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…
Category: U.S.
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…
An American Quilt of Privacy Laws, Incomplete
Natasha Singer discusses a recent blog post by Peter Fleischer, mentioned previously on this blog, We Need a Better, Simpler Narrative of US Privacy Laws: If the American side now appears to be losing the public relations battle, as Mr. Fleischer suggested, it may be because Europe has forged ahead with its project to modernize data…