Browser privacy bill amendment blows up over a single line

On Tuesday morning, an amendment to a draft law to protect the privacy of browsers and search protocols met with a wave of support from data protection advocates and legislators, just a day before the change was expected to be voted on.

Then the full details of the proposed change were published and support for imploded privacy protection was provided by Tuesday evening. The fall of the amendment seemed to come from one line.

It all depended on the phrase “United States people”.

The change was envisaged for the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act, a law designed to restore the surveillance powers of the Patriot Act that expired in March. These powers included the ability for U.S. agencies such as the FBI and CIA to search browser history without the need for a warrant.

Data protection advocates and legislators have supported changes to new legislation to protect people from government surveillance. Your browsing history and search history can contain a lot of sensitive information. Without protection, government agencies can report everything for no probable reason.

Proponents of government surveillance argue that measures are necessary to protect the United States from foreign threats.

“Our nation continues to face a number of threats – whether from foreign intelligence agencies or terrorist organizations – and we need to make sure that the secret services keep the authorities necessary to protect our country while at the same time robustly protecting the civil liberties of the Americans.” The President of House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff said in a statement.

The question is, where exactly should the line be drawn?

As Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, and Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, drafted her amendment to the USA Freedom Reauthorization ActThe U.S. government should be prevented from collecting logs of search histories, websites visited, or videos watched without first receiving a warrant.

The amendment was drafted after a similar amendment was voted unanimously on May 13 by Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Senator Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana.

The Lofgren-Davidson amendment had many similarities to the Wyden-Daines amendment, but negotiations with Schiff resulted in significant language differences, according to sources familiar with the new proposal.

The 12th line of the Lofgren-Davidson change Specifies that data protection applies only to “individuals in the United States”. Advocates of data protection interpreted this expression as meaning that undocumented people living in the United States would still be subject to extensive surveillance. The Lofgren and Davidson office did not comment on the definition of “persons from the United States” in their amendment.

If the Lofgren-Davidson amendment is passed without protection for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, it means that up to 12 million people have no privacy protection from the government that wants to track their search history.

This special language has strengthened their support.

“As previously stated, the change would not prevent the unlawful monitoring of Internet search history and browsing history for people in the United States,” said Neema Singh Guliani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “A clear, clear rule that prohibits such surveillance is both in line with the fourth amendment and critical to ensuring that information from US citizens is not misinterpreted.”

The original Wyden-Daines amendment extended this protection, but was removed in the Lofgren-Davidson amendment.

Data protection group Fight for the Future also looked at Lofgren-Davidson’s amendment after seeing the details from the final text.

“Surveillance by the mass government is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and fundamental human rights,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a statement. “It shouldn’t matter where you come from. Everyone should have the fundamental right to a due process and be free from unreasonable and legitimate government interference in their lives.”

The proposed change has also lost steam among legislators as to how Schiff interpreted his language. While Lofgren and Davidson wrote the amendment as comprehensive protection against surveillance, Schiff has interpreted that the law will only prevent lawless searches against certain US citizens.

This change would mean that the FBI could continue to receive logs of all website or video visitors without guarantee – which is a big magnet and only prevents single searches.

“The claim by the House Intelligence Committee chairman that the Lofgren-Davidson amendment does not fully protect Americans from a collection without guarantee is clearly contrary to Wyden-Daines’ intent and my understanding of the amendment that I approved today,” Wyden said in a statement on Tuesday.

Wyden’s withdrawal was first reported by Gizmodo.

Wyden is now asking the House to vote on its original amendment rather than the Lofgren-Davidson amendment introduced on Tuesday. At a committee hearing on Wednesday morning, Lofgren and Davidson proposed the same thing.

“There have been some comments that indicate that this amendment is ambiguous,” said Lofgren. “If the committee wanted to make sure there were no ambiguities, they could go back to the original request that Mr. Davidson and I made on May 20 – a reflection of the Wyden Daines amendment.”

The Wyden Daines amendment failed with one vote in the Senate, and two senators who would likely have voted to support it could not do so because they were not there.

The Lofgren-Davidson amendment was initially identical to the Wyden Daines amendment, but was changed after negotiations with the ship. The amendment is expected to be voted on Wednesday, but the terms added have likely gutted privacy protection for users’ browsing history.

“These are Rep. Schiff and Secret Service Falcons who work overtime to protect the surveillance state’s status quo,” Davidson said in a statement. “Hopefully everyone will wake up and defend the Constitution. It is time for the house to protect one of the most fundamental freedoms of Americans – the right to privacy.”