US Congress Passes CLOUD Act Hidden in Budget Spending Bill

The legislation is the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), a bill proposed in mid-February, this year (S. 2383 and H.R. 4943). The budget bill was deemed a priority and officials were almost forced to approve it in its current form to avoid a complete US government shutdown starting next week. The budget bill passed a day later, Thursday, with a 256-167 vote in the House of Representatives, and a 65-32 vote on the Senate floor, including with the embedded CLOUD Act that got zero discussion, feedback, or modifications from regulators. What is the CLOUD Act? The unaltered and now official CLOUD Act effectively gets rid of the need for search warrants and probable cause for grabbing a US citizen's data stored online. US police only need to point the finger at some account, and tech companies must abide and provide all the needed details, regardless if the data is stored in the US or overseas. Further, the bill recognizes foreign law enforcement and allows the US President to sign data-sharing agreements with other countries without congressional oversight. The CLOUD Act will then allow foreign law enforcement to require data on their own citizens stored in the US, also without obtaining a warrant or proving probable cause. Nonetheless, giving law enforcement access to data stored overseas could have been done by preserving the need for search warrants and proving probable cause, and without backdooring the Fourth Amendment, as EFF experts bluntly put it....MORE

This is so typical of federal law enforcement. No hearings, no debate, no opportunity to amend, Just tack it on a "must pass" bill. And Congress, no matter which party is in control, keeps doing their bidding. They have draft legislation, right now, that none of us has seen, sitting on a shelf and just waiting for thie next similar opportunity.