Global Patriot Act? UK Seeks Authority to Serve Warrants in America

Britain has been negotiating a plan with the United States which would allow the UK to directly serve wiretap warrants on American communications companies for national security and criminal proceedings.

Via USA Today:

The talks are aimed at allowing British authorities access to a range of data, from interceptions of live communications to archived emails involving British suspects, according to the officials, who are not authorized to comment publicly.

The claim is that everything has gone global and terror is no exception, so this is the only next logical step in combating it.

“Such an agreement would ensure U.S. access to data stored in the United Kingdom in support of law enforcement, terrorism, and other transnational threat investigations and support our partners’ ability to investigate serious crime, as well as terrorism and other transnational threats on a reciprocal basis,” that official said.

Considering how many threats they’ve known about and been able to actually thwart, this surely isn’t about further chipping away at everyone’s privacy along with American Constitutional protections as well as national sovereignty at all.

It’s amazing how fast our borders have disappeared in the technological age.

Congressional approval will still be required, but since this is a “you pat my back, I’ll pat yours” kind of deal, it’s not likely they’ll say no.

(H/T: Joe Joseph)

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