Rich Lord reports: A closely divided 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that the collection of DNA samples from people arrested — but not yet convicted — of crimes is constitutional, in an opinion released today. In a precedent-setting ruling, the appeals court rejected U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone’s 2009 order finding…
Category: U.S.
New privacy guidelines would give FBI leeway to abuse privacy
Frank Askin, who is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark, writes: Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed and President Gerald Ford signed the Federal Privacy Act. In an effort to end the abuses committed by the FBI against anti-war and civil rights activists that director J. Edgar…
DOJ takes swipe at EFF over encryption passphrases
Declan McCullagh reports: The U.S. Department of Justice took a thinly veiled swipe at an online civil liberties group that’s arguing a Colorado woman can’t be forced to decrypt her laptop for police inspection. In a legal brief filed yesterday in what is likely to be a precedent-setting case, the Justice Department claimed that the…
Wyden and Udall Call for Informed Debate of Domestic Surveillance Law
The following press release was issued by Senator Ron Wyden on July 14: Congress has until late 2012 to extend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008’s expiring new authorities and U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Col.) say Congress should use the time to thoroughly consider how the law has been interpreted and implemented. In a letter…