• ACLU files lawsuit challenging NSA's phone surveillance

    In the wake of the past week’s revelations about the NSA’s surveillance of phone calls, the yesterday American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans’ constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy.

  • U.S. secretly obtains AP phone records to identify source of story

    In what the AP calls a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the news organization’s news work, the U.S. Justice Department secretly gathered two-months-worth of telephone records of the agency’s reporters and editors. The AP says the records listed incoming and outgoing calls to the offices and homes of reporters and editors. The Justice Department began collecting the phone records in order to identify the source or sources of a 7 May 2012 AP story which detailed a secret CIA operation in Yemen to intercept an al Qaeda-sponsored attempt to load an IED onto a U.S.-bound airplane.

  • U.S. considering revamping wiretap laws

    The White House is reviewing an FBI plan to overhaul surveillance laws in order to make it easier for law enforcement officials to wiretap citizens using the Internet to communicate rather than phone services.

  • McCaul to draft cybersecurity bill

    House Homeland Security chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said he was drafting his own cybersecurity bill, which will define the role of DHS  in sharing information with private companies about cyber threats. McCaul hopes to agree on a compromise with the White House, which threatened to veto the bill.

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  • Sponsors of CISPA to address nagging privacy concerns about the bill

    House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), sponsors of the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), say they are currently working on the draft to alleviate privacy concerns civil liberty advocates may have about the bill.

  • Justice Department agrees 1986 snooping law should be reviewed

    The U.S. Justice Department said earlier this week that it supports reviewing legislation which allows U.S. law enforcement officials to read someone’s e-mails without a search warrant. The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) states that federal authorities only need a subpoena issued by a federal prosecutor, not a judge, to search through a person’s e-mails which are older than 180 days or which have already been opened.

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  • Facebook’s Likes expose intimate details, personality traits of millions

    Research shows that intimate personal attributes can be predicted with high levels of accuracy from “traces” left by seemingly innocuous digital behavior, in this case Facebook Likes. Study raises important questions about personalized marketing and online privacy.

  • iPhones can reveal a lot about their owners to law enforcement

    People assume their iPhones are safe to keep their personal information on. They would be dismayed to realize what law enforcement agencies can find about them on their phone.

  • Major surveillance law heading toward its own end-of-year cliff

    While coverage of the tense negotiations over a resolution to the fiscal cliff threat has dominated the media, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments of 2008 is heading for a cliff of its own, as the provisions of the act are set to expire at the end of the year

  • Jill Kelly’s FBI friend helped launch the investigation, then tipped lawmakers

    Jill Kelly, a Petraeus family friend, was warned in a series of anonymous e-mails not to get too close to CIA director David Petraeus; Kelly contacted a friend who worked in the FBI Tampa office, and he persuaded the agency cyber squad to investigate; in late October, fearing that FBI director Robert Muller would sweep the investigation’s results under the rug, he contacted Rep. David Reichert (R-Washington), who, in turn, alerted the majority whip,  Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia);  the Tampa agent is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI

  • Electronic surveillance by U.S. law enforcement agencies has increased dramatically

    According to data obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), U.S. law enforcement’s surveillance of e-mails and other Internet communication has skyrocketed in the last two years; some forms of surveillance have increased 361 percent

  • FBI seeking wiretap-ready Web

    As communications have changed in recent years from the traditional telephone system to the Internet, the FBI has found itself facing greater difficulty in carrying out surveillance operations; the agency is asking Internet companies not to oppose a coming proposal which would require them to provide a surveillance backdoor

  • Experts: White House consumer privacy plan seriously flawed

    Last week the White House announced its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which would give consumers the right to exercise control over what personal data is collected and how it is used; an expert says more than thirty years of experience with control-based laws has demonstrated that they don’t work and they don’t protect consumer privacy

  • WikiLeaks “Spyfiles” reveal covert surveillance industry

    Earlier this month WikiLeaks launched its latest campaign, releasing hundreds of documents that reveal the extent of sophisticated surveillance technology that has been used by both oppressive rulers and Western democracies; the more than 287 files expose the work of roughly 160 companies operating in twenty-five countries and their concerted effort to market technology that allow governments or law enforcement agencies to track and monitor individuals

  • ACLU questions police tracking of cell phones

    Civil rights advocates are increasingly uneasy with law enforcement agencies increasing use of cell phone triangulation to pinpoint an individual’s location; earlier this year, thirty-four ACLU affiliates from across the country filed open records requests from local law enforcement agencies requesting information on how authorities are tracking cell phones