It appears to, among other things, allow any web site owner to be charged with contempt of court for not turning over all customer data within the time-period defined in the warrant (which appears to be as low as 3 days).
Search warrants already exist. What does this bill change? Does it just make the time limit lower?
And is it really very much like CISPA? I thought CISPA was about removing liability for certain kinds of voluntary data sharing, not about making it easier for the government to force data to be shared.
Yeah, looking over this again, it appears you're correct and the CISPAesqueness could be disputed. The very short time limits (some of these actually apply to the officers serving the warrant) and the contempt of court threat are worrisome, though. The Senate bill also isn't quite clear as to whether they'd ask for data outside of what's legally allowable via ECPA or other US Federal/International privacy laws.
Note that the House version of the bill (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/83R/billtext/html/HB0...) appears to be a net boon for user privacy - it requires a warrant for location tracking and requires agencies to compile a yearly report of warrants and orders.
IANAL, and I may not be reading the bill correctly, but it looks to me like the limit is always 10 days, which doesn't seem that bad to me. The relevant language is: "10 whole days if the warrant is issued under Section 5A, Article 18.21". Section 5A is the meat of this bill. I think the warrants we're concerned with are all issued under section 5A.
Note that the 3 day limit is current law. The 10 day limit is new.
>the contempt of court threat
What would the penalty be for failing to comply with a court-issued search warrant, if not contempt of court? I was under the impression that was already normal.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 21.8 ms ] threadftp://ftp.legis.state.tx.us/bills/83R/billtext/html/senate_bills/SB01000_SB01099/SB01052S.htm
It appears to, among other things, allow any web site owner to be charged with contempt of court for not turning over all customer data within the time-period defined in the warrant (which appears to be as low as 3 days).
And is it really very much like CISPA? I thought CISPA was about removing liability for certain kinds of voluntary data sharing, not about making it easier for the government to force data to be shared.
Note that the House version of the bill (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/83R/billtext/html/HB0...) appears to be a net boon for user privacy - it requires a warrant for location tracking and requires agencies to compile a yearly report of warrants and orders.
IANAL, and I may not be reading the bill correctly, but it looks to me like the limit is always 10 days, which doesn't seem that bad to me. The relevant language is: "10 whole days if the warrant is issued under Section 5A, Article 18.21". Section 5A is the meat of this bill. I think the warrants we're concerned with are all issued under section 5A.
Note that the 3 day limit is current law. The 10 day limit is new.
>the contempt of court threat
What would the penalty be for failing to comply with a court-issued search warrant, if not contempt of court? I was under the impression that was already normal.