According to the Guardian and reports this morning, Government officials today have announced that they intend to put in place a strong clamp down on illicit file sharing to ‘support’ record and film industries they wrongly believe are threatened. This is the wrong moment to go in this direction. Online music revenues are going up,…
Category: Govt
ACLU seeks records about laptop searches at the border
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today demanding records about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)’s policy of searching travelers’ laptops without suspicion of wrongdoing. The lawsuit was filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to learn how CBP’s policy, issued last year, has impacted the civil liberties of travelers during…
Tentative settlement between govt and FL on sale of DMV records
The Associated Press is reporting that Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to pay the federal government $1.5 million to settle charges that the state violated motorists’ privacy by selling their personal information in motor vehicle records to businesses during the period June 1, 2000 to September 30, 2004. The legislature…
Op-Ed on Lawless Surveillance by Cindy Cohn
Hugh D’Andrade of EFF points us to an opinion piece their legal director, Cindy Cohen, posted it to the blog of the American Constitution Society. The piece points out that the Obama Administration has embraced two of the most radical positions taken by the Bush Administration — that the Executive Branch need not follow the…