EFF has a report on the terms of service WSJ and AJ offer leakers using their WikiLeaks competitor sites. I had already heard that WSJ offered almost no technical security (which EFF describes), but it turns out neither offer much in the way of confidentiality guarantees. Despite promising anonymity, security and confidentiality, [Al Jazeera Transparency [...]

Maris Taylor has an important update on the OLC exigent letter opinion. Last year, DOJ’s now-retired Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report revealing how the FBI had used exigent letters to get call data information from telecoms with no oversight. Ryan Singel noted a reference to an OLC opinion that basically melted away the [...]

Three significant pieces of news, taken together, show that the Courts continue to chip away at Bush-and-now-Obama’s domestic surveillance programs. FISA Court Encourages Government to Stop Collecting Some Metadata First, and potentially most importantly, the FISA Court, after learning more about what the collection of telecom metadata entailed, raised some concerns with the government, leading [...]

The 9th Circuit wrote a really fascinating opinion in the EFF FOIA. The Circuit was dealing with three questions regarding EFF’s FOIA of the documents pertaining to telecom lobbying leading up to the passage of PAA and FAA. Those three questions are: Whether FOIA Exemption 3 (protection of sources and methods) applies Whether FOIA Exemption [...]

Just two days ago we were discussing the status of EFF v. ODNI, the FOIA case in NDCA where disclosure is being sought of documents evidencing the telecom lobbying on immunity for corporate participation in Bush’s surveillance program. As you will recall, Judge White had denied the various stay attempts put forth by the government [...]

Judge Jeffrey S. White has entered a new order in the NDCA denying the government’s request for a stay pending appeal in the telco documents FOIA case brought by the EFF . And he did it before the government ever even really asked for a stay!

The government motion for an emergency stay reveals how Congress and the executive branch and the contractors they employ to spy on the American people have become on indistinguishable blob.

One thing about the EFF document dump is immediately apparent. There is one trace–a phone slip–of any conversations between ODNI personnel and the phone companies.