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…
Category: U.S.
Article: The Fourth Amendment in a World Without Privacy
Omer Tene points us to an article by Paul Ohm, “The Fourth Amendment in a World Without Privacy.” The article was published in Mississippi Law Journal, Vol. 81, No. 5, p. 1309, 2012. Here’s the Abstract: This Article explores the relationship between private and public surveillance. Every year, companies spend millions of dollars developing new…
ACLU Files Brief Opposing Warrantless GPS Searches
Andrew Crocker writes: In 2010, the FBI attached a GPS device to the car of a man named Fred Robinson and continuously monitored his whereabouts for nearly two months—all without getting a warrant. Now Robinson is on trial, and on Friday, the ACLU and its affiliate, the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, filed an amicus brief in his…
Coming up this week in the Senate: What Facial Recognition Technology Means for Privacy and Civil Liberties
I won’t be online much Wednesday morning, but wanted to note this upcoming hearing: “What Facial Recognition Technology Means for Privacy and Civil Liberties” Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law DATE: July 18, 2012 TIME: 02:30 PM ROOM: Dirksen 226 OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST: July 11, 2012 NOTICE OF…