Superior Court (Alameda County) Rules in Favor of ABAG and One Bay Area

Lit­i­ga­tion Seeks to Pro­tect the Amer­i­can Form of Gov­ern­ment In a result ori­ent­ed deci­sion, Alame­da Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Eve­lio Gril­lo ruled against Free­dom Advo­cates and oth­ers in the war over pro­tect­ing Cities and Coun­ties from a trans­for­ma­tion of local gov­ern­ment (One Bay Area). The new form of gov­ern­ment in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area […]

In a First, Government Acknowledges the Limits of Section 215

Fol­low­ing EFF’s vic­to­ry in a four-year Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit, the gov­ern­ment released an opin­ion (pdf), writ­ten by the Office of Legal Coun­sel (OLC) in 2010, that con­clud­ed that Sec­tion 215—the pro­vi­sion of the Patri­ot Act the NSA relies on to col­lect mil­lions of Amer­i­cans’ phone records—does have a lim­it: cen­sus data. The Com­merce Department […]

Samsung SmartTVs can collect and transmit spoken words, personal information, and sensitive data to 3rd party sources

NEW SMART TVS OFFER A WINDOW INTO YOUR LIFE Smart TVs may be get­ting too smart as some now actu­al­ly col­lect and trans­mit your spo­ken words, per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and sen­si­tive data to oth­er 3rd par­ty sources. In fact Sam­sung, a major elec­tron­ic man­u­fac­ture, admits that they “col­lect, use, share, and store infor­ma­tion through your SmartTV in […]

16-Year-Old Launches Organization to Battle Warrantless Surveillance

Bran­don Keibler is just your ordi­nary 16-year-old from South­ern Indi­ana. At least that’s what some peo­ple might think. How­ev­er, hav­ing become an activist at four­teen and help­ing to estab­lish the Restore the Fourth orga­ni­za­tion, this young man has just launched an orga­ni­za­tion to encour­age grass­roots efforts aimed at a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that wish­es to disregard […]

Digital Electronic “Internet of Things”(IoT) and “Smart Grid Technologies” to Fully Eviscerate Privacy

The “Inter­net of Things” (IoT) and Smart Grid tech­nolo­gies will togeth­er be aggres­sive­ly inte­grat­ed into the devel­oped world’s socioe­co­nom­ic fab­ric with lit­­tle-if-any pub­lic or gov­ern­men­tal over­sight. This is the over­all opin­ion of a new report by the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, which has announced a series of “rec­om­men­da­tions” to major util­i­ty com­pa­nies and transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions heavily […]

TSA to Require ‘Real ID’ with Background Checks for Domestic Flights

Real ID: gold star for good behav­ior; no report on the scar­let let­ter they’ll use to ID trou­ble­mak­ers. The TSA recent­ly announced they will require a spe­cial driver’s license to board domes­tic flights by 2016. These ‘Real IDs’ will have already per­formed exten­sive back­ground check­son every­one who receives them and will fea­ture stars and oth­er markings […]

The TSA Wants To Read Your Facebook Posts And Check Out Your Purchases Before It Will Approve You For PreCheck

from the ah,-now-I-understand-the-phrase-‘documented-citizen’ dept The TSA is dis­ap­point­ed that so few Amer­i­cans have opt­ed out of its bot­­tle-toss­ing, pack­­age-grop­ing screen­ings by sign­ing up for its PreCheck pro­gram. For a few years now, the TSA has been sell­ing trav­el­ers’ civ­il lib­er­ties back to them, most recent­ly for $85 a head, but it’s now mak­ing a serious […]

Revealed: Canadian Spy Program Illustrates “Giant X‑Ray Machine Over All Our Digital Lives”

Lat­est rev­e­la­tion from Snow­den archive shows CSE has been mon­i­tor­ing, ana­lyz­ing, and track­ing mil­lions of peo­ple who uti­lize pop­u­lar file-shar­ing web­sites New­ly released doc­u­ments con­tained in the archive of mate­ri­als leaked to jour­nal­ists by NSA whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den reveals that Canada’s spy agency, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Secu­ri­ty Estab­lish­ment, has been oper­at­ing a covert, mass sur­veil­lance program […]