It’s always hard to predict the effects of new legislation: Congress can call it a “job creation” bill, but at the end of the day, they’ve got to hope the world cooperates with their good intentions. But if the Democratic process is going to function, legislators at least need to feel reasonably confident that they [...]

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I’ve got a longish piece over at The American Prospect that looks at how the Obama administration worked to kill the National Security Letter reforms that Obama once campaigned on—and even borrowed a page from Bush by retroactively reinterpreting the law to excuse systematic illegal surveillance.

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When it’s a carefully-worded statement from Lindy Matsko, the vice principal implicated in the Pennsylvania school webcam spying lawsuit:
“At no time have I ever monitored a student via a laptop webcam,” said Matsko, who is in her 25th year working for Lower Merion School District, “nor have I ever authorized the monitoring of a student [...]

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For those who didn’t want to sit through the full panel, here’s an eight minute excerpt:

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It’s something of a cliche among privacy researchers that “anonymity loves company“: Anonymizing mix networks (e.g. Tor) are more secure and more anonymous the more people are using them. Glossing the geekalicious details, the basic idea is lots of different encrypted communications, going to and from lots of different people, get chopped, scrambled, and sent [...]

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One more thought about Chris Soghoian’s great post from last week on telecoms and surveillance. The government is able to get an enormous amount of information about your online activity—short of actually reading your e-mails—using tools like National Security Letters and pen/trap orders, which don’t require the showing of “probable cause” required by the Fourth [...]

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It’s been a good week for document dumps—especially if you’re interested in surveillance policy. On top of Chris Soghoian’s revelations about telecom location tracking requests and a slew of leaked telecom and social networking site surveillance manuals for law enforcement at Cryptome, I’ve also been poring over the FOIA documents on cell phone lojacking obtained [...]

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I had half forgotten until last week’s Cato forum how much I enjoy a good live debate, but it does invariably mean you spending the next couple days thinking of points you wish you’d made—either because they didn’t occur to you, or because there just wasn’t time to get through everything you scribbled down while [...]

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I’m going back over the transcripts from last week’s PATRIOT hearings and still a little gobsmacked by the shameless stupidity of the remarks from grown men who actually get to decide what the law will be.  Remember, this isn’t what they say to the rubes from the stump; it’s how they talk to each other [...]

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