Privacy law
Obama proposes series of changes to rules governing NSA surveillance
President Barack Obama met the media on Friday and started the Q&A session with a series of proposals for changes to the rules and laws that govern the NSA surveillance program. It’s unclear, at this stage, whether these changes, fairly modest in nature, will quiet the outcry that has been brewing.
James Rosen case prompts frank discuss about balance between First Amendment, national security
The Justice Department has launched an unprecedented crackdown on leaks within the government — going so far as to seize the phone records of several AP journalists and searching the personal email of a Fox News correspondent. The crackdown has prompted an outcry from media and civil rights advocates.
Transparency, Secrecy and Freedom: The History of Privacy and Democracy
As we learn more about the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs and leaker Edward Snowden, The Takeaway is looking at freedom in America, and freedom’s relationship to privacy. In a recent article for The New Yorker, staff writer and professor of American history at Harvard University Jill Lepore explores the relationship between privacy, government transparency […]
Cell Phone Data a Legal Gray Area in the Courts
What happens when technology moves faster than the laws that govern it? That’s the major question before courts across the country, as cell phones, and the overwhelming amount of data they hold, become evidence. Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law that governs email communications, in 1986, a lifetime ago in the tech world. The […]
Don’t Mention It: Patriot Act
Ahead of the 2008 election, the Patriot Act was a major campaign issue. “I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom,” then-Senator Obama said in 2007. “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, […]