Via Washington Post (February 4, 2010):
The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Related link for the privacy conscious individuals out there: Panpopticlick – a new site from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Electronic Frontier Foundation Press Release (January 23, 2010):
A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails.
“We’re deeply disappointed in the judge’s ruling,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America’s system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that.”
In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a “particularized injury” but instead a “generalized grievance” because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.
“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”
Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit that’s currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Via WCSH (January 18, 2010):
Some Maine privacy advocates are criticizing a new surveillance system used by South Portland police that automatically reads license plates.
The Portland Press Herald says South Portland is apparently Maine’s first community to use automated license plate recognition to target traffic scofflaws, people wanted on warrants and other offenders.
Cameras on a cruiser takes pictures of license plans and runs the numbers through the database of the National Crime Information Center.
South Portland police Lt. Frank Clark says the technology can be used to detect stolen vehicles and help find missing people.
Shenna Bellows of the Maine Civil Liberties Union says the surveillance system undermines the fundamental right to be left alone.