“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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ALA OIF BLOG
Jonathan Kelley | March 20, 2012

Updated information on news affecting intellectual freedom, censorship, privacy, access to information, and more.

WIRED
David Kravets | December 29, 2011

Online civil liberties groups were thrilled in May when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the head of the powerful Judiciary Committee, announced legislation requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain Americans’ e-mail and other content stored in the cloud.

But, despite the backing of a coalition of powerful tech companies, the bill to amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was dead on arrival, never even getting a hearing before the committee Leahy heads.

In contrast, another proposal sailed through Leahy’s committee, less than two weeks after Leahy and others floated it at about the same time as his ECPA reform measure. That bill, known as the Protect IP Act, was anti-piracy legislation long sought by Hollywood that dramatically increased the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”

This dichotomy played itself out over and again in 2011, as lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans alike — turned a blind eye to important civil liberties issues, including Patriot Act reform, and instead paid heed to the content industry’s desires to stop piracy.

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NPR
Carrie Johnson | October 26, 2011

Ten years ago, on Oct. 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Act.

Congress overwhelmingly passed the law only weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s designed to give the FBI more power to collect information in cases that involve national security.

But in the decade since then, civil liberties groups have raised concerns about whether the Patriot Act goes too far by scooping up too much data and violating people’s rights to privacy.

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See also:
Resolution on the Reauthorization of Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act (2009)
Resolution on the Use and Abuse of National Security Letters (2007)
Resolution on the USA Patriot Act and Related Measuares that Infringe on the Rights of Library Users (2003)