EFF Appeals Dismissal of Warrantless Wiretapping Case: Via EFF.org Updates.

EFF today filed its appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals of the dismissal of Jewel v. NSA, the case EFF brought against the U.S. government and government officials on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the National Security Agency's illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing mass surveillance of their communications and communications records. The case arises from the still growing stacks of evidence confirming the surveillance, including the technical documents presented by former AT&T employee Mark Klein that describe the NSA's secret mass wiretapping facility in San Francisco. [ Read more ... ]

To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes: Via NYTimes.com ( Op-Ed Contributor ).

PERHAPS the only thing more surprising than President Obama’s decision to give an interview for “America’s Most Wanted” last weekend was his apparent agreement with the program’s host, John Walsh, that there should be a national DNA database with profiles of every person arrested, whether convicted or not.Emphasis added: Many Americans feel that this proposal flies in the face of our “innocent until proven guilty” ethos, and given that African-Americans are far more likely to be arrested than whites, critics refer to such genetic collection as creating “Jim Crow’s database.”

In truth, however, this is an issue where both sides are partly right. The president was correct in saying that we need a more robust DNA database, available to law enforcement in every state, to “continue to tighten the grip around folks who have perpetrated these crimes.” But critics have a point that genetic police work, like the sampling of arrestees, is fraught with bias. A better solution: to keep every American’s DNA profile on file. [ Read more ... ]

The Cell Phone Network: Law Enforcement's Surveillance Dream: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Yesterday, WNYC's On the Media (OTM) profiled our cell phone tracking case. In this case, the ACLU, Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the court to require that the government at least show probable cause before it can ask a wireless provider to fork over information about your whereabouts using GPS or cell tower tracking via your cell phone. We won in the district court (PDF); the government appealed that decision to the 3rd Circuit. [ Read more ... ]

Breaching your online privacy to fight crime: Via The Ottawa Citizen.

The "mosaic effect" is an argument often put forward by governments and police to block access to sensitive information. It suggests even seemingly innocuous pieces of information can be fitted together like a puzzle to form a meaningful picture of something they want kept secret, typically a national security operation.

But when the tables are turned and it's police and government that want to piece together seemingly innocuous bits of your personal and digital information to form a picture of you, the "mosaic effect" is recast as "lawful access" and characterized as benign state intervention into the online lives of Canadians in the name of crime-fighting.

Your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and Internet Protocol (IP) address can reveal your Internet habits, social network, personal interests, political views, secrets and more.

The government's new "lawful access" initiative, contained in bills C-46 and C-47, was tabled in the Commons in June. It's the latest attempt in a decade-long push by successive governments to give police and other agents of the state, such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Competition Bureau, modernized surveillance powers and technical capabilities to better patrol the dark side of the digital world.

But here's the rub: C-47 allows police and government agents to demand basic subscriber data from telecommunication and Internet service providers without a warrant. (Some companies routinely volunteer the data when asked, others don't, according to police.)

The Score on USA Patriot Act: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We've come to love our fears more than we love our freedoms," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) mused on the House floor just before that chamber voted 315-97 (with 20 members not voting) to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act without any changes for yet another year.

By now, you know the stakes — the tweaks that could have been made to guarantee that Patriot powers are used only against suspected terrorists or spies and to mandate continued reporting to ensure that we actually learn about current and future Patriot abuses. Many of these fixes were, in fact, included in prior iterations of Patriot reauthorization bills introduced in both the House and the Senate.

As Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) pointed out to her colleagues, "I think we are missing an opportunity. There are good ideas in this House about how to curb the abuses with national security letters, how to clarify that roving wiretaps are limited to a single identifiable target, and how to eliminate the lone wolf provision which has never been used and for which existing title III authority can suffice. Those ideas have been the subject of hearings in the Judiciary Committee, but they're not being debated on this floor . . . I think this is a real missed opportunity." [ Read more ... ]

U.S. Security Agencies Begging for a Cybersecurity "Cold War": Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)

So the U.S. security establishment is salivating at the prospect of a new cybersecurity "Cold War." In an over-the-top op-ed in Tuesday's Washington Post, Mike McConnell issues a declaration that we are "fighting a cyber war today" and compares it to the nuclear showdown with the Soviets. McConnell exemplifies the security establishment as much as anyone — former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), former Director of National Intelligence, and currently executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a private-sector refuge for former U.S. intelligence officials (and a company that stands to make large sums from consulting on cybersecurity). [ Read more ... ]

Deceptively simple Patriot Act extension - a giant blow: Via LibraryLaw Blog.

By now you've heard that the Patriot Act provisions that were due to sunset Feb. 28, 2010 have been extended until Feb. 28, 2011. It sounds deceptively simple, a mild one-year extension.

But it's not. It undoes months, no years of work to add a few checks and balances to better extension bills. I will write up a longer post very soon, but the thrust of it is that we are stuck with an unchanged Sect. 215, often called "the library records" provision, a broad authority that doesn't require particularized suspicion.

Far worse, to my mind, is what's NOT included in this extension. Small but important reforms to the National Security Letter (NSL) provisions were riding on more favorable extension bills. The NSL provisions do not sunset, and the momentum to reform them vanishes with the straight-up one-year sunset extension.

Read Original Article:(Via LibraryLaw Blog.)

Epic Fail in Congress: USA PATRIOT Act Renewed Without Any New Civil Liberties Protections: Via EFF.org Updates.

Yesterday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to renew three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, after the Senate abandoned the PATRIOT reform effort and approved the extension by a voice vote on Wednesday night.

Disappointingly, the government's dangerously broad authority to conduct roving wiretaps of unspecified or "John Doe" targets, to secretly wiretap of persons without any connection to terrorists or spies under the so-called "lone wolf" provision, and to secretly access a wide range of private business records without warrants under PATRIOT Section 215 were all renewed without any new checks and balances to prevent abuse. Despite months of vigorous debate, when PATRIOT renewal bills providing for greater oversight and accountability were approved by the Judiciary Committees of both the House and the Senate, Democratic leaders' push for reform fizzled in the face of staunch Republican opposition buoyed by recent hot-button events such as the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day and the shooting at Fort Hood. [ Read more ... ]

South Carolina Senate Should Reject Warrantless Search Bill Approved By House, Says ACLU South Carolina National Office: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

The South Carolina House on Thursday approved on its third reading Senate bill 191, which authorizes warrantless searches of juveniles and adults on probation and parole. The ACLU South Carolina National Office urges the Senate to vote no on this bill when it takes it up next week.

"There is no evidence supporting the concept that we can reduce recidivism by expanding police power to conduct warrantless searches of people's cars and possessions," said Victoria Middleton, Executive Director of the ACLU SC National Office. "The proposed expansion of police power would, in essence, create a category of citizens with no right to privacy – all those who are on probation or parole."

This bill would undermine the goals of omnibus criminal justice legislation (S 1154) recently proposed by the South Carolina Sentencing Reform Commission. [ Read more ... ]

Congress Drops the Ball on Upgrading Patriot Protections: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

We're sorry to say, but is anyone surprised that Congress has capitulated to post-underpants bomber fear-mongering and passed the three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act without so much as a debate?

Oh, you didn't hear about that?

Wednesday night, the Senate passed a straight one-year extension by voice vote, and last night, the House followed suit.

That’s right. No changes. Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, zero. (You get the picture.)

That leaves ordinary Americans like you and me without the civil liberties safeguards proposed by several bills last year. Both the House and Senate had bills that would have improved the Patriot Act. The Senate bill even had the support of the White House. But instead of passing the much-needed reforms, Congress: [ Read more ... ]

Lawmakers Punt Patriot Act to Obama: Via Threat Level.

The House and Senate are forwarding to President Barack Obama legislation reauthorizing three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act — despite heated debate among lawmakers the surveillance measure went too far.

The act, hastily adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, greatly expanded the government’s ability to spy on Americans in the name of national security. Three measures of the act were set to expire at the end of 2009, but lawmakers in December extended the deadline to the end of February in hopes of reaching a compromise.

But no deal was reached by the end of the new Feb. 28 deadline. Instead, both chambers ditched two competing measures and extended the Patriot Act for another year without any changes. The final package was sent to the president Thursday for his expected signature.

Lawmakers had taken the expiration as an opportunity to revisit a number of the act’s surveillance provisions, including elements of the Patriot Act that were not expiring. This included proposals to alter the standard by which so-called National Security Letters are issued. [ Read more ... ]

Democrats retreat on new privacy protections: Via The Washington Post .

Democrats have retreated from adding new privacy protections to the nation's primary counterterrorism law, stymied by Senate Republicans who argued the changes would weaken terror investigations.

The proposed protections were cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed - by voice vote without debate - a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

The House was prepared to approve the extension Thursday, dropping even more extensive privacy protections approved by the House Judiciary Committee. [ Read more ... ]

FBI Tracks Suspects' Cell Phones Without a Warrant: Via Newsweek.com .

Law enforcement is tracking Americans' cell phones in real time—without the benefit of a warrant.

But many federal magistrates—whose job is to sign off on search warrants and handle other routine court duties—were spooked by the requests. Some in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas balked. Prosecutors "were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device," said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. "And I started asking the U.S. Attorney's Office, 'What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?' "

Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama's Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government's relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. [ Read more ... ]

Copyright Undercover: ACTA & the Web: Via Internet Evolution - The Big Report .

Let's pause a moment to consider the nature of copyright, the Internet, and governance. Copyright law has historically been made by and for the entertainment industry's supply chain. Copyright rules were not envisioned as an adequate or desirable regulation-set for any other realm: We don't try to shoehorn labor law, finance, education, healthcare, election campaigns, or parenting matters into copyright.

But once you take those activities onto the Internet, copyright becomes the first line of regulation governing everything. It's impossible to do anything on the Internet without making copies (you made between 5 and 50 copies of this article just by following a link to it). And since copyright regulates copying, any rule that affects copyright will affect all those realms, too.

That's what makes ACTA's secrecy so troubling, even if you don't care about copyright, fair use, or other wonky subjects. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Can Search, Seize P2P Files Without Warrant: Via Threat Level.

The authorities do not need court warrants to view and download files trading on peer-to-peer networks, a federal appeals court says.

Wednesday’s 3-0 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned a Nevada man convicted of possessing child pornography as part of an FBI investigation. Defendant Charles Borowy claimed the Fourth Amendment required court authorization to search and seize his LimeWire files in 2007.

The San Francisco-based appeals court, however, cited the nation’s legal standard, reiterating that warrants are required if a search “violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.” (.pdf)

Borowy, the court noted, “was clearly aware that LimeWire was a file-sharing program that would allow the public at large to access files in his shared folder unless he took steps to avoid it.”

The defendant, however, claimed he had a reasonable expectation of privacy because he thought he had turned off LimeWire’s share feature. [ Read more ... ]

GPS Tracking: Turning Science Fiction Into Reality: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As a fan of the The Wire, I can find lots of plot twists and exciting scenes that illustrate the basic constitutional balance between the rights of individuals and the power of law enforcement. The Wire portrays police who follow the rules and those who don't as they wiretap, search, photograph and otherwise conduct their investigations into complex criminal cases.

In one episode, Detective Leander Snydor has followed a drug dealer to a house which might link him to other criminal relationships. Snydor skillfully walks past the dealer's car, fixes a GPS tracking system to the underside of the vehicle, and walks away with a whistle.

That might seem like smart cop work when aimed at an enormous, fictional drug ring in the mean streets of Baltimore. But GPS is no longer HBO fiction. In Madison, Wisconsin, where law enforcement agents used GPS to track someone suspected of violating a restraining order without first getting a warrant, it's very, very real. Unfortunately, according to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, we should let go of the expectation that police need permission to track our movements. [ Read more ... ]

EFF to Wisconsin: Just Say No to Warrantless GPS Tracking: Via EFF.org Updates.

ACLU National, ACLU of Wisconsin, and EFF have filed an amicus brief in the Wisconsin Supreme Court arguing that the law of that state prohibits police from installing a GPS device on you or your car without first getting a warrant from a judge. A growing number of state high courts have decided that their citizens should be protected from suspicionless GPS tracking, recognizing that uninterrupted around-the-clock surveillance is qualitatively different from ordinary police observations of a suspect. In the Wisconsin case, People v. Sveum, we ask the court to follow the example of Washington, New York, and Massachusetts and find that GPS tracking is a search that requires a warrant. EFF participated as amicus in the New York case, People v. Weaver, and is awaiting a decision under the federal Constitution in U.S. v. Jones, a GPS tracking case pending in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. [ Read more ... ]

EFF Fights Illegal Search of Cell Phone in Thursday Hearing: Via EFF.org Updates.

Redwood City, Calif. - On Thursday, February 18, at 9:00 a.m., the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a judge in Redwood City, California, to suppress evidence illegally gathered from an iPhone.

In People v. Taylor, police in Daly City, California, seized the suspect's phone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators searched through the data on the device -- including contacts, called phone numbers, emails, text messages, Internet search history, and photos -- without a search warrant. Police later obtained a search warrant for the phone, based in part on information gathered during the initial illegal search.

In Thursday's hearing, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann will ask the court to suppress the illegally gathered evidence and quash the warrant based on that improperly collected information. [ Read more ... ]

Film Premiere: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police: Via Cato Institute .

FILM PREMIERE
Friday, February 12, 2010 (rescheduled to a new date yet to be determined)
Cato Institute 
1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. 
Washington, D.C.

With comments from William "Billy" Murphy, Attorney and 10 Rules Narrator and Neill Franklin, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.

Editor: Due to the weather conditions, we are unable to hold the film premiere. The event will be rescheduled for a future date and new invitations will be sent. You can also check back here at cato.org for updates. [ Read more ... ]

British Court Orders Release Of Torture Evidence In Extraordinary Rendition Case: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

Ruling May Affect British Resident's Case In ACLU Lawsuit Against Boeing Subsidiary For Its Role In Unlawful Extraordinary Rendition Program 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union commended today's ruling by a British court that the British government must release evidence of torture in the case of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who was captured in Pakistan and detained in Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay as part of the Bush administration's extraordinary rendition program. While in detention, Mohamed was subjected to physical and psychological abuse by his captors. Upon his release, Mohamed sought documents from the British government that would confirm that U.K. officials were aware of and complicit in his abuse by U.S. forces. Today's ruling orders the disclosure of seven previously suppressed paragraphs from an earlier court ruling that summarize British government documents related to Mohamed's detention and torture while under the control of U.S. authorities. [ Read more ... ]

ACLU Sues Over Unconstitutional Airport Detention And Interrogation Of College Student Carrying Arabic Flashcards: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

Incident At Philadelphia Airport Highlights Misdirected Security Efforts, Says ACLU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

PHILADELPHIA – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania today filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pomona College student Nicholas George, who was abusively interrogated, handcuffed and detained for nearly five hours at the Philadelphia International Airport because of a set of English-Arabic flashcards he was carrying in connection with his college language studies.

"Arresting and restraining passengers who pose no threat to flight safety and are not breaking any law not only violates people's rights, but it won't make us any safer. It may actually make us less safe, by diverting vital resources and attention away from true security threats," said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Nick George was handcuffed, locked in a cell for hours and questioned about 9/11 simply because he has chosen to study Arabic, a language that is spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world. This sort of harassment of innocent travelers is a waste of time and a violation of the Constitution." [ Read more ... ]

Appeals Court Backs EFF Push for Telecom Lobbying Documents Disclosure: Via EFF.org Updates.

San Francisco - Today a federal appeals court rejected a government claim of "lobbyist privacy" to hide the identities of individuals who pressured Congress to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the government's warrantless electronic surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. As the court observed, "There is a clear public interest in public knowledge of the methods through which well-connected corporate lobbyists wield their influence."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been seeking records detailing the telecoms' campaign for retroactive legal immunity under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Telecom immunity was enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

"Today's ruling is an important one for government and corporate accountability," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "The court recognized that paid lobbyists trying to influence the government to advance their clients' interests can't hide behind privacy claims to keep their efforts secret." [ Read more ... ]

Court Keeps White House Spy Docs Secret: Via Threat Level.

A federal appellate panel on Tuesday blocked a court order requiring disclosure of e-mail between the White House, Justice Department, National Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — communications that paved the way for new spy legislation.

The 2008 messages were a precursor to legislation that year to kill litigation against the nation’s carriers for funneling Americans’ communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a California judge who ordered disclosure of those e-mails and the names of telco company lobbyists who pushed for the legislation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group in San Francisco, sought the e-mail and lobbyist information under a Freedom of Information Act claim. [ Read more ... ]

EFF Asks Court to Suppress Evidence Illegally Gathered From Password-Protected Phone: Via EFF.org Updates.

Our cell phones aren't just for calls anymore. They hold our address books, our calendars, our emails, and our grocery lists. They may even include things like a list of questions to ask your doctor, pictures of your girlfriend, or URLs of web sites you've visited. When can police search your phone and look at all this information?

That's the question that EFF is asking a court in California to consider. In People v. Taylor, police in Daly City, California seized a suspect's iPhone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators bypassed the password and searched through the data on the device without a search warrant. After the officers realized that the information was too extensive to write down, they finally obtained a warrant to search the phone. [ Read more ... ]

EFF Fights for Cell Phone Users' Privacy in Thursday Hearing: Via EFF.org Updates.

Philadelphia - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will be arguing this Thursday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia, urging the court to block a government attempt to seize telephone company records detailing a cell phone user's past locations without first getting a search warrant. [ Read more ... ]