Privacy Activists Suffer Legal Setback In National Security Letter Case

Privacy activists suffered a legal blow when a panel of California appeals court judges ruled Monday the Federal Bureau of Investigation could continue its practice of secretly issuing National Security Letter NSL requests for customer data from communications firms. The case involved a challenge...

EFF Sues DOJ Over National Security Letter Disclosure Rules

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the United States Department of Justice Wednesday demanding to know whether the agency is complying with rules that mandate a periodic review of National Security Letter gag orders. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of...

Yahoo Discloses Contents of Three National Security Letters

Yahoo today disclosed the contents of three National Security Letters it has received since 2013, the first time a company has made such a disclosure since the passage of the USA FREEDOM Act. Under the law, the FBI is now required to periodically review whether non-disclosure around National...

Microsoft Wins Widespread Support in Privacy Clash With Govt.

Microsoft’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails is getting widespread support by privacy advocates. For many, Microsoft’s stance lends an important and powerful voice to ongoing efforts to reform the Electronic...

Microsoft Sues US Govt Over Unconstitutional Secret Data Requests

Microsoft is suing the Department of Justice DoJ to protest the gag order that prevents technology companies from telling their customers when their cloud data is handed over to authorities. In layman's terms, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ECPA allows the government to issue gag order...

Confusion Reigns Over FBI's Plans for National Security Letter Gag Orders

The way that National Security Letters are approved and used is one of the government’s more opaque processes. Now, you can add some more confusion into the mix, courtesy of some new comments from the FBI about when recipients are able to disclose the fact that they have received an NSL. More tha...

National Security Letters Challenged in Ninth Circuit Court

In the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco Wednesday morning, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s EFF Kurt Opsahl urged the federal appeals court to uphold a lower court’s ruling that national security letters NSLs are unconstitutional. Regardless whether the ruling is upheld, the matter of NSL...

Dropbox Reports 80 Percent of Subpoenas Contain Gag Request

Most U.S. government subpoenas for data on Dropbox users are accompanied with a request not to inform the user in question. Dropbox legal counsel Bart Volkmer said those gag orders are repelled unless there is a valid court order. The revelation accompanied the release of the cloud storage...

Who Governs The Internet and whose property is it?

The recent exposes and revelations by Edward Snowden about the Top Secret Internet Snooping program currently run by US National Security Agency NSA have shocked the world. The extent of snooping is even more shocking and what has just stunned the world is the sheer name of top Internet companies...

Google For First Time Reports FBI Non-Warrant Requests for User Data

Google today revealed – if in vague terms – it last year received less than 1,000 “national Security letters” from federal authorities seeking financial and communications data on up to almost 2,000 individuals. The disclosure of such government requests marks a first for a major Internet service...