The “warrantless wiretapping” law has new life, as the United States Senate extended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, today by a significant margin.

The law, originally passed in 2008 under the Bush administration, was renewed this morning when the Senate passed the bill 73 to 23. FISA permits the federal government to obtain secret court orders that allow it to listen in on American communications if “foreign intelligence” data could be collected. For example, American communications can be tapped if they’re speaking with someone outside the country. Americans are not alerted to this surveillance, and a warrant is not required to perform it. The government says it is necessary for national security, though the bill can still be challenged in the Supreme Court.

The bill will next expire on Dec. 31, 2017, once the president has signed it into law today.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco, tweeted, “After rejecting all privacy fixes, the Senate just reauthorized #FISA warrantless wiretapping. A shame on Congress, a blight on our nation.”

The EFF previously outlined all of the “privacy fixes” that were proposed, including an amendment from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that asked the government to reveal how many Americans were under surveillance by FISA. It was shot down in a move the EFF called “disgraceful.”

Other amendments included one from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called the “Fourth Amendment Protection Act,” which would force the government to get warrants for the wiretapping. Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) amendment would make the government be transparent about how the FISA bill is being used against Americans specifically. And Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Ver.) amendment would have the bill expire within three years, to be reassessed during President Barack Obama’s administration.

None of these passed.

Wired reports that FISA spying can begin at any point, before the secret court orders have been issued and through any resulting appeals process, should a request to use FISA is shot down. Wired further notes that FISA can be used on “any telephone that it believes will yield information from or about al Qaeda.”

We have reached out to the EFF and the Electronic Privacy Information Center and will update this post upon hearing back.

Listening-in image via Shuttestock

Netflix will enable subscribers in the United States connect their profiles to Facebook as soon as President Barack Obama signs a popular bill into law, the company confirmed today.

The bill, which will permits Netflix members share their viewing history with friends online, has cleared the U.S. House and Senate and now it just needs Obama’s signature, which should happen in the near future.

“We are pleased that the Senate moved so quickly after the House,” Netflix said in a statement to Talking Points Memo. “We plan to introduce social features for our U.S. members in 2013, after the president signs it.”

Netflix has been noticeably absent from Facebook’s Timeline feature due to a clearly outdated 1988 law that forbids video rental services from sharing a customer’s rental history. The bill was passed in the Blockbuster days and was designed to stop folks from seeing other people’s viewing habits. But with Facebook and other social networks, people often want to share what content they are consuming.

This should be a major win for Netflix, which has been pushing for the legislative changes for more than a year. With more sharing on Facebook, it could encourage more users to sign up or try Netflix.

The news comes a little over a day after several sites across the internet participated in a national protest against the bill. Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and several others instituted a full blackout of services, replacing their homepages with opposition messages about PIPA as well as the house version of the bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). And while internet giant Google didn’t shut down its own services, the company did replace the site’s logo with a “blacked out” version along with a link to a anti-SOPA/PIPA petition.

PIPA previously gained support from over 40 senators, who co-sponsored the bill. As of today, that number has dropped significantly — with 25 senators publicly opposing and another 13 that are leaning toward opposition, according to OpenCongress. The bill, however, still has support from 33 senators. A handful of others have yet to make a statement for or against PIPA.

Still, with all the bad press surrounding PIPA after yesterday’s opposition efforts, it seems very unlikely that it will pass the vote scheduled for Jan. 24.

Below is a list of U.S. senators that have come out against PIPA:

• Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
• Mark Begich (D-AK)
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Scott Brown (R-MA)
• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Benjamin Cardin (D-MD)
• Tom Coburn (R-OK)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Jim DeMint (R-SC)
• Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
• James Inhofe (R-OK)
• Mike Johanns (R-NE)
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)
• Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
• Rand Paul (R-KY)
• John Reed (D-RI)
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)
• Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
• Mark Udall (D-CO)
• David Vitter (R-LA)
• Mark Warner (D-VA)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)

As I discussed in my post, “FAQ: What the new U.S. crowdfunding bill means for entrepreneurs,” this change could be huge for startups and lifts certain securities law prohibitions that have been on the books since the 1930s.

Since I wrote that post, I have received numerous emails and phone calls with questions regarding the House bill. Here are some of the more commonly asked questions and my answers. Leave any additional queries or thoughts in the comments.

Has the House bill been signed into law?

No, not yet. First the U.S. Senate must pass a crowdfunding bill. Then the House bill and the Senate bill must be reconciled in conference. The White House supports the House bill; thus, upon reconciliation, it will presumably be signed into law by President Obama.

Has a crowdfunding bill been introduced in the Senate?

Yes, on November 2nd Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts introduced S.1791 (the “Democratizing Access to Capital Act of 2011”), which was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. A hearing was held by such committee on December 1 with respect to a number of pieces of capital formation legislation, including crowdfunding.

Are there any differences between the House bill and the Senate bill?

Yes, there are four significant differences:

• The Senate bill only permits the issuance of securities “through a crowdfunding intermediary” (such as Kickstarter). Accordingly, startups would not be permitted to raise funds via social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn (as permitted under the House bill).

• Under the Senate bill, each investor is limited to investing up to $1,000 per year per company; the House bill permits an amount equal to the lesser of (i) $10,000 or (ii) 10 percent of the investor’s annual income.

• Similar to the House bill, the Senate bill caps the total amount of capital that may be raised during any twelve-month period at $1 million; the House bill, however, raises the cap to $2 million if the issuer provides potential investors with audited financial statements.

• Finally, the Senate bill permits some form of registration by the State in which the company is organized and/or “any State in which purchasers of 50 percent or greater of the aggregate amount of the issue are…residents.” The House bill preempts State law and, accordingly, there is no State registration requirement.

Has there been any pushback to crowdfunding?

Yes, the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), a trade group for state regulators, has been lobbying very hard against the House Bill to prevent the preemption of State law and to reduce the maximum investment amount per investor. As NASAA President Jack Herstein wrote in a letter to House members: “Any effort to remove or weaken the up-front registration and disclosure process should not happen without adequate alternative safeguards….H.R. 2930 will create an exemption that will expose many more American families to potentially catastrophic financial harm.”

What should startups do?

Until the crowdfunding bill becomes law, startups should avoid selling stock or other securities via crowdfunding sites or social networking sites. Why? Because such sales are in violation of applicable securities laws and thus could lead to severe consequences, including a right of rescission for the stockholders (i.e., the right to get their money back, plus interest), injunctive relief, fines and penalties and possible criminal prosecution

For example, as a recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out, the crowdfunding site ProFounder “drew scrutiny from California securities regulators and was recently forced to abandon its original mission of providing online sales of equity stakes in small businesses.” Indeed, in August, the California Department of Corporations issued a formal consent order against ProFounder to “desist and refrain” from engaging in securities transactions without registering as a “broker dealer.”

Any companies that raised funds via Profounder now run the risk of having violated applicable federal and state securities laws by utilizing an unregistered broker-dealer.

Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs.

Image via Schoolhouse Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes a Law“

“We like to clarify again: All LulzSec members are accounted for, nobody is hiding. Only a name was abandoned for the greater glory #AntiSec,” said @AnonymousIRC.

LulzSec has dominated the news for the past several weeks with hacks targeting the U.S. Sentate, CIA, Brazilian government sites, and games like Minecraft and EVE Online. As LulzSec went dark, it made one final information dump on 750,000 AT&T user accounts and thousands of users playing EA’s Battlefield Heroes.

Anonymous, on the other hand, has been around longer than LulzSec and has many members around the world, so it may be easier for LulzSec members to maintain anonymity as part of that group. On Monday, Anonymous released some documents that FEMA uses to educate smaller governments about hacking and counter-hacking and made an attack on the Tunisian government’s website, signaling that it will pick up where LulzSec left off.

We thought LulzSec could be laying low because its recent release of confidential information from Arizona police computers attracted more attention than most of its hacks. But it appears LulzSec will still continue to cause online chaos, now under the guise of Anonymous.