Archive of all posts about the FBI by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
A dramatic legal battle is taking place that will have dramatic implications for the future of technology, privacy, security, and the extent of government power. The FBI obtained an order from a magistrate judge to force Apple to develop software to help the FBI break into an encrypted iPhone.
By Daniel J. Solove When you go to the hospital, you might worry about catching a staph infection or pneumonia, but you should also worry about contracting a nasty case of medical identity theft. Most people suffer significant harm from medical ID theft, and few are completely cured. This ailment is spreading dramatically as data […]
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.
According to CNN: The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has threatened Wikipedia with legal action if the online encyclopedia doesn’t remove the FBI’s seal from its site. The seal is featured in an encyclopedia entry about the FBI. Wikipedia isn’t backing down, however. The online encyclopedia — which is run by a nonprofit group and […]
From CNN: The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists. But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans. The bureau is expected […]
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 […]
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:
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.
As many of the recent revelations of government surveillance and information gathering are revealing, government agencies such as the FBI and NSA are violating the law. Recently, the DOJ investigation into the FBI’s use of NSLs reveals many violations of law. So where are the penalties? In the latest surveillance scandal, the FBI says that it […]