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The long-standing warrantless spying case ended at the hands of the Supreme Court today. After six years of working its way up through the courts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the National Security Agency -- which aimed to hold telecom companies liable for allowing government eavesdropping on U.S. residents -- was terminated.

The Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling on the case today, closing the door on further appeals. Its decision did not address the merits of the case.

Hepting v. AT&T was a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties … 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 American Civil Liberties Union today sued the U.S. government to get access to information about how authorities are using automated license plate readers to track people's movements and location.

The ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests on July 30 with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Transportation to try to find out how much officials use the technology and how much it is paying to expand the program. Agencies are required by law to respond to FOIA requests within 20 working days, but more than a month later, only one DOJ office and a few … Read more

When you "like" something on Facebook, that expression is indeed covered by the First Amendment, Facebook is arguing in a new court document.

The friend-of-the-court brief, filed last night, also urges an appeals court to vacate a recent ruling by a judge in Virginia that Facebook "likes" are not protected speech.

In that ruling in the spring, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson had said, essentially, that just clicking a Facebook button differs materially from the kinds of statements traditionally protected by the First Amendment. As a result, the judge dismissed a claim by six employees … Read more

LAS VEGAS - The American Civil Liberties Union wants to know how police around the country are using automatic license plate readers to track people's movements.

The ACLU today sent requests for information to police departments in 38 states and filed federal Freedom of Information Act requests with the departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Transportation to try to find out how much the governments use the technology and how much it is paying to expand the program.

Mounted on patrol cars, telephone poles and under bridges, the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) can snap a photograph of every … Read more

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has released an Android app designed to be used by people who want to secretly record police activity without running the risk that the mobile device will be seized.

Called Police Tape, the free app allows the user to record video and audio discreetly. For one thing, the app disappears from a phone's screen when the recording begins. For another, it can send a copy of the recording to the ACLU-New Jersey for backup storage and analysis of potential civil liberties violations.

It is similar to the Stop and Frisk Watch app … Read more

Three consumer rights groups filed a friend of the court brief today arguing that allowing the government access to an individual's Twitter account information would chill free speech.

The brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Citizen comes three weeks after Twitter filed its own challenge to an order from a New York State court requiring it to hand over data on one of its users who was arrested for disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wall Street protest last year.

The District Attorney's Office in New York wants Twitter to turn … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--A senior U.S. House of Representatives aide said at an event held this evening at CNET's headquarters that he was astonished by the recent groundswell of opposition to a cybersecurity bill expected to be voted on next week.

"I'm really astounded to keep hearing this drumbeat that it's vague," Jamil Jaffer, senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, said during a roundtable on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA (PDF), moderated by CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh and organized by Hackers and Founders.

Jaffer said that CISPA's critics … Read more

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