Jul 15
Jacob Sullum is one of America’s most gifted writers on civil liberties. His most recent column points out that federal police-state control freaks are (once again) seeking to ensure that all future federal laws governing computer technology be written so that the surveillance freaks in the federal government (the NSA, FBI, etc.) will always be …
Jul 11
by Dr. Roger I. Roots, founder, Lysander Spooner University I remember years ago after I graduated from law school, I applied for a job with the U.S. Census Bureau. I attended an initiation meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. At that meeting I recall a Census official telling applicants that as Census agents we would be …
Jul 02
The endless quest by governments to monitor, surveil and control all human life and activity continues. It went mostly unnoticed 10 years ago when the U.S. Congress enacted a “Real ID” law requiring that every state impose some form of biometric identifier in its driver-licensing. There was a minor popular backlash in state legislatures; then …
Jun 04
The New York Times is reporting today that the TSA has once again expanded its spying on Americans’ internet and email communications, despite the lapsing of the USA Patriot Act and a total lack of congressional authorization. The new spying apparently does have the approval of President Obama, who campaigned in 2008 that he would …
Jun 02
It has now come out that the FBI has been operating a fleet of small aircraft to monitor and surveil Americans’ movements and communication without warrants. The story is here.
Jun 01
Great USA Patriot Act theater as May turns into June 2015. U.S. Senator Rand Paul, arguing to allow the unconstitutional USA Patriot Act to expire, states that many people are hoping for new terrorist attacks on American soil, so that such attacks can be blamed on Rand Paul. The video and commentary are here. This …
Apr 01
About a month ago, federal prosecutors successfully prosecuted an internet entrepreneur for launching a lucrative anonymous cyber exchange known as “the Silk Road.” FBI agents supposedly worked to investigate and shut down the free-exchange web network for several years. Federal efforts against “the Silk Road” exchange were accompanied by a massive across-federal-agencies offensive promoting more …
Feb 28
February 27, 2015. In the immediate wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA is unconstitutionally intercepting, seizing and storing virtually every American email and phone record, there were many promises by congressional candidates and President Obama to stop the NSA’s mass surveillance. Now, months later, a federal court has again renewed an order allowing …
Feb 14
Exiled U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden recently spoke to an audience at Harvard University, via videofeed from Russia. The occasion was the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science’s “Data Privacy Symposium” on January 23, 2015. Professor Bruce Schneier joined Snowden for an enlightening discussion. Snowden pointed to published media reports showing that the NSA is …
