Jacqui Cheng reports: US courts have historically looked on anonymous bloggers and commenters with a sympathetic eye, but there are exceptions. A Tennessee judge denied a blogger’s motion to quash a subpoena to reveal his identity last week, and he also denied a motion to dismiss the case. With few other options available to him…
Category: U.S.
Privacy, free speech, and the PATRIOT Act: First and Fourth Amendment limits on national security letters
Patrick P. Garlinger has a Note in the October issue of the New York University Law Review. The abstract is: Congress’s passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11 expanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) information-gathering authority to issue national security letters (NSL). Without any judicial review, the FBI issues NSLs to telecommunications providers to…
Editorial: Privacy and the Patriot Act
In the aftermath of 9/11, legislators cut legal corners to protect the nation. Congress should amend that now by revising certain expiring provisions of the law. Along with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the Bush administration’s illegal eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, the USA Patriot Act came to symbolize the excesses of the post-9/11 war…
DHS information-sharing initiative stalls due to privacy concerns
Jill R. Aitoro reports: A proposed Homeland Security Department information-sharing initiative faces ongoing funding challenges, due to congressional concerns over privacy. For the third year in a row, Congress as part of the Homeland Security spending bill prohibited DHS from using appropriated funds to stand up the National Immigration Information Sharing Operation. To start the…