This article originally appeared on ReadWrite and it’s another example of the powers of government encroaching on the private lives of its citizens. We’d like to know what you think. Please read the article and give us your feedback. Do you think it’s a good idea? Who is going to pay for this mass storage? Do you think congress will pass this kind of law? Do you see your freedoms disappearing?<\/p>\n
Let us know what you think…<\/p>\n
“Text me. Wait, don’t. Not anything too private anyway.<\/p>\n
That’s because if a\u00a0new proposal<\/a>\u00a0is approved by the Senate, each and every SMS message you send will be stored in a digital archive by your phone provider. Why, you ask? It’s all in the name of law enforcement being able to using your messages as evidence to catch bad guys and solve cases. And it’s also a government-sponsored privacy nightmare come to reality.<\/p>\n If passed, the proposal would be the first major update to the 27-year-old\u00a0Electronic Communications Privacy Act<\/a>\u00a0(ECPA), and the latest in a string of blatant\u00a0challenges<\/a>\u00a0to the Fourth Amendment, which (up until recently… we’re looking at you,\u00a0FISA<\/a>) served to protect citizens’ rights and information,\u00a0unless<\/em>\u00a0law enforcement was granted a court-issued warrant.<\/p>\n But if this SMS-retention requirement makes it into law, the nearly 2.3 trillion text messages\u00a0America’s 321.7 million\u00a0wireless subscribers<\/a>\u00a0send in a year would all become the property of the Federal government, stored in a repository for 2 years.<\/p>\n Why This Is A Very Bad Idea<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a very big change to the ECPA, which currently does not have any express directives to store and track customers’ personal data, beyond court-ordered warrants and the need for providing a service. While the repository of texts\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0theoretically help solve\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>criminal cases, the technology and manpower required to sift through all of those messages, the need to significantly enhance storage facilities and data centers, and the exposure of the private business and personal communication of millions of people is a very high price to pay…”<\/p>\n (Please read the rest of this article by visiting ReadWrite here…<\/strong><\/span><\/a> )<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article originally appeared on ReadWrite and it’s another example of the powers of government encroaching on the private lives of its citizens. We’d like to know what you think. Please read the article and give us your feedback. Do you think it’s a good idea? Who is going to pay for this mass storage? Do you think\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1656,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5288,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5287\/revisions\/5288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}