Our friends at ACLU have put up a petition to Google to not enter into a data-sharing agreement with the military. Check out the interactive petition form here.

March 1, 2010

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

In November 2009, many of the undersigned organizations wrote to you to express our concern over the lack of nominations to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). We write again, with increased urgency, to encourage you to appoint individuals immediately.

REDWOOD CITY — It's now up to a San Mateo County Superior Court judge to decide whether to set a legal precedent on the powers police have to search a person's cell phone following arrest.

After nearly three and a half hours of testimony and arguments Thursday afternoon on the legality of Daly City police officers' search of an identity theft suspect's iPhone, Judge John Runde said he will consider the case and issue a ruling.

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."

Real estate certainly has its risks and fraud is a growing problem, but now there's a new law that's supposed to protect buyers. As CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports the new law will also place an unusual burden on the seller.

Fingerprinting is something we often associate with crime. So the fact that Cook County home sellers will soon have to provide a thumb print left some people shocked.

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.

Napolitano debates Real ID
Will examine alternatives to driver's licenses

The Washington Times
Audrey Hudson
Friday, February 20, 2009

As governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano was no fan of the Real ID program that sets federal standards for state-issued driver's licenses which will be required in the future to board airplanes.

Executive Order: Further Amendments to Executive Orders 12139 and 12949 in Light of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081007-7.html

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 104 and 303 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq.), as amended by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-261), it is hereby ordered as follows: