Clik here to view.
Missed martial law and the end of democracy by that much
In a secret 23 October 2001 37-page memo (.pdf; 11.9Mb) to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo — then a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel — and Robert...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Limbaugh, the inverse conservative
Rush Limbaugh is “the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party.” So said leading Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who, I suppose, should know. He was quoted by Washington Post...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Obama wants your email
A federal magistrate judge in Colorado has ordered Yahoo to disclose — without probable cause or a warrant — email less than six months old to law enforcement officials. Yahoo has declined, citing the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The blotter: Week ending 22 May 2011
Business If you’re not quite sure that we’re in the middle of another tech bubble, LinkedIn’s initial public offering (IPO) should quash any doubt. The professional social networking website set the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can you hear me now?
In what alternative universe is it possibly acceptable for US law enforcement to warrantlessly track citizens’ mobile phones? Not this one. At least not after the US Supreme Court ruled (.pdf; 217KB)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
EFF and ACLU submit amicus brief on Stingray
Earlier this month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a joint amicus brief (.pdf; 569KB) in United States v. Rigmaiden, a case revolving...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Obama’s constitutionally questionable civil liberties missteps
Among President Barack Obama’s many accomplishments — both in and out of the US presidency — is constitutional law professor. Presumably he knows more about — and respects — the US Constitution, its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NCTC free to surveil and datamine the US citizenry at will
Last March, US intelligence officials met at the White House to debate a proposal to “create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about US citizens — even people suspected of no...
View ArticleClik here to view.
National disgrace: Five more years of warrantless wiretapping
Last September, to no one’s surprise, the US House of Representatives passed the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act for 2012 on a vote of 301-118. On 28 December 2012, scheduled to be hidden as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Routing around the Supremes’ GPS decision
In January 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled (.pdf; 208KB) that law enforcement agencies must obtain a probable-cause warrant before attaching Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices to a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Google requires warrants for user data
For the last three years, Google has regularly released transparency reports, containing information about government requests for access to its users’ data. Government requests for user data have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
US Supreme Court blocks warrantless wiretapping challenge
The US Supreme Court, in a predictably choreographed 5-4 decision (.pdf; 207KB), has found that the initially-secret warrantless wiretapping program instituted by the George W. Bush administration and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
IRS demonstrates lack of Fourth Amendment understanding
According to internal documents, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) believes it does not need a probable-cause warrant to read anyone’s email. Declan McCullagh, writing for CNET, cites the IRS 2009...
View ArticleClik here to view.
US Justice Department claims email warrants unnecessary
First the US Internal Revenue Service claimed it didn’t need probable-cause warrants to read anyone’s email. Now the US Department of Justice claims its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) manuals —...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judge allows evidence from Stingray
The US government has consistently taken the position that it need not obtain probable-cause warrants to use International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) locator devices like Stingray, about which...
View ArticleClik here to view.
There goes your genetic privacy
In a 5-4 decision (.pdf; 257.4KB), the US Supreme Court reversed a 2012 Maryland Court of Appeals ruling (.pdf; 184.4KB) that states may take involuntary DNA samples from suspects arrested for certain...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Propaganda without camouflage from the StarTribune
As a former employee of the University of Minnesota — both my wife/business partner and I retain group health insurance through the University — it unnerves me no end to learn about changes to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NSA domestic telephone surveillance program likely unconstitutional
Early this week, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic telephone surveillance program collecting information on nearly all telephone calls...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NSA domestic telephone surveillance program ruled legal
Less than two weeks ago, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic telephone surveillance program that collects information on nearly all...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Feinstein alleges CIA illegally searched Senate computers
US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had illegally searched the committee’s computers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snowden calls for end-to-end encryption at SXSW
Recently, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, Edward Snowden appeared in a live videoconference, complete with tunnel audio, poorly-synched, Max Headroom-like video, and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is the content of your smartphone private?
Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Do it again. While doing so, ponder the amount of sensitive information that you carry around with you on your smartphone. Chances are, you carry this device...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Court rules warrant required to track location
The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has ruled that law enforcement agencies must get a probable-cause warrant before tracking the location of anyone by their mobile phone. While several state...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PCLOB endorses Section 702 surveillance
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — an agency within the executive branch of the US government — has issued a report endorsing surveillance activities under Section 702 of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Terrorist and no-fly list guidebook revealed
President Barack Obama recently expanded the criteria for which individuals are placed on various secret “watchlists” including the no-fly list maintained by the US government. Jeremy Scahill and Ryan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DOJ releases warrantless wiretapping justification memos
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has released two heavily redacted memos outlining the government’s justification for warrantlessly wiretapping domestic telephone calls. The documents were released...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Second Circuit finds NSA’s bulk phone data collection illegal
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk phone data collection program is illegal. Without speaking to the constitutionality of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Supreme Court approves procedural rule change to allow governmental hacking
The US Supreme Court recently passed a proposed change (.pdf; 34KB) to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, making it significantly easier for law enforcement agencies to remotely hack...
View ArticleClik here to view.
US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals: No expectation of privacy in cell phone...
Do this on your iPhone: Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Frequent Locations. A list of places you’ve recently visited will appear. Click on one of the locations...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No reasonable expectation of privacy in your own computer
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled (.pdf; 2.7MB) that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own personal computer — even if it’s located inside...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plain hearing joins plain sight in probable-cause wiretap warrant toolbox
In 2015, the number of non-national security related wiretaps authorized by US courts increased 17 percent over 2014. A total of 4,148 of these wiretaps were authorized — without a single denial — and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yahoo reportedly built email surveillance software for US government
Early this week, Joseph Menn writing for Reuters broke a story reporting that in 2015, Yahoo built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NSA ends some domestic warrantless surveillance
On 28 April 2017, the US National Security Agency (NSA) published a statement indicating that it had ceased warrantless surveillance of Americans’ electronic communications with people outside the US,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trump administration issues warrant for identities of visitors to anti-Trump...
On 17 July 2017, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) served a search warrant (.pdf; 1MB) on DreamHost, a website host, for all information related to a website used to coordinate protests during the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
US Congress interprets Fourth Amendment as damage and routes around it
On 11 January 2018, the US House of Representatives voted 256–164 to extend the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless surveillance program, commonly known as Section 702 of the Foreign...
View Article
