Ben Palosaari reports: Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is sick of hearing about the super-scary Missouri program that sends citizens’ personal information to another super-scary federal database. He’s so sick of it, in fact, that he cracked just a little bit on Wednesday during a press conference. The bogus claims about the Department of Revenue scanning…
Category: U.S.
Surveillance Court’s Opinions Must Remain Secret, Feds Say
David Kravets reports: The President Barack Obama administration is informing a federal judge that if it’s forced to disclose a secret court opinion about the government illegally spying on Americans, the likely result could be “exceptionally grave and serious damage to the national security.” The statement came in response to a lawsuit demanding the administration…
Harvard to review privacy policies in wake of email search scandal
Jaikumar Vijayan reports that Harvard University will be reviewing and revamping its email privacy policies after a recent controversial search of 16 deans’ email to identify the source of a leak turned out to be more extensive than they had originally claimed: At Tuesday’s meeting, Harvard Dean Evelyn Hammond noted that two additional searches had…
ID Theft Case Uncovers New Snooping Gizmo
While a breach involving tax refund fraud would normally get posted to the companion blog, DataBreaches.net, here’s a case where a data breach and the investigators’ surveillance tools collide. Jamie Ross of Courthouse News reports: The federal government’s use of a “stingray” device to track down a suspected ID thief has become an issue in…