ryanradia

The proposed civil forfeiture provisions are indeed troubling. Currently, “[a]ny property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to a violation of [the CFAA]” is subject to civil forfeiture. But the CFAA discussion draft would expand this to include "[a]ny property ... used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of [a CFAA violation]." This means your computer could be seized if you access a website in violation of its ToS, even if the government doesn't even charge (let alone convict) you of any crime.

This vote isn't (or shouldn't be) a referendum on Snowden, despite several disingenuous media articles. Rather, it's a vote on the merits of the NSA suspicionless domestic surveillance program. Even if one thinks Snowden was wrong to leak documents about the program, the cat is out of the bag and the time has come to decide whether we want to allow these programs to continue in their current form.

If you are transmitting or receiving encrypted data on the public Internet, it's quite possible the NSA is intercepting it. This is especially so if the data is traversing other countries, as the law bars the NSA from intentionally targeting Americans' communications contents.(50 USC sec. 1881a) not to be confused with metadata, which the Amash amendment addresses

I'd love to see thousands of underseas fiber optic cables built, but that's just not a feasible option for the foreseeable future. Some degree of centralization is inevitable if there is to be an Internet resembling the one we have today; and in fact there are many benefits of there being a handful of tier 1 providers. Even if the number of internet companies expanded dramatically, the NSA has plenty of resources each of those companies a court order with the same force as the one it sent to Verizon.

I don't think it's that US civil libertarians are "sublimely untroubled" by US spying on foreign nationals, but that US civil libertarians are mainly focused on the US spying on its own citizens. While it's troubling for any government to access the contents of a person's private electronic communications without probable cause, it's especially troubling when that government also has the legal authority (and the means) to imprison the person behind the communications.