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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 —...
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US Justice Department warrantlessly seizes AP phone records
Earlier this month, the US Justice Department informed the Associated Press (AP) that federal law enforcement had — without notice — seized two months of telephone records of more than 20 AP editors...
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Holder signed warrant for Fox News reporter’s email
While US Attorney General Eric Holder apparently recused himself from the warrantless seizure of Associated Press telephone records, he reportedly signed the warrant application used to obtain the...
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Obama rumored to nominate Comey as head of FBI
When he was President George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general, James Comey was the figure who authorized one of that administration’s biggest scandals — the warrantless wiretapping fiasco — and...
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Secret lawsuit seeks Google user data
The US Justice Department has filed a secret lawsuit asking a judge to grant its “petition to enforce” a warrantless demand that Google release user data. Declan McCullagh, writing for CNET reports...
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Verizon’s share everything plan isn’t what you think it is
The US National Security Agency (NSA) is siphoning the telephone records of Verizon’s US customers under a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order issued last April. Glenn...
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Apple ebook antitrust trial begins
Last week a New York trial began in which the US government attempts to prove that Apple conspired with publishers to artificially raise ebook prices. The government’s position is that Apple and a...
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NSA intercepted Google and Yahoo data center links
Just before Halloween, in the latest disclosure of US surveillance state leaks from Edward Snowden, Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani writing for the Washington Post reveal that the US National...
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DaVita adds US$97 million to reserve fund for legal investigations
Last May, DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc. — one of the world’s two largest dialysis services providers — created a US$300 million reserve fund to settle pending criminal and civil investigations into...
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Greasing the FOIA wheels
Ryan Shapiro, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD candidate, is the most prolific Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requester for information from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...
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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...
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Obama administration retains secrecy for phone data memo
The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that the Obama administration can retain the secrecy of a Department of Justice memo regarding the...
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Victors and authors of history
In March 1971 I was a junior in high school, fascinated with the idea that someone would break into a suburban Philadelphia office of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) solely to steal every...
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PCLOB finds NSA surveillance program ineffective, illegal, and unconstitutional
Late last week, the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) released its long-awaited report concluding that the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) program to collect the telephone...
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Comcast and Time Warner Cable sitting in a tree
Last week, Time Warner Cable agreed to be assimilated by Comcast in exchange for US$45.2 billion in Comcast stock. As a result Comcast would have 33 million cable television subscribers (and almost...
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Obama administration must disclose legal basis of assassinations
The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled that the Obama administration must disclose the legal basis of its use of armed drones to assassinate American citizens overseas. The...
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Udall and Wyden press Verrilli on his warrantless surveillance lies
US Senators Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) sent a letter to US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. accusing the Obama administration and its Justice Department of lying to the US...
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US Marshals seize Stingray tracking files
For several months, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been filing public records requests with Florida law enforcement agencies seeking information on the use of International Mobile...
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US court forces release of drone memo
A US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has released a previously secret Obama administration memo outlining a legal justification for the government’s use of drones to target and kill...
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DOJ releases useless NSL report
Last month, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released a 198-page heavily redacted report (.pdf; 3.9MB) on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) use of national security letters (NSLs)....
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