Today, Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), accompanied by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dean Heller (R-NV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Al Franken (D-MN), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), introduced a bill that would put an end to the “secret law” governing controversial government surveillance programs. This bill would require the Attorney…
Category: U.S.
Does the Fourth Amendment regulate the NSA’s analysis of call records? The FISC might have ruled it does.
Babak Siavoshy has this commentary on Concurring Opinions: A striking (and underreported) feature of the NSA’s recently-revealed surveillance programs is the government’s practice of seeking court orders for theanalysis and querying of telephony metadata acquired under the program. As Orin Kerr pointed out last week, the DNI director’s statement about the NSA programs states that a reasonable suspicion standard governs government “queries”…
Dutch security service has received information via PRISM: Telegraaf
Dutch security service AIVD has also received information on email and social media traffic via US spy system PRISM, the Telegraaf reports on Tuesday. If the AIVD lists an American address as suspicious, it is supplied all the information within five minutes, a source told the paper. The source worked for the department which monitored…
Tech Companies Tread Lightly in Statements on U.S. Spying
One of the many issues in the wake of NSA disclosures last week is whether large companies have been lying to consumers about the extent to which they protect our privacy. Andrew Ross Sorkin reports on that in the NY Times: “They are in a very difficult position,” said Thomas A. Sporkin, a former S.E.C….