According to at least one federal judge, warrantless bulk collection of phone data belonging to you and every American fits nicely within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment. In other words, this federal government employee agrees with the federal government that it has the power and authority to collect your phone records, in mass, with…
It seems more and more apparent that all of the people waiting for federal courts to protect their privacy will decay into cobweb covered skeletons before the courts actually limit the power of the federal surveillance state. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected what Reuters called “a test case on privacy in the digital…
Federal courts once again failed to protect Americans from ubiquitous NSA spying. On Friday, US District Judge T.S. Ellis III dismissed a suit against the NSA brought by the ACLU on behalf of Wikimedia, the parent company that publishes Wikipedia. The judge held the company lacks standing to sue because it cannot definitively prove the…
BOSTON (Oct. 9, 2015) – A privacy bill that would prohibit collection of electronic data from communication service providers without a warrant in most cases, and that would effectively block an NSA data sharing program, continues to work its way through the Massachusetts legislature. Last spring, a bipartisan coalition of 36 legislators introduced Senate Bill…
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Oct. 8, 2015) – Today, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law not just one, but two bills that represent some of the strongest privacy protections in the country. The new laws work together to protect privacy from some of the worst spying programs on the state level, but also take on a…
No. This is not the opening sentence of an Onion article. This actually happened.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Sept. 8, 2015) – Today, the California Assembly gave final approval to a bill that would protect electronic privacy against warrantless intrusion, sending it to Gov. Brown’s desk for a signature. It works in conjunction with a 2nd bill passed last week to help end bulk spying by “stingrays.” If ultimately signed into…
Recently, AllahPundit over at HotAir.com ripped on Rand Paul for tweeting that he would shut down the NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah, but his criticism misses the mark on a few important points. Rand swung by Bluffdale on Aug. 29 and tweeted out a photo of himself standing in front of the infamous NSA…
WASHINGTON (Aug. 30, 2015) – On Friday, a federal court overturned a lower court decision and quashed a lawsuit brought against an NSA bulk surveillance program by a conservative activist and civil-liberties groups. The ruling demonstrates the near impossibility of stopping the NSA through legal action. A three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel determined…
The dust-up between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over presidential fidelity to the Constitution — particularly the Fourth Amendment — was the most illuminating two minutes of the Republican debate last week. It is a well-regarded historical truism that the Fourth Amendment was written by victims of government snooping, the…