Over on Politico, Josh Gerstein writes: President Barack Obama’s administration is escalating a legal showdown which has the Justice Department defending official secrecy and executive power with arguments more associated with former Vice President Dick Cheney than the White House’s newest occupants. On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department filed an appeal and a request for…
Category: Surveillance
Feds ask appeals court to stay drug decision
USA Today has a story by Ronald Blum of the Associated Press reporting that federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to stay its decision [pdf] that government agents illegally seized the drug testing records and samples of more than 100 major league baseball players (see this post for previous coverage of the decision and…
Eavesdropping on Internet
Imagine an invisible person is behind you watching all you do on the Internet, like searching, chatting and file downloading. Horrible as it may sound, this was what the National Intelligence Service allegedly did to a pro-unification civic group leader. As if that was not enough, the NIS agents wiretapped all communications in cyberspace, not…
DHS: All your laptops are belong to us
As a follow-up to the position of the Department of Homeland Security on searching laptops at the border (reported here last week), Jaikumar Vijayan of Computerworld reports: The Department of Homeland Security’s Privacy Office has approved the controversial searches, copying and retention of laptops, PDAs, and other digital devices without cause at U.S. borders. Travelers…