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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...
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Twitter sues US Justice Department over surveillance gag orders
Last week, Twitter sued the US Justice Department for its ban on detailing the scope of its surveillance activities, claiming unconstitutional prior restraint under the First Amendment to the US...
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DaVita settles False Claims Act charges for US$350 million
DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc., one of the two dominant corporate providers of dialysis services in the US, has agreed to pay US$350 million to resolve charges that it violated the False Claims Act...
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DOJ walks back demand for Risen to reveal source
The US Department of Justice has wisely, if belatedly, walked back its demand that Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times staffer James Risen reveal his source for a series of articles he wrote on the...
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Obama’s Justice Department spikes FOIA transparency
It was rare in last Congress to find bipartisan support for dang near anything, but very broad support existed for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Improvement Act. The proposed legislation was...
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Poitras’ Citizenfour wins 2015 Academy Award for best documentary
Last night, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, her cinéma vérité account of her first meetings with Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, won the 2015 Academy Award for best documentary. Frankly, it was the...
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Petraeus hand-slapped for classified leaks
Earlier this week, David Petraeus — the former US military leader in Iraq and Afghanistan and former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — pled guilty to leaking highly classified...
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Comcast blinks, comcastically
Earlier this week — just after US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) staffers recommended that Comcast’s US$45 billion planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable be reviewed by an administrative...
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DaVita to pay US$450 million to settle yet another whistleblower lawsuit
This week DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc. — one of the two biggest corporate providers of dialysis services in the US — disclosed its agreement to pay US$450 million to settle one of its ongoing...
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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...
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Look, up in the sky
For some time, reports have surfaced about mysterious small aircraft flying in oddly precise circular patterns over US cities. Matt McKinney and John Reinan writing for the StarTribune, for example,...
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Reheating the cryptowars
In the early 1990s, the Clinton administration proposed using a key escrow system to allow government access to information encrypted by American citizens. An appropriate court order would be required...
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US Department of Justice publishes media subpoena report
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has published its first ever report on its use of subpoenas to obtain information from media sources, covering calendar year 2014. The government agency has said...
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Federal use of Stingrays now subject to warrant
Earlier this week the US Department of Justice (DOJ) published policy changes for its use of cell-site simulators, commonly called Stingrays. The most important change is that federal agents must, in...
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Apple can’t comply with iMessage decryption demand
Earlier this summer, you’ll remember US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey claimed to recognize the importance of strong cryptography and encouraged open debate on balancing...
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Warren calls for restorative justice by prosecuting corporate criminals
While Bernie Sanders continues to chip away at the dominant politcal model in the US from one side — here’s a hint: When Hillary Clinton starts self-identifying as a progressive, she’s mimicking...
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And so crypto wars 2.0 begins
On 21 March, the prosecutors for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the US District Court for the Central District of California to vacate its order to compel Apple to assist in decrypting the...
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EFF sues for access to FISC documents declassified by USA FREEDOM Act
One of the things that was supposed to happen when President Barack Obama signed the USA FREEDOM Act into law in June 2015 was that “significant” decisions from the US Foreign Intelligence...
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The FISC rubber stamp
For the entire calendar year of 2015, the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) received 1,457 electronic surveillance requests, and granted every single one of them. Dustin Volz writing...
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FBI wants biometric database exempted from Privacy Act
For the last eight years, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been quietly building a sprawling biometric database it calls the Next Generation Identification System (NGIS). The NGIS...
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