privacy

Congressional Democrats on Tuesday dug in on their refusal to pass a revamped surveillance law that could wipe out some 40 lawsuits accusing telephone companies of illegal cooperation with government spies.

According to summary documents provided by U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office, Democratic leaders are preparing to debate yet another new bill that would not offer so-called "retroactive immunity" to companies that allegedly opened up their networks to the National Security Agency without a court order. At least in theory, that means cases like the one the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed against AT&T … Read more

About six months ago, German police reported disrupting a terrorist plot against U.S. installations in their country, thanks in part to intelligence tips from American agents. Now officials in the two nations have hatched a formal plan to share more information about known and suspected terrorists.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and their German counterparts--Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries--initialed an agreement on Tuesday to swap fingerprint and DNA data.

At a Tuesday press conference at German government headquarters in Berlin, Mukasey hailed the proposed cooperation as a &… Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--Life was so simple before the Internet came along.

We could live our lives in relative obscurity, renting porn at the video store, checking out books on VD at the library, and consorting with all sorts of miscreants at dive bars, or worse, Celine Dion concerts.

Now, our moves, thoughts, transactions, and romantic tendencies are out on the Internet for everyone to see. You're in a silly costume at a party in a Facebook photo when you called in sick from work. Now you are captured on Google Maps Street View climbing over a neighbor's fence. … Read more

A Swiss bank that successfully sued to yank the Wikileaks.org domain name, and then faced a severe setback in a subsequent court ruling, has given up for now.

Bank Julius Baer filed a brief note with a court in San Francisco Wednesday saying it would voluntarily dismiss its own case, while reserving the right to file it again in the future or pursue it "in an alternate court, jurisdiction, or venue."

BJB's sudden move comes a few days after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his earlier ruling (which pulled the plug on the Wikileaks.… Read more

WASHINGTON--One of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's most prominent Real ID cheerleaders made a more timid than usual push on Tuesday for states to adopt the controversial identification card standards.

Stewart Baker, the department's assistant secretary for policy, has touted what he perceives as the privacy-protective, identity theft-preventive features of the congressionally mandated Real ID driver's license regime during the past year.

But, clearly fearing criticism during a Tuesday morning speech at the spring meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, he saved any mention of the program until the tail end of a … Read more

Updated at 1:42 p.m. and again at 5:02 p.m. PST.

SAN FRANCISCO--Wikileaks is getting its domain name back.

After spending more than three hours hearing arguments from a raft of attorneys--two representing the Swiss bank that fought to get the site's plug pulled and about 10 who have been trying to get the site back online--a federal judge here has ruled in favor of Wikileaks.

Wikileaks, which uses Wikileaks.org as its primary domain, is a whistle-blowing site that focuses on posting leaked documents.

"The court denies the motion for preliminary injunction, and … Read more

WASHINGTON--A new Bush administration plan to capture and analyze traffic on all federal government networks in real time is generating privacy worries from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike.

At a hearing convened here Thursday by the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, politicians directed pointed questions to Department of Homeland Security officials about their plans to expand an existing "intrusion detection" system known as Einstein. Among other things, the system will monitor visits from Americans--and foreigners--visiting .gov Web sites.

Einstein, which DHS calls an "early warning system" for cyber-incidents, is described in a Homeland … Read more

It's said that everyone's got something to hide, but not everyone needs top-notch encryption to do it. My Lockbox is a free privacy app for Windows XP and Vista that password-protects any folder of your choosing and then, poof!, can make it disappear from view.

The fairly simple interface has you setting up a password, with a hint. Keep it strong and different from your other passwords, or you're leaving yourself vulnerable to a forced lock. Passwords protect both the control panel and the folder path you've decided to conceal from Window Explorer's sights, for … Read more

The Bush administration's plan to outfit the U.S.-Mexico border with a "virtual" fence consisting of sensors, cameras, and drone aircraft is running into technical snags.

Federal officials told a congressional committee on Wednesday that the first phase of the project--consisting of about 100 miles near Yuma and Tuscon, Ariz., and El Paso, Texas--won't likely be completed until 2011, about three years later than expected, according to The Washington Post. The task is being overseen by the Department of Homeland Security and has been contracted out to Boeing.

For years, the Bush administration has been heralding … Read more