The New Yorker magazine cover cartoon this week shows a turban–wearing Barack and gun–toting Michelle Obama in the White House. An American flag burns in the fireplace. The New Yorker says the cartoon satirizes the worst scare tactics being used against Obama. Obama's campaign manager calls it tasteless and offensive. What do you think?

...

And for the past 18 months, immigration officials at border entries have been searching electronic files on some citizens' laptops and cellphones when they return from international trips. Civil rights groups say it's unconstitutional and they want the Department of Homeland Security to stop.

Guests

Lee Tien is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. He testified in favor of a probable cause standard for laptop searches at a Congressional hearing last month.

The Senate approved a major revision of the 30-year-old law regulating the government's electronic surveillance program Wednesday, ending a debate that threatened to freeze intelligence operations.

The bill, which President Bush promised to sign, is designed to end at least 40 lawsuits against telecommunication companies that have aided the government.

...

Opponents said the bill codifies an unconstitutional program. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation vowed a court challenge.

"This program broke the law, and this president broke the law," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a leading opponent. Senators will regret they passed the law if they learn more about the program, he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Thursday over a controversial wiretapping law, challenging the constitutionality of the expanded spy powers Congress granted to the president on Wednesday.

The federal lawsuit was filed with the court just hours after Bush signed the bill into law.

...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is expected to challenge the provision of the bill that gives retroactive amnesty to telecoms that are being sued for helping the government spy on Americans without warrants.

But the San Francisco-based online rights group also announced in a fund-raising letter on Thursday that it too would challenge the constitutionality of the bill's expanded spying powers. An EFF lawyer said the group was still developing the case and could not provide details of when or where the case would be filed.

Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California civil rights organization, intends to challenge the constitutionality of the immunity provision.

The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. We speak with Mark Klein, a technician with AT&T for over twenty-two years. In 2006 Klein leaked internal AT&T documents that revealed the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the National Security Agency access to its fiber optic internet cables.

...

Mark Klein is also a witness in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which alleges AT&T illegally gave the National Security Agency access to its networks. Mark Klein joins us now from San Francisco, California.

Two civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government yesterday, seeking records related to the government's use of cellphones as tracking devices.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the government in federal court in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act. Last November, the ACLU had filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department for documents, memos and guides regarding the policies for tracking people through the use of their cellphones.

In the latest turn in Viacom's copyright infringement suit against YouTube and parent company Google, a federal judge ruled that Google must hand over YouTube users' IP addresses and user names, plus a history of videos they've viewed. The court order stipulates that data turned over to Viacom by Google must be used solely to prove Viacom's claim that YouTube is a hotbed of pirated video content. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation stills sees the ruling as a blow to user privacy. CNET News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy tells News.com's Leslie Katz why.

In a ruling that could have serious privacy implications, a federal judge has ruled that popular Internet video site YouTube must hand over details about what people watch online.

...

"The court's order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the (act) and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users," Kurt Opsahl, senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a blog posting. "As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection."

The record industry is urging a federal court to let a copyright infringement verdict stand against Minnesota resident Jammie Thomas, who was found liable last year by a jury for copyright infringement based on placing files in a Kazaa folder.

...

The case has drawn significant attention by digital rights advocates as well as media executives. Digital rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge filed papers on behalf of Thomas. They argue that equating making files available with distribution will broaden copyright law in a way that could harm many Web companies. "An inappropriately expansive reading of the distribution right will have far-reaching effects on the rights of users of digital works as well as the ability of innovators to find new, legal uses for those works," they wrote.

A European Union lawmaker who frequently travels to the United States is suing the U.S. government for access to her personal records, such as credit card information and travel history, that the Department of Homeland Security and other security agencies may have gathered.

...

"The bottom line is, the U.S. is trying to give the impression in Europe that there's a simple, well-established process for records access that any European can avail themselves of," said David L. Sobel, senior counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is filing the lawsuit on in't Veld's behalf. "But as this lawsuit shows, it's a difficult, time-consuming process that might ultimately not result in anything being obtained."