Providers get many “emergency” requests for user info. How many, we don’t really know, although some providers have recently become more transparent about how many requests they receive each month. But whether a situation is an “emergency” or not may depend on how imminent the threat is. Does someone tweeting a death threat from Florida…
Category: U.S.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Reverses Al-Haramain
Sadly, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the decision in Al-Haramain, the only suit against the government’s Terrorist Surveillance Program that had prevailed. The reversal was based on the government’s claim that FISA’s civil remedies language did not trump sovereign immunity. In their opinion, the court took special pains to respond to the…
Bad News On Warrantless GPS Tracking
Catherine Crump writes: Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a disappointing but fortunately narrow decision in a case involving warrantless tracking of a vehicle with a GPS device. The three-judge panel refused to exclude GPS tracking evidence under what’s known as the “good faith” exception, ruling that when the tracking took place,…
Congress Resists Efforts to Reduce Secrecy
Steven Aftergood writes: Ordinarily, critics of government secrecy focus their ire — and their strategy — on executive branch agencies that refuse to release certain national security-related information to the public. But to an extent that is not widely recognized or understood, it is Congress that has erected barriers to greater openness and has blocked…