

So in reality, moving everything offshore may actually lessen your Constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment to privacy and unreasonable searches and seizures. For example the CLOUD Act;

Includes a weak standard for review that does not rise to the protections of the warrant requirement under the 4th Amendment.

Fails to require foreign law enforcement to seek individualized and prior judicial review.

Grants real-time access and interception to foreign law enforcement without requiring the heightened warrant standards that U.S. police have to adhere to under the Wiretap Act.

Fails to place adequate limits on the category and severity of crimes for this type of agreement.

Fails to require notice on any level – to the person targeted, to the country where the person resides, and to the country where the data is stored. (Under a separate provision regarding U.S. law enforcement extraterritorial orders, the bill allows companies to give notice to the foreign countries where data is stored, but there is no parallel provision for company-to-country notice when foreign police seek data stored in the United States.)

Be very aware where your information is stored. Just because your Switter account, ProtonMail or escorting ad is hosted/stored overseas doesn’t mean it's safe from the U.S. government.

Matter of fact, it may actually be at greater risk.

[Drukpa Kunley]

it was sneaky, read how we got the CLOUD Act:

the CLOUD Act Passes

March 23, 2018: President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion Omnibus government spending bill—which includes the CLOUD Act—into law on a Friday morning.

“People deserve the right to a better process.”

Those are the words of Jim McGovern, representative for Massachusetts and member of the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, when, after 8:00 PM EST on Wednesday, he and his colleagues were handed a 2,232-page bill to review and approve for a floor vote by the next morning. Trump signs the bill into law on Friday morning, the very next day after the House and Senate voted.

In the final pages of the bill—meant only to appropriate future government spending—lawmakers snuck in a separate piece of legislation that made no mention of funds, salaries, or budget cuts. Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.

This bill is the CLOUD Act. It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion Omnibus government spending bill. Congress has a professional responsibility to listen to the American people’s concerns, to represent their constituents, and to debate the merits and concerns of this proposal amongst themselves, and they failed.

The House approved the Omnibus government spending bill, with the CLOUD Act attached, in a 256-167 vote. The Senate followed up late that night with a 65-32 vote in favor. And the bill got the president’s signature.

Make no mistake—many of you spoke up. You emailed your representatives. You told them to protect privacy and to reject the CLOUD Act, including any efforts to attach it to must-pass spending bills. You did your part. It is Congressional leadership—negotiating behind closed doors—who failed.

Because of this failure, U.S. and foreign police will have new mechanisms to seize data across the globe.

Because of this failure, your private emails, your online chats, your Facebook, Google, Flickr photos, your Snapchat videos, your private lives online, your moments shared digitally between only those you trust, will be open to foreign law enforcement without a warrant and with few restrictions on using and sharing your information. Because of this failure, U.S. laws will be bypassed on U.S. soil.

The CLOUD Act is a far-reaching, privacy-upending piece of legislation that will:

Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people's communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.

Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.

Allow the U.S. president to enter "executive agreements" that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.

Allow foreign police to collect someone's data without notifying them about it.

Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it's a U.S. person's or not, no matter where it is stored.

This is how the CLOUD Act would work in practice:

London investigators want the private Slack messages of a Londoner they suspect of bank fraud. The London police could go directly to Slack, a U.S. company, to request and collect those messages. The London police would not necessarily need prior judicial review for this request. The London police would not be required to notify U.S. law enforcement about this request. The London police would not need a probable cause warrant for this collection.

Predictably, in this request, the London police might also collect Slack messages written by U.S. persons communicating with the Londoner suspected of bank fraud. Those messages could be read, stored, and potentially shared, all without the U.S. person knowing about it. Those messages, if shared with U.S. law enforcement, could be used to criminally charge the U.S. person in a U.S. court, even though a warrant was never issued.

This bill has large privacy implications both in the U.S. and abroad. It was never given the attention it deserved in Congress.

As Rep. McGovern said, the people deserve the right to a better process.

[assaholic]

Doesn't this assume that the other country would simply bend to the will of the FBI or a US court? What if it was some no-so-cooperative banana republic? What would happen if someone set up a BP clone in Venezuela, Ecuador, Cayman Islands, or even Macau?

[alexissweet69]

Sign the Petition Against it!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...stop-fosta-now