Est. Oct. 3, 2010
Source: Wired. The development surfaced as Google publicly announced that more than two-thirds of the user data Google forwards to government agencies across the United States is handed over without a probable-cause warrant.
Source: Huffington Post. Law enforcement is asking Google for its users’ data more than ever — and most of the time, they aren’t getting a warrant first.
Source: The New American. “The Justice Department’s unfortunate decision leaves Americans with no clear understanding of when we will be subjected to tracking — possibly for months at a time — or whether the government will first get a warrant,” writes ACLU attorney Catherine Crump. “Privacy law needs to keep up with technology, but how can that happen if the government won’t even tell us what its policies are?”
Source: NYT. The labor board’s rulings, which apply to virtually all private sector employers, generally tell companies that it is illegal to adopt broad social media policies — like bans on “disrespectful” comments or posts that criticize the employer — if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits or working conditions. But the agency has also found that it is permissible for employers to act against a lone worker ranting on the Internet.
Source: NYT. The genetic data posted online seemed perfectly anonymous — strings of billions of DNA letters from more than 1,000 people. But all it took was some clever sleuthing on the Web for a genetics researcher to identify five people he randomly selected from the study group. Not only that, he found their entire families, even though the relatives had no part in the study — identifying nearly 50 people.
Source: ACLU. Two key memos outlining the Justice Department’s views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology are being kept secret by the department despite a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU to force their release.
Source: HuffPo. As President Barack Obama begins his second term next week, the administration’s drone war is having a media moment, with an uptick in reported strikes, increased calls for accountability on cable news and op-ed pages, and renewed questions from lawmakers about the program’s legal rationale in light of counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan’s nomination to the post of CIA director.
Source: Herald-Tribune.com. Helicopters have running lights and make noise. If one hovers over your backyard pool because the pilot wants to check out a sunbather’s all-over tan, that aircraft is easily noticed. Not so with smaller drones powered by nearly silent, low-power motors. And what’s most chilling about drone technology isn’t just what’s on the market already, but what will be soon.
Source: Bloomberg. A federal judge blocked the New York City Police Department from making unlawful stops outside privately owned buildings in the Bronx, ruling the department’s “stop and frisk” practices violate the U.S. Constitution.
Source: NY Daily News. A Manhattan Federal Court judge has ordered police stop making trespass stops outside private residential buildings immediately. The tactic was decried by some as infringing on civil liberties.
