Posts about the National Security Agency (NSA) by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a data security training company.
The passing of Justice Antonin Scalia has brought a wave of speculation about current and future U.S. Supreme Court cases. One area where there might be a significant impact will be the 4th Amendment, which provides the primary constitutional protection against government surveillance and information gathering. A new justice could usher in a dramatic expansion […]
I’ve long been saying that privacy need not be sacrificed for security, and it makes me delighted to see that public attitudes are aligning with this view. A Pew survey revealed that a “majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts.” The anti-NSA […]
I am pleased to announce that Alan Westin’s classic work, Privacy and Freedom, is now back in print. Originally published in 1967, Privacy and Freedom had an enormous influence in shaping the discourse on privacy in the 1970s and beyond, when the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) were developed. The book contains a short introduction […]
By Daniel J. Solove In a profound ruling with enormous implications,the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has declared the Safe Harbor Arrangement to be invalid. [Press Release] [Opinion] The Safe Harbor Arrangement The Safe Harbor Arrangement has been in place since 2000, and it is a central means by which data about EU citizens can […]
by Daniel J. Solove One of the most well-known classic privacy books is George Orwell’s 1984, and it has been published in countless editions around the world. I enjoy collecting things, and I’ve gathered up more than 50 book covers of various editions of the novel. I find it interesting how various artists and designers […]
By Daniel J. Solove The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit just issued a 97-page ruling limiting the NSA’s power to sweep up data about people’s phone calls. The case is ACLU v. Clapper, and the court held that the USA Patriot Act Section 215 doesn’t authorize the kind of sweeping collection of […]
The 9th Circuit has decided a pair of cases involving the NSA Surveillance Program. In Jewel v. NSA, the 9th Circuit concluded that plaintiffs had standing to raise constitutional challenges against NSA telephone surveillance:
ABC News reports about a new scandal arising out of the NSA Surveillance Program: Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at […]
Remember when, about five years ago, a program called Total Information Awareness (TIA) came to light. TIA was a plan to create a massive government database of personal information which would then be data mined. The program led to a public outcry, with William Safire writing a blistering op-ed in the New York Times attacking […]
For the past several months, Congress has been wrangling over how to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow for the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The fact that the NSA surveillance program was clearly illegal — even under charitable creative dubiously-plausible fantastical interpretations of the law — seems to have quickly been forgotten. The […]