Encouraging news: both the ACLU and EFF say proposed amendments to the cybersecurity bill, S. 2105, address privacy concerns. Michelle Richardson of the ACLU writes that the proposed changes would: Ensure that companies who share cybersecurity information with the government give it directly to civilian agencies, and not to military agencies like the National Security…
Category: Laws
Regulation of facial recognition may be needed, US senator says
Grant Gross reports on yesterday’s hearing in the Senate: Congress may need to pass legislation that limits the way government agencies and private companies use facial recognition technology to identify people, a U.S. senator said Wednesday. The growing use of facial recognition technology raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns, said Sen. Al Franken, a…
EFF Challenges National Security Letter Statute in Landmark Lawsuit
Matt Zimmerman writes: Since the first national security letter statute was passed in 1986, the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of such letters seeking private telecommunications and financial records of Americans without any prior approval from courts. Indeed, for the period between 2003 and 2006 alone, almost 200,000 requests for private customer information were sought…
Dust off the proposal to revise ECPA
You can ‘t see it, but I generally stick out my tongue at stories or commentaries that talk about the “end of privacy” or “lessons learned.” But there’s an editorial in the NY Times that you might want to read as it attempts to breathe new life into a bill revising ECPA that had been…