“Following EFF’s victory in a four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the government released an opinion, written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2010, that concluded that Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans’ phone records—does have a limit: census date The Commerce Department… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Patriot Act
Council of Europe Report on Mass Surveillance
Provisional version – Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights – Mass surveillance. Rapporteur: Mr Pieter Omtzigt, Netherlands, Group of the European People’s Party. “Our freedom is built on what others do not know of our existences” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. A Draft resolution 1. The Parliamentary Assembly is deeply concerned about mass surveillance practices disclosed since… Continue Reading
EFF Joins Coalition to Launch Canarywatch.org
“Warrant canary” is a colloquial term for a regularly published statement that an internet service provider (ISP) has not received legal process that it would be prohibited from saying it had received, such as a national security letter. The term “warrant canary” is a reference to the canaries used to provide warnings in coalmines, which… Continue Reading
Privacy Board Renews Call for President Obama to End Bulk Collection
EPIC – “The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released a report on prior recommendations regarding the NSA’s domestic and global surveillance programs. The Board stated that the Obama Administration has failed to end the domestic telephone collection program. The Board stated, “the Administration can end the bulk telephone records program at any time, without… Continue Reading
Guardian – WikiLeaks demands answers after Google hands staff emails to US government
Ed Pilkington and Dominic Rushe: “Google took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the US government, under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge. WikiLeaks has written to Google’s executive chairman,… Continue Reading
The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle
Spiegel Online – The NSA’s mass surveillance is just the beginning. Documents from Edward Snowden show that the intelligence agency is arming America for future digital wars — a struggle for control of the Internet that is already well underway, by Jacob Appelbaum, Aaron Gibson, Claudio Guarnieri, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Leif Ryge,… Continue Reading
National Academy of Sciences Releases Report – Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence
James R. Clapper – Director of National Intelligence” “On January 17, 2014, the President, through Presidential Policy Directive 28, directed my office to assess “the feasibility of creating software that would allow the Intelligence Community more easily to conduct targeted information acquisition rather than bulk collection.” In order to fulfill this direction, I asked the National Academy… Continue Reading
CIA Releases Redacted Report on Surveillance of Congress
“Several months after EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency, the agency has released the Inspector General’s report on the agency’s surveillance of Congress. The Inspector General launched an investigation after the Senate accused the CIA of improperly accessing the computers of Senate staff who were investigating CIA torture… Continue Reading
Review of the FBI’s Activities Under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008
A Review of the FBI’s Activities Under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, September 2012 (January 9, 2015 version) — Executive Summary | Full Report/Redacted Continue Reading
DOJ IG Report on FBI Access to NSA Surveillance Data
“U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation access to overseas surveillance collected by sister organization the National Security Agency has expanded in recent years, with the law enforcement agency gaining access to collected but unprocessed data in 2009, according to a report released by the government. The FBI’s access to email and other data collected from overseas targets… Continue Reading
EPIC Urges Congress to Hold Hearing on FBI Database
“In a letter to Senators Grassley and Leahy, EPIC has urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the FBI’s “Next Generation Identification” program. NGI is the most extensive biometric database in the world and raises many privacy risks. In a recent FOIA case, EPIC v. FBI, EPIC obtained documents which show that the FBI accepted… Continue Reading
Half of online Americans don’t know what a privacy policy is
Pew – Aaron Smith – What Is a Privacy Policy: Research by “Joseph Turow [who studies digital marketing and privacy issues at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication] …also suggests that ordinary users don’t fully understand the scope of the data that is being collected on them — or how small amounts of data can… Continue Reading
