Privacy groups rip terrorist risk-rating plan
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Privacy groups assailed a federal data mining program that assigns secret terrorist ratings to millions of U.S. citizens and foreigners traveling to and from the U.S.
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By Anonymous  HOMELAND SECURITY  What would happen to Internet reliability in the U.S.
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Several members of a government board appointed to guard privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror say they're impressed with the protections built into the Bush administration's electronic eavesdropping program.
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Civil liberties groups urge Congress to reject telecom immunity for a U.S. surveillance program.
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On Saturday, a London-based privacy advocacy group, Privacy International, released the preliminary results of a six-month survey of Internet privacy practices. The organization evaluated 23 Internet companies on several criteria, and assigned each company a color-coded privacy assessment, ranging from green (&quot;privacy-friendly and privacy enhancing&quot;) to black (&quot;comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy&quot;).
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The pilot programs ignored privacy safeguards, says a recent Homeland Security report.
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SEC launches software tool to provide info on companies doing business in terrorist states.
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Group says popular technique threatens U.S. security by sidelining other approaches more suited to decryption and the like.
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A coalition of privacy groups asked the government to set up a mandatory do-not-track list for the Internet.
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By BOB JOHNSON  MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.
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'Legislative equivalent of breaking and entering' The obsessive secrecy provided by the Patriot Act for certain domestic surveillance activities suffered a severe blow yesterday, as a federal judge struck down provisions of the Act that provided for expansive and secretive use of so-called "National Security Letters" (NSL) to obtain phone and email records.â¦
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Cutting-edge data mining and other intelligence tools could redefine privacy as we know it. A News.com special report.
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and antiwar organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists.
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Blog: The move comes in response to privacy gripes from advocacy groups about the practices companies like Microsoft use to target ads to consumers.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. district judge has struck down a part of the anti-terrorism-inspired Patriot Act that requires telephone and Internet service providers to turn over records to the government without telling customers. Judge Victor Marrero, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled Thursday that the Patriot Act provision that allows the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation toÂ obtain ISP and telecom subscribers' billing, calling, and Web surfing recordsÂ without court approval violates the U.S. Constitution. Marrero ordered the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to stop issuing so-calledÂ national security letters, or NSLs, requiring ISPs to turn over subscriber records. The NSL program prohibited ISPs from telling customers that they were being investigated. Marrero delayed the order pending a DOJ appeal of his decision. The NSL program under the Patriot Act violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a restraint on free speech, the judge said in his 107-page order. The program also bypasses judicial oversight of the requests, Marrero said. The NSL program could allow the FBI to unmask the identity of Internet users posting anonymous comments, obtain all of the e-mail messages of an Internet user, and even find out all the Web sites a user has visited, Marrero said. "In light of the seriousness of the potential intrusion into the individual's personal affairs and the significant possibility of a chilling effect on speech and association -- particularly of expression that is critical of the government or its policies -- a compelling need exists to ensure that the use of NSLs is subject to the safeguards of public accountability," the judge wrote. The DOJ is reviewing the decision and considering its options, a spokesman said. The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit against the DOJ and FBI, praised Marrero's decision. "Courts have a constitutionally mandated role to play when national security policies infringe on First Amendment rights," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said in a statement. "A statute that allows the FBI to silence people without meaningful judicial oversight is unconstitutional." The U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act less than two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Congress, under pressure from President George Bush, reauthorized the Patriot Act in 2006. Many civil liberties groups have criticized the law for being overly broad and targeting innocent U.S. residents. Marrero in 2004 ruled that the NSL provisions of the Patriot Act violated the Constitution because they amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. After the 2006 revisions to the Patriot Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sent the case back to Marrero for a ruling on whether the NSL provisions were still unconstitutional. The FBI's use of the NSL program, which existed before the Patriot Act, has ballooned since the law was passed, Marrero noted. In 2000, the FBI issued about 8,500 NSL requests, and the number of requests rose to 56,000 in 2004, he wrote. The NSL program's "most troubling" aspect, Marrero wrote, is that it attempts to bypass judicial review of law enforcement requests. The program "reflects an attempt by Congress and the executive to infringe upon the judiciary's designated role under the Constitution," he wrote.
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Working group generates little real agreement on how or even whether to implement proposed privacy reforms.
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The Bush administration's new privacy guidelines fail to protect the rights of Americans, and the board created to guarantee those rights lacks the independence to do the job, civil libertarians told the White House privacy board yesterday at its first public forum.