Blog Entries

John McCain files bill attacking your access to supplements

February 5, 2010 - 3:33pm

The following alert is from the Alliance of Natural Health.  Check out their action-alert contact form here: 

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). It would give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others.

Police want backdoor to Web users' private data

February 4, 2010 - 5:27am

Declan McCullagh has the story on the latest in back-door spyware demanded by US police agencies:

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to "exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process" through an encrypted, police-only "nationwide computer network."

The Forfeiture Racket

January 28, 2010 - 5:31am

Radley Balko has a good overview of asset forfeiture and its abuses over at Reason.  An excerpt:

 

TSA hiding airport body-scanner docs; suit filed

January 19, 2010 - 4:30pm

From our partners at the Electronic Privacy Information Center:

MacLean v. Department of Homeland Security Background

November 6, 2009 - 2:27pm

MacLean was a 10-year federal law enforcement officer, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Air Marshal (FAM) with an unblemished record. In July 2003, he successfully blew the whistle on agency plans to secretly offset budget shortfalls by eliminating air marshals from long distance flights in the midst of a terrorism alert over suicide terrorist hijackings. After public congressional pressure, DHS’s plans were canceled. On April 11, 2006, the agency fired MacLean for using previously-undesignated Sensitive Security Information (SSI) in the 2003 disclosure.