Law

Internal police documents reveal the legal processes that law enforcement agencies use to require Apple and Google to bypass the lock screens on seized mobile phones.

Training materials prepared by the Sacramento sheriff's office include a fill-in-the-blanks court order that, with a judge's signature, requires Apple to "assist law enforcement agents" with "bypassing the cell phone user's passcode so that the agents may search the iPhone."

It's more difficult to gain access to a locked Android phone. The document (PDF page 25) says that according to T-Mobile and Google, the only way … Read more

Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Microsoft try not to let copyright-infringing Web sites sign up. Their advertising network contracts currently prohibit it.

But that isn't stopping the White House from pressuring those four companies to do more to satisfy Hollywood and other copyright holders who are peeved about online piracy -- in this case, that presumably means addressing piratical Web sites that cover their bandwidth costs through ad revenue.

A White House report (PDF) released today singles out those four companies by name, arguing that they and others should "act as checkpoints for infringing activity and reduce the distribution … Read more

Only weeks after protests over two digital copyright bills demonstrated the political muscle of Internet users, the White House is publicly endorsing new copyright legislation that also would target suspected pirate Web sites.

After the unprecedented outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act -- designed to target offshore copyright-infringing Web sites -- supporters of the bills on Capitol Hill backed down and moved on to other topics.

But the White House today reignited the congressional debate by throwing its weight behind legislation targeting offshore Web sites. "We believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools … Read more

A founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, who says federal agents seized his laptop because of his support for the alleged Wiki-leaker, will have his day in court.

U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston yesterday ruled that a lawsuit challenging activist David House's border searches and other interviews by government agents may continue.

In an opinion (PDF) rejecting the U.S. government's request to dismiss the case, Casper wrote that just because "the initial search and seizure occurred at the border does not strip House of his First Amendment rights," especially because it … Read more

Foes of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance have long argued that if the law is constitutional, a federal law forcing everyone to eat broccoli would be permitted as well.

During today's oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices instead asked a lawyer for the Obama administration this: Could Congress constitutionally require Americans to buy cell phones?

In other words, if Obamacare, as critics have labeled the Act, can require Americans to engage in commerce merely because they're breathing -- which is unprecedented in the history of the United States … Read more

The City of Boston tacitly acknowledged today that arresting a man for recording a police officer in public may not exactly have been the wisest -- or most constitutional -- choice.

That acknowledgement comes in the form of a $170,000 payment to Simon Glik, a Boston attorney who was prosecuted under criminal wiretap laws for using his cell phone to record police arresting someone on the Boston Common. They prosecuted the wrong fellow: Glik himself specializes in criminal defense.

A spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department told CNET this afternoon that the city has taken steps to ensure arrests-for-recording … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission this morning released a wide-ranging report that stops short of endorsing a new "Do Not Track" law.

This morning's 120-page report instead asks Congress to enact a new law that "would provide consumers with access to information about them held by a data broker" such as Lexis Nexis, US Search, or Reed Elsevier subsidiary Choicepoint -- many of which have been the subject of FTC enforcement actions in the last few years.

But when it comes to a Do Not Track law targeting Web companies, which was proposed by legislation introduced last year, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Representatives from opposite sides in the "big data" privacy debate tangled Sunday over whether a proposed White House "privacy bill of rights" is necessary to keep Americans safe online.

During a "big data" panel sponsored by CNET at South by Southwest, Berin Szoka, president of the non-partisan, non-profit, tech policy think tank TechFreedom, argued that states and the federal government might have better results providing privacy protections for Americans by enforcing existing laws than they would if they adopted new regulations.

"We have a difference of opinion of when government should get … Read more

The uproar about privacy is only getting louder as companies of all sizes are doing more and more with all the data we all produce--not just on social networks, but via our cell phones and even our cars.

Your data is not only fueling companies like Google and Facebook but also an entire wave of startups. The question is at what cost?

Catch our live blog Sunday 3 p.m. PT/5 p.m. CT

Big Data: Privacy threat or business model?

Whether it's iOS apps like Path grabbing address books data without user permission, or Google changing default privacy settings … Read more