The FBI has long been searching for a way to bypass the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which they have claimed makes their job difficult, increasingly so in the information age. Previously the FBI just broke the law and hoped it would not get caught, now the agency wants a patina of legality to [...]

Any time there is an intelligence failure the different intelligence agencies quickly blame each other in hopes of avoiding scrutiny. Let the blame game begin. The Central Intelligence Agency is now claiming they pushed to have Tamerlan Tsarnaev added to a terrorism watch list a year before the Boston Marathon Bombing. The CIA pushed to [...]

According to officials investigating the Boston Marathon Bombing the evidence so far points to the suspected bombers – Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev – being “self-radicalized” and not part of any larger group. The brothers were apparently radicalized by America’s war of aggression on Iraq and continued dirty war in Afghanistan. The officials, who spoke on [...]

After facing defeat with Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – thanks in part to the late Aaron Swartz – the State and Big Business have regrouped and re-branded their bill Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Relying on a lazy press to leave out the details and hoping that a dimwitted public will cower [...]

Today the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has overcome another legislative hurdle heading towards passage in the House. The resolution pushing the bill forward passed 227-192 primarily along party lines with 8 Democrats crossing party lines to vote with the Republicans – Barber, Costa, Gutierrez, Schneider, Ruppersberger, McIntyre, Owens, and Matheson. Final vote [...]

The Senate will vote on a cybersecurity bill that’s taken years to get to the floor. The House has already passed a bill known as CISPA, which raised the ire of privacy and technology activists. Even the White House threatened a veto. Now the Senate will get their turn, after a series of maneuvers designed [...]

Like me, Congress was out of town last week. I guess the main difference is that they get 20 or so of these a year and I get one, but no matter. Today, at least, we start from the same position. And so what do they have planned for the next few days? Well, in [...]

I mentioned earlier that the White House weighed in on CISPA, the cybersecurity bill working its way through Congress. Previously they had been generally supportive of it, at least from the words of counter-terrorism czar John Brennan. But now, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council has criticized the bill. CISPA would encourage companies to [...]