“Online Privacy: Americans Want It, and They Want It Now. So Why Can’t They Get It?”
(ITworld | Dan Tynan | July 24, 2012)

A new survey by Truste claims 94 percent of people care deeply about online privacy. Unfortunately, none of them are in the online advertising industry.

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“Garret Keizer Looks At The State of Privacy”
(Vermont Public Radio Edition | Steve Zind |August 8, 2012)

Terrorism, technology and the Patriot Act are just three causes for a reduction in the level of privacy that Americans now enjoy. So have we willingly given abandoned our need and desire to maintain a certain level for privacy? Or has our interest just been temporarily relaxed in the post-9-11 digital age?

Author Garret Keizer’s new book “Privacy” looks at how we now define it and whether it has become obsolete. He discusses how views on privacy differ across social, political and cultural lines.

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“What Happens When Our Cellphones Can Predict Our Every Move?”
(Slate | Will Oremus | August 8, 2012)

Your cellphone knows where you’ve been. And new research shows it can take a pretty good guess at where you’re going next.

A team of British researchers has developed an algorithm that uses tracking data on people’s phones to predict where they’ll be in 24 hours. The average error: just 20 meters.

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“Appeals court OKs warrantless tracking”
(The Hill | Brendan Sasso | August 14, 2012)

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that police do not need a warrant to track the location of a suspect’s phone.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration did not violate the constitutional rights of Melvin Skinner when it collected his phone’s GPS data.

DEA agents tracked Skinner’s pay-as-you-go phone as he transported drugs between Arizona and Tennessee. They arrested him at a rest stop in Texas with a motor home filled with more than 1,100 pounds of marijuana.

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“Sixth Circuit: No Expectation of Privacy in Cell Phone GPS Data”
(Wall Street Journal | Joe Palazzolo | August 14, 2012)

Drug dealers, beware. Your pay-as-you-go phones probably have GPS. And, according to a federal appeals court in Cincinnati, police can track the signal they emit without a warrant.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration committed no Fourth Amendment violation in using a drug runner’s cellphone data to track his whereabouts.

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“Markey confronts law enforcement, DOJ over growing cellphone record requests”
(The Hill | Julie Ershadi | August 10, 2012)

After investigations revealed a startling number of law enforcement requests for private cellphone data in recent years, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday released a discussion draft of legislation that would limit such digital searches and seizures.

As co-chairman of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, Markey’s inquiry with nine major wireless carriers revealed that law enforcement officials at all levels of government made 1.3 million requests for user data from the companies in 2011.

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WIRED
Kim Zetter | July 18, 2012

Last year, when a telecommunications company received an ultra-secret demand letter from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers, the telecom took an extraordinary step — it challenged the underlying authority of the FBI’s National Security Letter, as well as the legitimacy of the gag order that came with it.

Both challenges are allowed under a federal law that governs NSLs, a power greatly expanded under the Patriot Act that allows the government to get detailed information on Americans’ finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and been reprimanded for abusing them — though almost none of the requests have been challenged by the recipients.

After the telecom challenged its NSL last year, the Justice Department took its own extraordinary measure: It sued the company, arguing in court documents that the company was violating the law by challenging its authority.

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cnet NEWS
By Declan McCullagh | December 14, 2010

Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access.

In case involving a penile-enhancement entrepreneur convicted of fraud and other crimes, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the practice of warrantless access to e-mail messages violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures.

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THE WASHINGTON POST
By Spencer S. Hsu | December 3, 2010

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In releasing 900 pages of documents, U.S. government agencies refused to say how many Americans’ telephone, e-mail or other communications have been intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – or FISA – Amendments Act of 2008, or to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said. Most of the documents were heavily redacted.

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