Passage Of The CLOUD Feared By The Virtual Currency Sector

Buried deep inside a weighted expenditure package worth over a trillion dollars, the clarifying lawful Oversea Use of data (CLOUD) Act has just been enacted. Rather than an up and down vote on the benefits of CLOUD, Parliamentary must reject the complete bill which consists of thousands of pages thus exposing to risk of state shut down in response to any kind of disagreement. The virtual currency sector is concern that ClOUD is a widening of global regulation enforcement power in connection to its online operation.

Get off My Cloud, Yes!! You!!!

President Pro Tempore of the US Senate, Senator Orrin Hatch elaborated, “The CLOUD Act bridges the divide that sometimes exists between law enforcement and the tech sector by giving law enforcement the tools it needs to access data throughout the world while at the same time creating a commonsense framework to encourage international cooperation to resolve conflicts of law.”

In the past weeks, virtual currency privacy supporters have received some shortcomings. As revealed by the infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden, there has been a long and steady trend of US authorities tracking and listening to conversations of bitcoiners to be precise as long as 2013 at least. Currently, the latest US legislation detailed in the omnibus expenditure document reveal to seek regulators more control over its capability to supervise privacy online.

The CLOUD act can be found on page 2,201 of the bill which starts as S.2383/H.R 4943 Clarifying lawful Overseas Use of Data part. This is as a result of a combined work of legal administrators of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! And Senator Orrin Hatch, who in particular has held this position as long as 1977.

A group announcement from all five firms states “The new Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act reflects a growing consensus in favor of protecting Internet users around the world and provides a logical solution for governing cross-border access to data. Introduction of this bipartisan legislation is an important step toward enhancing and protecting individual privacy rights, reducing international conflicts of law and keeping us all safer.”

Further Intrusions and Worse received by EFF an ACLU

This year, One of the firms involved in privacy battles such as Microsoft has even gone to the extent of reaching the Supreme Court. The is currently examining if Microsoft should give the Department of Justice data held in Ireland. Since 2013, the case has been on-going. It might be the case in which the main tech companies desiring a universal set of regulations regarding international compliance rule rather than contesting at every angle. These platforms believe that the CLOUD Act is the best balance between essential law enforcement access and safeguarding privacy.

However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation tend to disagree with the above statement “ to require foreign law enforcement to seek individualized and prior judicial review. Grants real-time access and an interception to foreign law enforcement without requiring the heightened warrant standards that U.S. police have to adhere to under the Wiretap Act. Fails to place adequate limits on the category and severity of crimes for this type of agreement. Fails to require notice on any level – to the person targeted, to the country where the person resides, and to the country where the data is stored.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provided a statement in response to the CLOUD act noting “other things, the legislation would: Allow foreign governments to wiretap on U.S. soil under standards that do not comply with U.S. law; Give the executive branch the power to enter into foreign agreements without Congressional approval; Possibly facilitate foreign government access to information that is used to commit human rights abuses, like torture; and Allow foreign governments to obtain information that could pertain to individuals in the U.S. without meeting constitutional standards.”

Andres Antonopoulos, a well-respected virtual currency luminary also commented, “The CLOUD Act passed. It destroys privacy globally, so it had to be snuck into the $1.3 trillion omnibus without debate. Encrypt. Encrypt. Encrypt. Go Dark. When privacy is criminalized, only criminals have privacy. We got sold out, again.”