Kevin Bankston writes: Wow, that was fast: little more than two weeks after EFF testified to a Senate subcommittee that federal electronic privacy law needs to be updated to protect against secret video surveillance just like it regulates electronic eavesdropping, Senator Arlen Specter has responded by introducing a bill to do just that. Specter, chairman…
Category: U.S.
Truth in Caller ID Act passes House (corrected)
The Associated Press reports that H.R. 1258, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010, passed the House today. The proposed law would make it: unlawful for any person within the United States, in connection with any real time voice communications service, regardless of the technology or network utilized, to cause any caller ID service…
Statement of Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice before the House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties concerning “Report by the Office of the Inspector General on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records”
The testimony, here, makes clear that the FBI misused and abused exigent letters. In many cases, there was no real emergency and in many cases where the FBI said that subpoenas had been sought, they had not been sought at all. Fine’s testimony also describes how the FBI engaged in other improper practices such as…
Some Thoughts on the Reply Brief in City of Ontario v. Quon
Orin Kerr writes: The Reply Brief in the Court’s only major Fourth Amendment case this term, the text-messaging case City of Ontario v. Quon, has now been filed and is available here. Here are a few thoughts on it. (1) The parties focus significant attention on the Stored Communications Act, somewhat to my surprise. The Stored…