Issues

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:

 

U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google

January 26, 2010 - 6:09am

By Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN

Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn't that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated -- we knew that already -- it's that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.

In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.

Wichita Witch Hunt: The Justice Department wages war on pain relief. by Harvey A. Silverglate

September 2, 2009 - 12:48pm

In Kansas, it appears that zealous prosecutors are targeting not only the doctors, but also their public advocates. When Reynolds wrote op-eds in local newspapers and granted interviews to other media outlets, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway attempted to impose a gag order on her public advocacy. The district judge correctly denied this extraordinary request. Full Story