Bonum Certa Men Certa

EPO and Microsoft Collude to Break the Law -- Part III: The PATRIOT Act and Mass Surveillance

Previous parts:



On patriotism
The US PATRIOT Act – a refuge for scoundrels?



Summary: "According to critics and political dissenters, the effect of these acts has been to establish an American police state by institutionalising the illegal COINTELPRO tactics used to assassinate dissenters and leaders from the 1950s onwards."

As a result of Edward Snowden's courageous disclosures which forced him into exile from his homeland public opinion across the globe was alerted to the existence of mass surveillance programmes conducted by US security and intelligence agencies.



"The PATRIOT Act amended eleven other legislative acts and allowed the US government to spy on its own citizens without due process. It was passed in less than a week with little debate and no expert testimony."But the modern era of mass surveillance was already underway long before Snowden took his fateful decision to blow the whistle back in 2013.

Following the September 11 attacks of 2001, domestic and international mass surveillance capabilities increased immensely on the basis of a wide range of legal instruments, including presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then renewed on an annual basis by Barack Obama, along with a number of national security Acts most notably the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendment Act which established the PRISM surveillance program.

According to critics and political dissenters, the effect of these acts has been to establish an American police state by institutionalising the illegal COINTELPRO tactics used to assassinate dissenters and leaders from the 1950s onwards.

The PATRIOT Act amended eleven other legislative acts and allowed the US government to spy on its own citizens without due process. It was passed in less than a week with little debate and no expert testimony.

In April 2011, the IT news channel ZDNet published a series of detailed posts about the US PATRIOT Act of 2001, a piece of legislation which is formally entitled "An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and across the globe, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes".

In its analysis of the PATRIOT Act, ZDNet focussed on how its provisions could be used to access data held outside the United States.

According to ZDNet: "U.S. law enforcement could use the USA PATRIOT Act on a U.S.-based organisation -- like Microsoft, Google, Intel or Amazon, for example -- to force its local subsidiary companies across the world into handing over user data to U.S. authorities.

"EU data once may have 'had to stay in Europe', but this is on the most part untrue. The Safe Harbor framework, designed to protect EU data in the United States, protects merely the transfer of data from Europe to U.S. soil. But as soon as it arrived on U.S. soil, Safe Harbor can be superseded by America's counter-terrorism law.

"U.S. corporations survive by having subsidiary or smaller companies in foreign locations, to communicate and collaborate with their clients on the ground in their locale. These subsidiary companies are wholly owned and controlled by their U.S. parent. If a U.S. parent company receives a request from the U.S. government to inspect data held by a subsidiary company in a foreign location, the subsidiary would therefore have no choice but to hand over the data to their U.S.-based parent."

Shortly afterwards, in a June 2011 article entitled "Microsoft admits Patriot Act can access EU-based cloud data" ZDNet reported that Microsoft's UK head had admitted that "no cloud data is safe from the Patriot Act, and the company can be forced to hand EU-stored data over to U.S. authorities".

ZDNet continued to report on the risk of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies accessing cloud-stored data and in February 2013 it published an article entitled "Yes, U.S. authorities can spy on EU cloud data. Here's how":

"EU citizens and businesses are warned against using the cloud over the risk that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies can obtain your personal records. Here's how the U.S. can acquire your data, even if you're based in the EU."

As we will see in the next part, some of the specific features of the legal landscape have been modified in the meantime, but the more or less the same risks reported on by ZDNet back in 2011 and 2013 continue to exist under the terms of the so-called CLOUD Act which was passed by US lawmakers in March 2018.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
 
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025
From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025
Links 04/05/2025: Science, Conflicts, and Monopolies
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Above 7% in Bulgaria, Rising Just Like in Most of Europe
Up to 7%, not counting Chromebooks
Data Shows Largest EU Economies Shifting to GNU/Linux
all-time highs
statCounter Says Only One in 6 Web-Connected Clients in Hungary Are Using Windows, iOS Almost Bigger Than Windows Now
Hungary is a cautionary tale in the world of European (or Russian) politics
Many Reports About Microsoft's Financial Report/Performance Are False, Fake News, Churnalism/Parroting, and LLM Slop (Machine-Generated Lies)
Even if you see a thousand sites saying that Microsoft is performing well ask yourself why the company is rushing to fire tens of thousands of workers and cancelling datacentres
Links 04/05/2025: FCC Turning Into MAGA’s Censoring Machine, SEC Pressured to Delist Chinese Companies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/05/2025: Historical Artifacts and Date Calculations in POSIX Shell
Links for the day
In the First 3 Months of 2025 GAFAM Debt Rose by More Than $14.4 Billion
That's based on their official statements
10-Step Strategy to Get BRETT WILSON LLP ("Gun for Hire"), Microsoft's Serial Strangler, and the Serial Defamer to Compensate Techrights and Tux Machines for Years of SLAPPs and Abusive Litigation
There's no room or capacity for forgiveness here; enablers and protectors of crime need to be scuttled and pay up in full
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 03, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 03, 2025