Fourth Amendment

The U.S. Congress took the first major step today toward updating a 1986 law, crafted in the pre-Internet era of telephone modems and the black-and-white Macintosh Plus, to protect the privacy of Americans who use mobile phones, Web e-mail, and services like Google Docs, Flickr, and Picasa.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Judiciary committee, introduced sweeping legislation that would, in many cases, require police to obtain a search warrant to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices.

"Updating this law to reflect the realities of our time is essential to ensuring that our … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice today called for new laws requiring mobile providers to collect and store information about their customers, a proposal that pits it against privacy advocates and even other federal agencies.

Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division, picked an odd place to describe the department's proposal: a U.S. Senate hearing that arose out of revelations about iPhones recording information about owners' locations, and, in some cases, transmitting those data to Apple without consent.

Nevertheless, Weinstein said, "when this information is not stored, it may be impossible for law … Read more

Nearly 10 years ago, Osama bin Laden changed the way many of us lived.

The coordinated suicide attacks on September 11, 2001, began what would become known as the War on Terror. They led directly to the invasion of Afghanistan and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, and indirectly to the Guantanamo Bay prison and a rise in government centralization and secrecy.

What's not as obvious is how al Qaeda's attacks, at least in technology and political circles, shifted the discussion from protecting electronic privacy to facilitating government surveillance.

Bin Laden was killed yesterday in Pakistan … Read more

Google acknowledged today that it collects location information from Android devices, but downplayed concerns about privacy by saying the information is not "traceable to a specific user."

That claim, it turns out, depends on the definition of "traceable."

According to detailed records provided to CNET by a security researcher, Android phones regularly connect to Google.com and disgorge a miniature data dump that includes time down to the millisecond, current and recent GPS coordinates, nearby Wi-Fi network addresses, and two 16-letter strings representing a device ID that's unique to each phone.

Apple, which came under fire this week … Read more

Law enforcement agencies have known since at least last year that an iPhone or iPad surreptitiously records its owner's approximate location, and have used that geolocation data to aid criminal investigations.

Apple has never publicized the undocumented feature buried deep within the software that operates iPhones and iPads, which became the topic of criticism this week after a researcher at a conference in Santa Clara, Calif., described in detail how it works. Apple had acknowledged to Congress last year only that "cell tower and Wi-Fi access point information" is "intermittently" collected and "transmitted to … Read more

news analysis Two U.S. senators introduced sweeping privacy legislation today that they promise will "establish a framework to protect the personal information of all Americans."

There is, however, one feature of the bill (PDF) sponsored by senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) that has gone relatively unnoticed: it doesn't apply to data mining, surveillance, or any other forms of activities that governments use to collect and collate Americans' personal information.

At a press conference in Washington, D.C., McCain said the privacy bill of rights will protect the "fundamental right of American citizens, … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department today dismissed as "absurd" any privacy and free speech concerns about its request for access to the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks volunteers.

In a 32-page brief filed in federal court in Virginia, prosecutors characterized their request for a court order as a "routine compelled disclosure" that raises no constitutional issues.

These types of records "are widely subpoenaed by grand juries without raising 'chilling effects,' or occasioning constitutional litigation and delays," prosecutors wrote. Any claim that Twitter's logs "are subject to heightened protections under the First Amendment is … Read more

An emerging dispute over electronic privacy is testing whether President Obama will live up to his promise to protect Americans' online rights.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice criticized changes backed by Internet companies and privacy groups that would update a 1986 federal law to extend greater legal protections to cloud-computing and mobile-device users.

Yet strengthening privacy laws is precisely what Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential campaign. He told CNET at the time that: "I will work with leading legislators, privacy advocates, and business leaders to strengthen both voluntary and legally required privacy protections." … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department today offered what amounts to a frontal attack on proposals to amend federal law to better protect Americans' privacy.

James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, warned that rewriting a 1986 privacy law to grant cloud computing users more privacy protections and to require court approval before tracking Americans' cell phones would hinder police investigations.

This appears the first time that the Justice Department has publicly responded to a set of digital privacy proposals unveiled last year by a coalition of businesses and advocacy groups including AT&T, Google, Microsoft, eBay, the American Civil … Read more