Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes
From https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes
Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes
BY DAVID RUIZ
MARCH 22, 2018
People deserve the right to a better process.
Those are the words of Jim McGovern, representative for Massachusetts and member of the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, when, after 8:00 PM EST on Wednesday, he and his colleagues were handed a 2,232-page bill to review and approve for a floor vote by the next morning.
In the final pages of the billmeant only to appropriate future government spendinglawmakers snuck in a separate piece of legislation that made no mention of funds, salaries, or budget cuts. Instead, this final, tacked-on piece of legislation will erode privacy protections around the globe.
This bill is the CLOUD Act. It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate. It never received a hearing. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this un-vetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill. Congress has a professional responsibility to listen to the American peoples concerns, to represent their constituents, and to debate the merits and concerns of this proposal amongst themselves, and this week, they failed.
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More at link.