Peter Bacqué reports: Using Department of Motor Vehicles records as its core, the state government is quietly developing a master identity database of Virginia residents for use by state agencies. The state enterprise record – the master electronic ID database – would help agencies ferret out fraud and help residents do business electronically with the state more…
Category: Govt
Documents leaked by Snowden reveal NSA’s attempts to connect the dots using our email and phone contacts
James Risen and Laura Poitras report: Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials. […] The…
U.S. Misses Deadline in NSA ‘Dragnet’ Case, Has Excuse
Nick DiVito reports: The federal government wants more time to defend its massive domestic surveillance program against the ACLU’s claims that it is an unconstitutional “dragnet” on the phone records of every American. A brief opposing the ACLU’s demands for a preliminary injunction was due Thursday, but the government said in a letter that night to U.S….
After NSA Court Hearing, Government Must Unseal Documents by December 20
Mark Jaycox writes a welcome government transparency smackdown by the courts: A federal judge ordered the government to unseal more documents concerning the NSA spying programs by December 20, 2013. The judge issued the ruling in EFF’s lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, which began in 2008 over the NSA spying program initiated by the Bush Administration, which…