Yesterday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce opened an investigation into warrantless wiretapping, asking for details from telecommunications providers about government efforts to obtain customer data. In addition, several key members of the committee sent letters to EFF and other civil liberties groups, requesting assistance in the committee's...

The AP, the Washington Post, and Wired's Threat Level are reporting on today's testimony by Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Goldsmith testified that there were certain aspects of the warrantless surveillance program "that I could not find the legal support...

Good news from California's Alameda County -- a judge has voided election results after the county botched its response to a contested race conducted on Diebold electronic voting machines. The judge ordered that the disputed Measure R -- an initiative addressing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries -- go...

Today, Judge Ann Aiken of the Oregon Federal District Court ruled that two provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), "50 U.S.C. ?? 1804 and 1823, as amended by the Patriot Act, are unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution."
This case...

I'm currently tapping into my laptop a few feet away from Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security. He is giving the keynote at Terra Incognita: the annual conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, here in Montreal.
His audience has him on the defensive....

The Associated Press reports on the beta website ThePudding.com, which is offering users "free" voice over IP (VoIP) calls, with an invasive catch -- it uses voice-recognition software to serve you ads based on the conversation you're having. In some ways, it can be likened to Google scanning...