Posts about the National Security Agency (NSA) by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a data security training company.
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 […]
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.
EFF has obtained a big bunch of documents from the FBI via the Freedom of Information Act pertaining to its surveillance abuses. From the EFF announcement:
In an earlier post, I discussed some of the constitutional issues involved in ACLU v. NSA, –F.3d — (6th Cir. 2007). In this case, a panel from the 6th Circuit concluded that the ACLU and other plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). The program is […]
The CIA has recently released about 700 pages of previously-classified documents, some of which reveal abuses in the name of national security. The CIA calls these documents the “family jewels.” The documents were created in connection with a report of CIA abuses for its former director, James Schlesinger. According to a BBC article:
Several years ago, the Department of Defense began developing a program called Total Information Awareness, a massive data mining project analyzing personal information on every citizen of the United States. After a series of blistering op-eds and strong negative public reaction, the Senate voted to stop all funding for the program.
Typically, when we think of the constitutional criminal procedure that regulates government information gathering, we think of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But many government investigations involve collecting information about speech, association, religion, and the consumption of ideas. The NSA surveillance of telephone calls, for example, involves speech. National Security Letters can be used to […]
At Balkinization, Mark Graber posts an email from Princeton Professor Walter Murphy, who writes about his ordeal over being on an airline screening list:
Jack Balkin has some insightful analysis of the Senator Specter’s NSA Bill over at Balkinization: