Canadian activists are taking part in a weekend of action against the controversial C-51 surveillance bill currently making its way through Parliament.
Supporters of the bill say it would protect the nation against terrorist attacks, but critics charge that it would give the government ever more expansive and invasive spying powers.
If passed, C-51 would give up to 17 government agencies access to Canadian citizens' private info... (more)
California, the state that prides itself as the birthplace of modern technology and whose policies such as the unenforceability of non-competes contributed substantially to the innovation ecosystem, recently proposed a law that requires innovators to get permission from the state, or be banned.
Last week CA's State Assembly announced AB 1326, a bill that would ban any unlicensed bitcoin or cryptocurrency bus... (more)
Yesterday, a jury found that the 2013 song "Blurred Lines" was an infringement of Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" composition from 1977. Following the 7-million-dollar verdict, professional musicians are waking up to a fact that ordinary Internet users have long known: our overbearing copyright laws are a threat to creativity.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world, announced Tuesday that it--alongside a host of civil liberty advocates, news outlets, and privacy rights organizations--has filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency for violating the constitutional rights of its users by performing bulk surveillance and searching, without specific cause or warrant, the international Inter... (more)
Back in the summer of 2013 as the various "Five Eyes" countries were still reeling from the initial Snowden disclosures, New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key promised to resign if it was ever proven that the GCSB (New Zealand's equivalent to the NSA) had engaged in mass surveillance of New Zealanders -- but with some caveats. He later said that he meant if it was proven that there was illegal surveillanc... (more)
New reporting by The Intercept published Tuesday reveals a decades-long effort by the Central Intelligence Agency, alongside partners both inside and outside of government, to crack the digital security systems of the Apple's signature iPhone and iPad products.
Citing top-secret documents leaked to journalists by Edward Snowden, the latest reporting by Jeremy Scahill and Jo... (more)
Child Protective Services have charged two parents in Maryland with “unsubstantiated child neglect” after they allowed their 10-year-old and 6-year old to walk home one mile from their local playground.
Police were called after someone spotted the two children making their way home on December 20 in Silver Spring, a suburb outside W... (more)
This week, the Florida state legislature is considering a bill that would make it illegal to run any website or service anonymously, if the site fits a vague category of “disseminat[i
Your law enforcement panic of the day: an app that automatically uploads recorded footage and forwards it to the ACLU.
New Jersey's ACLU branch put together "Police Tape" back in 2012, an app which allowed anyone to record cops with a press of a button. The app then hid itself while the recording continued. If the recording was interrupted, the app would automatically s... (more)
It's an interesting time to be a computer security researcher. Last week, Kaspersky Lab released a report about a new family of malware from an entity they called "The Equation Group". The report demonstrated for the first time that firmware-based attacks, previously only demonstrated in lab settings, have been used in the wild by malware authors. This should ... (more)
In the long, convoluted and complex legal battles facing Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, there was some bizarre stuff that happened late last year. As you may recall, early on, the US government seized basically all of his stuff and money. Dotcom has made efforts to get some of it returned, as it's tough to fight the most powerful government in the world when it's holding onto all of your money. Keep in mind from our previous discussions on asset seizure and forfeiture, the government can basical... (more)
Anyone interested in privacy and security should think twice about their cell phone dependence right now. That's because today, The Intercept revealed that British spy agency GCHQ led successful efforts to hack into the internal networks of Gemalto, "the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications" made on the world's largest telecommun... (more)
An innocent male student was reportedly banned from entering large areas of his liberal-arts school in Oregon after a female classmate accused him of slightly resembling a rapist she encountered months prior in another state.
According to Professor Janey Halley, who detailed the incident in an article for the Harvard Law Review, the unnamed male student was forced to abide by the restraining order despite being found innocent during an extensive school investigation.
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Internet giant Google and the American Civil Liberties Union are among the various groups who have objected to a rule change by the U.S. Department of Justice that would give the FBI and other agencies sweeping new powers to perform search and seize private data from online users across the nation and the globe.
According to a brief submitted by Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement, against a pending DOJ proposal, the changes to law enforcement's ability to searc... (more)
For years, police agencies around the country have deployed automated license plate reader cameras (ALPR, also known as ANPR) without seeking public input or approval. Often the federal government picks up the tab for the cameras in the form of homeland security grants that support an effort to centralize a repository of the driving histories of motorists. The scope of the effort has inspired a legislative backlash.
We have been tracking for some time the increasingly repressive measures that the Russian authorities have brought in to censor and control the Internet. Of course, Techdirt readers know that an easy way to circumvent both censorship and control is to use tools like VPNs and Tor. Unfortunately, the Russian authorities also know this, and are now calling for acti... (more)
