From The Hill:
A handful of Democratic senators are promoting legislation to repeal immunity for telecommunications firms that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warantless wiretapping program.
Congress voted last year to provide “retroactive immunity” to any companies participating in the controversial program. But with a more sizable majority, some Democrats are pushing to repeal that.
Sen. Chris Dodd [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Big Brother's Shadow category.
Dodd pens telecom immunity repeal
Newly Declassified Files Detail Massive FBI Data-Mining Project
From Wired:
A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.
EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
On December 31, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that broadly expanded government surveillance authority in the wake of 9/11 are set to expire. The Obama Administration made clear in a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy that although the Justice Department supports reauthorization of those [...]
Obama Embraces Patriot Act; As Senator, He Was Skeptical
From The Atlantic:
The Obama administration wants Congress to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the 2001 USA Patriot Act scheduled to expire later this year, but said in a letter to two senators that it is open to adding (unspecified) civil liberties safeguards. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the sunsetting provisions next [...]
U.S. Justice Dept wants surveillance methods extended
From the Washington Post:
The Obama administration has asked the U.S. Congress to extend three surveillance techniques for intelligence agencies tracking suspected militants that expire this year, according to a letter to lawmakers.
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
From cnet:
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET [...]
“Librarians shushed no more:” The USA PATRIOT Act, the “Connecticut Four,” and professional ethics
From the abstract:
Upholding user privacy is one of the highest ethical principles in librarianship and is included in most national library associations’ ethical codes. This paper is an account of how the Library Connection, a Connecticut USA consortium, displayed extraordinary courage to protect their users’ privacy on the Internet. To date, the Library Connection’s successful [...]
Warrants Required: EFF and Google’s Big Disagreement about Google Book Search
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The central question in the privacy debate that EFF and our partners at the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley have been having with Google about Google Book Search is whether this exciting new digital library/bookstore is going to maintain the [...]
Public spied on 1,500 times a day in UK, study finds
From the Washington Post:
Police, councils and the intelligence services made more than 500,000 requests to access private emails and telephone records in the UK last year, according to an annual surveillance report.
The figures, compiled by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Paul Kennedy, found that about 1,500 surveillance requests were made every day in Britain.
That is [...]
Web-based mail exempt from data retention
From The Sunday Business Post:
Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail users will be exempt from the government’s new telecoms surveillance bill, according to industry experts.
The Retention of Data Bill, published by the Minister for Justice to combat serious criminal offences, compels internet and telephone operators to retain customer data on calls, texts and e-mails for up [...]