Wyden Praises ‘Times’ for Pursuing Administration’s Secret Patriot Act Interpretation
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he’s “very happy that The New York Times filed suit” under the Freedom of Information Act to get the Obama administration’s secret interpretation of the Patriot Act. In effect, “there are two Patriot Acts in America,” the law itself and the administration’s position, he said late Monday at the Web 2.0 Summit. “When the American people see what the secret interpretation is, … I think people are going to be surprised, and I think they are going to be angry. … The American people ought to be able to see this secret interpretation.” Wyden said he “had hoped that we would make more progress” when Barack Obama became president than has been made on expansive use of the law.
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"I can’t come close to answering that question,” Wyden said when asked whether much more warrantless wiretapping is being done under the act than is publicly known. He said answering would be “essentially against the law."
It’s an “iffy proposition” that federal appeals judges will uphold the FCC’s net neutrality rules, Wyden said, but he hopes they do. “We've got to make sure that we've got the freest and most open architecture possible in order to tap the opportunities,” he said. Wyden said he wishes the administration and the FCC “were able to go a bit further” than they have in doing that. The rules don’t cover wireless, he noted. “But clearly this is a solid step forward,” he said.
Wyden plugged the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act that he and conservative Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, have proposed. The premise is, “Let’s start with something simple” in protections against cellphone tracking, Wyden said. In addition to putting limits on private players, “let’s apply the Fourth Amendment” to government monitoring and require warrants except in emergencies, he said.
"Social media need to understand what the threat is” from the proposed federal Protect IP Act, Wyden said: It’s whether “the content sector” of the economy “can use government as a club to go after another part of our economy, which is the innovation sector” through “arbitrary seizures of domain names.” The bill also would mean “ceding a significant portion of the authority over the Internet to private companies” through a private right of action, he said. Engineers say the measure “would do tremendous damage” to hyperlinking, “the essence of the Internet architecture,” and it “could actually harm responsible efforts at cybersecurity,” Wyden said. The bill is like “using a cluster bomb when you ought to go in with a laser” and causing “collateral damage to innovation,” he said.
The bill “would take a significant toll on both freedom and innovation,” Wyden said, and that’s why he has put a hold on it in the Senate, using a procedure that he has tried to abolish. He said his aims are to “narrow the definitions” of intellectual-property theft “and particularly get rid of the private right of action."
"We need a new set of rules of the road” in federal law on data privacy, Wyden said. The central principle should be “people having control over their own data,” with unspecified penalties to back up the restrictions, he said. Now consumers have no idea how information about them is “aggregated and commoditized and being sold” and “what the rules are,” Wyden said. The U.S. should pay attention to European regulatory approaches, but “there’s limited applicability, because we need to come up with uniquely American approaches,” he said. “We're doing a lot of things right.” Wyden also said “he’s very troubled” by the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement “and some of the implications” for liability of Internet intermediaries.