Ellen Nakashima reports: For six years, Nicholas Merrill has lived in a surreal world of half-truths, where he could not tell even his fiancee, his closest friends or his mother that he is “John Doe” — the man who filed the first-ever court challenge to the FBI’s ability to obtain personal data on Americans without…
Category: U.S.
Consumer Watchdog Asks FBI, DEA to Explain Use of Google Earth
The FBI and DEA are now making extensive use of Google Earth, according to federal spending records. Consumer Watchdog is filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the agencies today to determine how the Internet giant’s digital mapping technology is being used for domestic surveillance, including whether it is used for racial profiling or other…
Lawyers Seek Order Forcing U.S. to Destroy NSA Wiretapping Data
Maria Dinzeo reports: The Center for Constitutional Rights has asked a federal judge to order the government to destroy or quarantine all surveillance records from the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. “It requires little imagination to see the continued risk of harm posed by the profoundly intrusive surveillance the NSA carried out with abandon…
New Minnesota law gives police warrantless access to cellphone location data
A new law went into effect in Minnesota today. As reported by Mark Sommerhauser: A new law requires cell-phone companies to reveal call-location information if asked by law enforcement to do so in an emergency. The law came from the Kelsey Smith Act, named for a missing Kansas teen whose body was found after a…