Ira “Gus” Hunt, the CIA’s Chief Technology Officer, gave a revealing presentation at GigaOM’s Structure: Data conference where he outlined the CIA’s approach to collecting data from the public. The approach as outlined is a recipe for a police state. “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it [...]

Today, the House will vote on the extension of the FISA Amendments Act, a bill that was well-known to most Americans, especially on the left, in 2008, but which has gotten little if any notice these days. The bill not only granted retroactive immunity to telecom companies that cooperated in the warrantless surveillance of US [...]

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 [...]

Amidst the inevitable 9-11 retrospectives, I feel like only the Los Angeles Times is putting the past ten years in the proper perspective. Because the longest-lasting legacy of the 9-11 attacks is clearly the terror industry it spawned. Over the weekend the LAT looked at the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on absurd [...]

Ron Wyden clearly has a secret, something he cannot tell. But he also clearly wants to tell it, to let Americans know how their privacy has been compromised by the surveillance state. So he had an opportunity yesterday, when he got to question an NSA lawyer in a Congressional hearing. According to the general counsel [...]

The ACLU won an appeal yesterday to continue their lawsuit against the US government for unlawful spying on Americans. The lawsuit specifically challenges the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which de facto legalized ongoing warrantless spying on Americans who communicate with parties overseas if a link to terrorism on either end can [...]

TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt writes: Two American lawyers and an Islamic charity have submitted their bill for damages following a federal court ruling the Bush Administration subjected them and Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation to illegal wiretapping. The tab as of now (not including attorneys’ fees and costs): $612,000. Judge Vaughn Walker ruled on March 31 (pdf) they [...]

The fallout from the Bush Administration’s domestic spying program being ruled illegal once again has been incredibly mild. A few cover stories in the major papers noted the ruling, but pretty much left it there. Glenn Greenwald tweeted his puzzlement: Should it be big news if a federal court rules the President violated the criminal [...]

I know Marcy has covered the hell out of this already, but clearly Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the Al Haramain case is a huge deal. There never was going to be before, or likely will be again, a case as cut and dried as Al Haramain. In this instance, the government accidentally handed over [...]