Metadata
108 Articles
EU-Funded Study: Electronic Mass Surveillance Fails – Drastically
(This article presents the results of research by the SURVEILLE [Surveillance: Ethical Issues, Legal Limitations, and Efficiency] consortium, a European Union-funded multidisciplinary…
Intercept Reporting Raises Broader Metadata Minimization Question
Does the NSA minimize Americans metadata? Today’s reporting by the Intercept calls into question whether the NSA minimizes so-called metadata relating to Americans’ digital…
Eleventh Circuit Says No to Warrantless Cell Tracking, Calls Other Metadata Programs Into Question
Today, the Eleventh Circuit rejected the exceedingly common law enforcement practice of warrantlessly tracking suspects’ physical location using cell phone tower data. The opinion,…
Michael Hayden: “We Kill People Based on Metadata”
[Editor’s note: See the video clip from the debate where General Hayden said “We kill people based on metadata” here.] I have a New York Review of Books blog up today on…
Getting Under the Hood of the HPSCI Bulk Collection Bill
While details on the president’s proposal to end NSA bulk collection of telephony records remain sparse, we do now have an actual piece of legislation to look at from the…
Some Questions About the President’s Phone-Records Proposal
In the New York Times, Charlie Savage reports that the administration intends to propose legislation that would end the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records. The legislation…
An End to Dragnet Surveillance?
The New York Times report that President Obama will call for an end to the bulk collection of American’s telephone metadata is yet further vindication for Edward Snowden in particular,…
DiFi vs CIA
More than a few folks have commented on the irony of Sen. Dianne Feinstein—perhaps the most vigorous defender of NSA’s controversial surveillance programs—flipping into…
How President Obama can fulfill his promise to end bulk collection of telephone metadata, while preserving intelligence capabilities
On January 17, President Obama promised to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of metadata on Americans’ phone calls under “section 215” (which is really…
RightsCon, March 3-5, San Francisco
Further to all our coverage of the use and abuse of digital technologies, I commend RightsCon to our readers—a gathering of the Silicon Valley (and beyond) tech community, digital…
The NSA’s Culture of “Legal Compliance” Still Breaks the Law
Lately the NSA has been on a public relations offensive that has two principal aims. First, the agency is trying to convince the public that a lot of the NSA’s bad press is based…
Why Does Microsoft Want a Global Convention on Government Access to Data?
Last month, Brad Smith, the General Counsel of Microsoft, called for an international convention on government access to consumer data (he was at Davos, so presumably he uploaded…