Surveillance

By Andrew Crocker and Mark Rumold | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – In a bombshell published today, Reuters is reporting that, in 2015, Yahoo complied with an order it received from the U.S. government to search all of its users’ incoming emails, in real time. There’s still much that we don’t know at this […]

Domestic Surveillance

Feds: We can read all your email, and you’ll never know

contributors

By Clark D. Cunningham | (The Conversation) | – – Fear of hackers reading private emails in cloud-based systems like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo has recently sent regular people and public officials scrambling to delete entire accounts full of messages dating back years. What we don’t expect is our own government to hack our […]

Bill of Rights

Making Case for Pardon, Snowden Says Leaks Were ‘Necessary, Vital Things’

contributors

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – ‘I think when people look at the calculations of benefit, it is clear that in the wake of 2013 the laws of our nation changed,’ Snowden tells the Guardian In a new interview with the Guardian, whistleblower Edward Snowden explains why U.S. President Barack Obama […]

Featured

15 Years after 9/11, can we Recover our Republic?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Founding Fathers thought keeping a standing army was a danger to democracy. The great wars of the twentieth century appear to have imbued the United States with a permanent standing army, and this institution has been reinforced by the September 11 attacks. Or rather it […]

Democratic Party

H. Clinton and Ed Snowden: Some Animals are more Equal than others

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Hillary Clinton has repeatedly attacked Ed Snowden for being careless with government information. So it is ironic that she has been found guilty of being . . . careless with government information. She, of course, will suffer no consequences, since she is part of the ruling […]

Bill of Rights

Dear Mr. Holder: Why Ed Snowden can’t get a Fair Trial in your National Security State

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Former US Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview that what NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden did was illegal but added “”We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service […]

Bill of Rights

The late great Fourth Amendment: Feds, Police and Intrusive Technologies

contributors

By Matthew Harwood and Jay Stanley | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Can’t you see the writing on the touchscreen? A techno-utopia is upon us. We’ve gone from smartphones at the turn of the twenty-first century to smart fridges and smart cars. The revolutionary changes to our everyday life will no doubt keep barreling […]

Government surveillance

Mr. President: Weakening Apple’s Defenses puts us all at Risk

contributors

Electronic Frontier Foundation | – – The Apple Fight Is About All of Us A Joint Statement from Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Apple is engaged in a high-profile battle against a court order demanding it write, sign, and deploy custom computer code to defeat the security on […]

Bill of Rights

The FBI’s outrageous assault on the 1st Amendment and Apple

contributors

By Andrew Crocker | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation ) | – – Last week, EFF filed a brief in support of Apple’s fight against the FBI, in which we argued that forcing Apple to write—and sign—a custom version of iOS would violate the First Amendment rights of Apple and its programmers. That’s because the right […]