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The Obama administration will tell federal judges in New Orleans today that warrantless tracking of the location of Americans' mobile devices is perfectly legal.

Federal prosecutors are planning to argue that they should be able to obtain stored records revealing the minute-by-minute movements of mobile users over a 60-day period -- in this case, T-Mobile and MetroPCS customers -- without having to ask a judge to approve a warrant first.

The case highlights how valuable location data is for police, especially when it's tied to devices that millions of people carry with them almost all the time. Records kept … Read more

Federal police are increasingly gaining real-time access to Americans' social-network accounts -- such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter -- without obtaining search warrants, newly released documents show.

The numbers are dramatic: live interception requests made by the U.S. Department of Justice to social-networking sites and e-mail providers jumped 80 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Documents the ACLU released today show police are using a 1986 law intended to tell police what phone numbers were dialed for far more invasive surveillance: monitoring of whom specific social-network users communicate with, what Internet addresses they're connecting from, and perhaps even "… Read more

The Big Apple is seeing a surge in stolen Apple devices.

The latest data from the New York City Police Department shows that iPhone and iPad thefts have soared 40 percent this year so far, compared with the same period last year.

Between January 1 and September 23 of this year, a total of 11,447 cases of stolen iDevices were reported to the New York City police, a rise of 3,280 over 2011, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said in a report sent to CNET.

"As if to mirror the market place, thefts of Apple products increased this … Read more

Apple is on the offensive again in the e-book pricing lawsuit. A subpoena issued by the tech giant in July has just surfaced and demands that the Department of Justice turn over interviews it conducted with Amazon employees for the suit, according to Paid Content.

The subpoena asks for "transcripts and exhibits" and a "list of individuals interviewed" by the DOJ in depositions.

To recap the case: in an antitrust lawsuit filed in April, federal prosecutors accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to artificially hike prices. At the time, Amazon was selling e-books much … Read more

The cops are getting their geek on. Four days a week, a police officer ducks into the social media room at the Redwood City Police Department, launches a video chat application and stands by waiting for your call, just like those Time Life Books operators.

Located smack in the middle of the Valley, the police department is the first in the country to offer video chat on its Web site. Police Chief J.R. Gamez was clearly peacock-proud when we asked about his organization's tech know-how. The police department tweets city alerts to followers and posts updates on Facebook. … Read more

Google has found itself embroiled in a high-profile dispute pitting the traditional western value of free speech against Islam's strict proscription against blasphemy.

The company confirmed today that it "temporarily" blocked YouTube users in Libya and Egypt from accessing a YouTube video trailer from an amateur movie sharply critical of the Prophet Muhammad. And Afghanistan retaliated by unilaterally blocking all of YouTube for its citizens.

Those restrictions came less than a day after the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed in an attack by Muslim protesters. Protesters also entered … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice has reined down hard on a Taiwanese LCD screen maker in court, demanding $1 billion in fines and significant jail time for two former executives.

According to the Associated Press, AU Optronics carried out an extensive price-fixing scheme that feds said was the most significant ever prosecuted in the U.S. During a federal trial in March, the jury found both AU Optronics and two of its executives, Hsuan Bin Chen and Hui Hsiung, guilty of price-fixing.

The original complaints for the case alleged that the company worked to create an international "cartel&… Read more

Facebook is a great resource to find out about friends graduating, getting married, and going on vacation. Apparently it's also a good resource for Taliban fighters to spy on soldiers.

According to Australia's Department of Defense's new report on social media (PDF), "the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers" as a way to gather information.

These fake profiles are a cause for concern, notes the report. The goal of the report is to be a training guide and review for Australia's military … Read more

After pleading guilty last year to creating a botnet that wreaked havoc on about 72,000 computers, Joshua Schichtel was sentenced to prison today. The Department of Justice announced that Schichtel received a 30-month prison sentence for "selling command-and-control access to and use of thousands of malware-infected computers."

Schichtel was a unique hacker. Rather than infecting computers for his own benefit, he instead sold botnets to customers who must have not had the tech know-how to create their own malware.

"Individuals who wanted to infect computers with various different types of malicious software (malware) would contact Schichtel … Read more