Posts about Surveillance by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
According to the a DOJ investigation, the FBI has violated the law on several occasions in connection with the issuance of National Security Letters (NSLs). A NSL is a demand letter issued to a particular entity or organization to turn over various record and data pertaining to individuals. They do not require probable cause, a warrant, […]
Earlier today, a federal district judge struck down the Bush Administration’s NSA surveillance program which involved intercepting international electronic communications without a warrant. The opinion is available here. I have not had time to read the opinion carefully yet, but I am especially intrigued by the court’s use of the First Amendment as one of the […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit recently upheld New York City’s program of random searches at subways. The case is McWade v. Kelly, No. 05 6754 CV (2d Cir. 2006). The program was initiated after the London subway bombing. Back in December, 2005, a federal district court upheld the searches, which are conducted […]
Jack Balkin has some insightful analysis of the Senator Specter’s NSA Bill over at Balkinization:
In reading the mainstream media accounts, one would get the impression that Senator Specter’s NSA surveillance bill is a compromise with the Administration, a way to limit Executive power, and that the Administration is reluctantly capitulating to judicial oversight.
Apparently, warrantless wiretapping and gathering of phone call records just aren’t enough to quench the Bush Administration’s thirst for data. Now we learn that the government has gathered massive quantities of financial records. The New York Times reports:
Currently, there’s a debate raging about whether the phone companies violated the law when they supplied phone call records to the NSA. Orin Kerr opines:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released its annual report on the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders, Wiretap Act orders, and National Security Letters issued in 2005. For FISA surveillance orders, 2072 applications were made to the FISA court; none were denied. Over the past few years, the number of orders has been steadily increasing:
A while ago, I blogged about companies that were selling records of the numbers people call on their cell phones on the Internet. Congress is currently conducting an investigation into these companies. Today, Bob Sullivan at MSNBC reports:
William Stuntz (law, Harvard) has long been advancing thoughtful provocative ideas about criminal procedure. I’ve always found Stuntz to be insightful even when I disagree (and I have disagreed with him a lot). Stuntz’s recent essay in The New Republic entitled Against Privacy and Transparency has me not just disagreeing, but doing so rather sharply.