Older Posts by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
Remember the good old days, when the FBI used tools such as Carnivore, the device that sifted through email traffic at ISPs. The FBI renamed the device DCS-1000 to sound less ominous and mean, but the name Carnivore stuck. Later on, Carnivore no longer became necessary, as ISPs could deliver the goods to the FBI […]
From the Washington Post: The government’s terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year. But only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list’s effectiveness. A range of state, local and federal […]
Congress recently passed a broad authorization of the NSA surveillance program, bowing to pressure from President Bush. From the New York Times: Racing to complete a final rush of legislation before a scheduled monthlong break, the House voted 227 to 183 to endorse a measure the Bush administration said was needed to keep pace with […]
In the August issue of the ABA Journal, Scott Turow calls for an end to the billable hour [link no longer available]:
Britain has implemented an extensive video surveillance system called Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), with over 4 million cameras watching over public areas. The purpose of the cameras is for officials in monitoring centers to watch for suspicious behavior and dispatch the police if they see crime developing. CCTV footage has also been used to investigate […]
As there are tons of new scholarly works in the privacy law field each year, I thought it might be useful to point out a few books and articles that I found particularly interesting and useful from the past year. This post will cover only those books and articles published in 2006.
A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Free Flow of Information Act, endeavors to create a federal privilege for journalists — a shield from being forced to identify anonymous sources. According to a Washington Post editorial in support of the bill:
A while back, it was reported that the Bush Administration authorized the NSA to engage in warrantless wiretapping. Based on the information released so far, the program was likely illegal. Now, it appears that the warrantless wiretapping program (more innocuously renamed the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” or “TSP”) is just the tip of a larger iceberg.
From the New York Times: Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers.
Every term, commentators attempt to predict the outcomes of the cases in the Supreme Court docket. The statistics, however, suggest that the betting person’s answer should be reversal.