Surveillance

By Joseph Bonneau | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The legal dispute between Apple and the FBI might prove pivotal in the long-running battle to protect users’ privacy and right to use uncompromised encryption. The case has captured the public imagination. Of course, EFF supports Apple’s efforts to protect its users. The case […]

Featured

Top 5 Scalia Rulings that helped Progressives

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Justice Antonin Scalia died in Texas on Saturday. IC sends condolences to his family. Scalia is widely recognized as having been a brilliant legal thinker and a fine and passionate prose stylist. He was the first Italian-American to serve on the Supreme Court. It is worth […]

Bill of Rights

Snowden restores 4th Amendment: NSA halts mass Warrantless spying on your Telephone Records

contributors

By David Greene and Nadia Kayyali | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The NSA’s collection en masse of the call detail records of millions of ordinary Americans ended quietly at midnight November 29. The bulk collection was phased out after a 180-day transition period provided for in the USA FREEDOM Act. The USA […]

Domestic Surveillance

Trump’s call for Spying on US Muslims recalls FBI bugging of MLK, Black Churches

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – As Donald Trump supporters beat a ‘Black Lives Matter’ protester at his rally in Birmingham, Ala., Trump himself reminded us of the dark days when a paranoid J. Edgar Hoover had the FBI monitor the Rev. Martin Luther King and black Churches of the Southern Christian […]

Featured

If Trump can track Muslims, close Mosques, what can he do to You?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump, having said earlier that he might seek to close down mosques if he were president, on Thursday went further and said he would implement a registration and tracking database for Muslim-Americans. Rabbi Jack Moline of the Interfaith Alliance pointed out that […]

Government surveillance

After Paris, it’s good detective work that will keep us safe, not mass surveillance

contributors

By Pete Fussey | (The Conversation) | – – Before the dust has even settled from the attacks on Paris, familiar calls for greater surveillance powers are surfacing. The desire for greater security is understandable, but that doesn’t mean we should suspend our judgement on the measures proposed to bring it about. In the aftermath […]

Entertainment

In ‘Spectre,’ James Bond becomes Edward Snowden

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The latest entry in the Daniel Craig reboot of the James Bond film franchise, Spectre , turns Bond into more muscular version of Edward Snowden, as he takes down a vast 9-nation attempt at electronic surveillance and information-sharing that would also benefit a criminal cartel. Tooling […]

Drone Warfare

2016 Campaign and Forever War: Electorate gone to Disney World

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact. If you were to read about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the […]

Domestic Surveillance

3rd Circuit to NYC: Being Muslim is not Reasonable Suspicion for Surveillance

contributors

By Nadia Kayyali | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – Being Muslim can’t be the basis for law enforcement surveillance. That was the message from the Third Circuit last Tuesday when it told the plaintiffs in Hassan v. The City of New York that their lawsuit could go forward. The plaintiffs are suing over the […]