Tag Archives: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Computers

Church, advocacy groups sue NSA over surveillance

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Nineteen organizations, including a church and gun ownership and marijuana legalization groups, have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency for a surveillance program that targets U.S. residents’ phone records.

The groups accuse the NSA, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of violating their members’ First Amendment rights of association by illegally collecting their telephone call records.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Tuesday, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, include the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, Free Press, the Free Software Foundation, Greenpeace, the National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ California Chapter, Public Knowledge, and TechFreedom.

The groups object to the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone records, disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in early June. The collection of all Verizon phone records, including records of calls made, the location of the phone, the time of the call and the duration of the call, violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by giving “the government a dramatically detailed picture into our associational ties,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, representing the plaintiffs.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Businesses and activists wrestle over California privacy bill

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beef and noodles

Businesses and privacy advocates are squaring off over a proposed law that would make California the first state in the nation to give people the right to see all the information companies have on them and to find out who the data is shared with.

Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union say California Assembly bill AB 1291 would help consumers decide whether they wanted to continue doing business with a company, based on the way it handled their personal information.

To opponents such as the California Chamber of Commerce and TechAmerica, the bill is too broad in defining the information covered and would open businesses up to frivolous lawsuits.

On Monday, lawmakers amended the bill, introduced in February by Democratic Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, to increase its chances of getting through the Legislature. To opponents, the changes were not enough.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

News, Politics, Government

Judge rules secret FBI letters unconstitutional

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They’re called national security letters and the FBI issues thousands of them a year to banks, phone companies and other businesses demanding customer information. They’re sent without judicial review and recipients are barred from disclosing them.

On Friday, a federal judge in San Francisco declared the letters unconstitutional, saying the secretive demands for customer data violate the First Amendment.

The government has failed to show that the letters and the blanket non-disclosure policy “serve the compelling need of national security,” and the gag order creates “too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted,” U.S. District Judge Susan Illston wrote.

She ordered the FBI to stop issuing the letters, but put that order on hold for 90 days so the U.S. Department of Justice can pursue an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The DOJ said it is reviewing the decision.

FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the letters after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The case arises from a lawsuit that lawyers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed in 2011 on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company that received an FBI demand for customer information.

“We are very pleased that the court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” EFF lawyer Matt Zimmerman said. “The government‘s gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience.”

Illston wrote that she was also troubled by the limited powers judges have to lift the gag orders.

Judges can eliminate the gag order only if they have “no reason to believe that disclosure may endanger the national security of the United States, interfere with a criminal counter-terrorism, or counterintelligence investigation, interfere with diplomatic relations, or endanger the life or physical safety of any person.”

That provision also violated the Constitution because it blocks meaningful judicial review.

Illston isn’t the first federal judge to find the letters troubling. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York also found the gag order unconstitutional, but allowed the FBI to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Articles of Interest

National Security Letter Gag Orders Struck Down As Unconstitutional

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

NEW YORK — Concluding that they suffer from “significant constitutional infirmities,” a federal district court judge in San Francisco on Thursday struck down sections of federal law that allow the FBI to warrantlessly obtain private information under a gag order in the name of national security.

But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston temporarily put her order on hold to allow the government to appeal her decision, recognizing that a higher court should first be able to “consider the weighty questions of national security and First Amendment rights” at issue in the case. The authority of national security letters, government orders to communications providers to reveal user information, was vastly expanded in the post-9/11 Patriot Act. The federal government has made wide use of them in the name of the fight against terrorism.

In May 2011, the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation brought a lawsuit against the national security letter statutes on behalf of an unnamed telephone service provider, arguing that placing the company under a gag order violated its First Amendment rights. EFF also argued that the 2005 renewal of the Patriot Act provided too little judicial review for the secret letters.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

News, Politics, Government

Older, quieter than WikiLeaks, Cryptome perseveres

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The FBI came calling after maps of urban rail tunnels and gas lines were posted online. Microsoft aggressively complained following the website’s publication of a confidential handbook on company policies for helping police. Other critics have gone further, warning that some of the postings could aid America’s enemies.

Yet Cryptome carries on.

The website, unfamiliar to the general public, is well-known in circles where intelligence tactics, government secrets and whistle-blowing are primary concerns. Since its creation in 1996, Cryptome has amassed more than 70,000 files — including lists of secret agents, high-resolution photos of nuclear power plants, and much more.

Its co-founder and webmaster, a feisty 77-year-old architect, doesn’t hesitate when asked why.

“I’m a fierce opponent of government secrets of all kinds,” says John Young. “The scale is tipped so far the other way that I’m willing to stick my neck out and say there should be none.”

Young describes several exchanges with federal agents over postings related to espionage and potential security breaches, though no charges have ever been filed. And he notes that corporate complaints of alleged copyright violations and efforts to shut Cryptome down have gone nowhere.

For Young, there’s a more persistent annoyance than these: the inevitable comparisons of Cryptome to WikiLeaks, the more famous online secret-sharing organization launched by Julian Assange and others in 2006.

Young briefly collaborated with WikiLeaks’ creators but says he was dropped from their network after questioning plans for multimillion-dollar fundraising. Cryptome operates on a minimal budget — less than $2,000 a year, according to Young, who also shuns WikiLeaks-style publicity campaigns.

“We like the scholarly approach — slow, almost boring,” says Young. He likens Cryptome to a “dusty, dimly lit library.”

That’s not quite the image that Reader’s Digest evoked in 2005, in an article titled “Let’s Shut Them Down.” Author Michael Crowley assailed Cryptome as an “invitation to terrorists,” notably because of its postings on potential security vulnerabilities.

Cryptome’s admirers also don’t fully buy into Young‘s minimalist self-description.

“He lives by his ideals and doesn’t pull any punches,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Computers

US appeals court asks whether to limit software patents

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Should an abstract idea written into software and run on a computer be patentable? That’s one question a U.S. appeals court will consider Friday when it hears arguments in a case with broad implications for software patents for companies as diverse as Google and Red Hat.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is unlikely to invalidate all software patents in the CLS Bank v. Alice Corp. case, but it could force tech companies to narrow their claims when applying for software patents, some patent experts said.

Julie Samuels, EFF

The case, which has generated briefs from Google, Facebook, Newegg and software trade group BSA, could “set the stage” for limiting what kinds of software patents can be issued, said Julie Samuels, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld