The NSA might be reading your searches, but your local police probably aren’t. The former monitoring base of the NSA in Germany. (Matthias Schrader/AP) Thursday's surveillance state hullabaloo turned out to be a bust. But now that we’ve all calmed down a bit about the supposed risks of searching for pressure cookers, it’s worth looking at when law enforcement can actually see what you’ve been Googling -- and perhaps more importantly, when they cannot. Considering all the recent revelations about the NSA’s surveillance program, it’s easy to assume (as many did Thursday) that warrantless snooping by law-enforcement agencies is a regular occurrence.
But that is, thankfully, not the case. We asked Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to lay out exactly when and how state and federal law enforcement can obtain a record of your Google searches. 1. 2. 3. All this goes to show that your local police will never be able to spy on your searches unless you’ve done something to convince a judge that you’re up to no good. Continue reading. News from The Associated Press. WASHINGTON (AP) -- With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans' calls and emails. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.
President George W. Bush authorized the "President's Surveillance Program" in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. If no legislation is passed, the Patriot Act provisions would expire. Spy satellites fighting crime from space. Months after the murder of Rania Alayed, the search for her body had ground to a halt. Although her husband -- who had admitted to her killing -- indicated the approximate location where he buried the body off a highway near Manchester, northern England, police were still left with miles of open field to dig through.
Frustrated with the high cost and lack of progress, investigators turned to an experimental form of satellite imaging. "We had been using aerial photography, and the opportunity came up to look at a larger expanse," said detective superintendent Peter Marsh, of Greater Manchester Police. "It allowed us to identify anomalies on the ground, which we could search straight away. " The satellite was sensitive enough to pick up a rabbit hole under bushes, and the disturbance caused by shotgun shells used in clay pigeon shooting. By systematically eliminating possible sites of the grave, police say their eye in the sky has saved them months of fruitless work.
Obama’s Speech on N.S.A. Phone Surveillance. Continue reading the main story Video Following is the text of President Obama’s speech on National Security Agency data collection programs, as transcribed by the White House. MR. OBAMA: At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the “The Sons of Liberty” was established in Boston. And the group’s members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America’s early Patriots.
Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms. Throughout this evolution, we benefited from both our Constitution and our traditions of limited government. In fact, even the United States proved not to be immune to the abuse of surveillance. The horror of September 11th brought all these issues to the fore. It is hard to overstate the transformation America’s intelligence community had to go through after 9/11. Why is this necessary? Thank you. How GPS tracking threatens our privacy. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will confront the profound impact of new location-tracking technologies on Americans' privacy. The case, U.S. v. Jones, presents the question of whether law enforcement needs a warrant before planting a GPS tracking device on a person's car. The answer to this question is important in its own right, but the case is likely to have broader implications.
Attaching a GPS to a car isn't the only way the government can track people's movements. In fact, everyone with a cell phone is already carrying a device that the government can use to track his or her location. As a result, the principle at stake in this case may well shape our privacy rights in the years and decades to come. The police in the current case suspected Antoine Jones of drug violations and tracked his movements continuously for one month by installing a GPS device on his car.
Catherine Crump Cell phone tracking can reveal our private associations and relationships with one another. Long Beach police to use 400 cameras citywide to fight crime - latimes. Long Beach police now have eyes everywhere. Battling a worsening budget and seeking to make Long Beach one of the safest big cities, Police Chief Jim McDonnell is turning to more than 400 cameras citywide as a solution. Although the city has a few dozen cameras across the community, McDonnell has set up a system to tap into hundreds of privately owned cameras that are part of the city's streetscape.
The new program synchronizes law enforcement data with real-time video feeds from parks, beaches, business corridors and even some retail centers. Dubbed Long Beach Common Operating Picture, or Long Beach COP, the "state-of-the-art program" was unveiled this week by McDonnell and Mayor Bob Foster. "We are using every technology advantage to improve safety in this city. Long Beach officers will now know even before they arrive what potential threats they face," McDonnell said. "It will help us to respond to crimes better and prevent other crimes.
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