The Senate late Thursday forwarded legislation to President Barack Obama granting the public the right to automatically display on their Facebook feeds what they're watching on Netflix. While lawmakers were caving to special interests, however, they cut from the legislative package language requiring the authorities to get a warrant to read your e-mail or other data stored in the cloud.
Instead of protecting privacy, the Senate tinkered with the Video Privacy Protection Act, (.pdf) which outlaws the disclosure of video rentals unless the consumer gives consent, on a rental-by-rental basis. That prohibits Netflix customers from allowing their Facebook streams to automatically update with information about the movies they are viewing, though Spotify and other online music-streaming customers can consent to the automatic publication on Facebook of the songs they're listening to.
Congress adopted the Video Privacy Protection Act in 1988 after failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history was published by the Washington City Paper during confirmation hearings.
Obama is expected to promptly sign the Video Privacy Protection Act amendment, which the House passed last year, to allow Facebook users to have their timelines automatically updated with whatever they're watching on Netflix. Facebook and Netflix strongly supported the measure.
But another part of the same Senate package -- sweeping digital privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud -- was removed at the last minute. Just a month ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the cloud-storage privacy protections as part of the Netflix package.
Clearly, lawmakers would rather roll over to special interests than protect Americans' privacy.
Chris Calabrese, the legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, was unhappy that one of the group's top legislative priorities disappeared into the ether.
"If Netflix is going to get an update to the privacy law, we think the American people should get an update to the privacy law," Calabrese said in a telephone interview.
Calabrese was talking about reforming the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The reform package, introduced by Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), would have nullified a provision that allows the government to acquire a suspect's e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed.
Currently, the government can obtain e-mail or other cloud documents without a warrant as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. The authorities only need to demonstrate, often via an administrative subpoena, that it has "reasonable grounds to believe" the information would be useful in an investigation.
Leahy has repeatedly sought to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, but he finds little support for it among fellow lawmakers or with the President Barack Obama administration.
But at least Netflix and Facebook got what they wanted. Americans should be elated, too, because they will now become even bigger marketing pawns on Facebook.
"We are pleased the Senate has moved quickly to modernize the VPPA, giving consumers more freedom to share with friends when they want," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers told CNET. "After the president signs the bill, we will introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013."
