A federal appeals court said Tuesday the government may obtain cell-site information that mobile phone carriers retain on their customers without a probable-cause warrant under the Fourth Amendment. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (.pdf) was not, however, an outright Obama administration victory. Lower courts, the three-judge panel wrote, could demand the government show probable cause — the warrant standard —... 

Yahoo and federal prosecutors in Colorado are embroiled in a privacy battle that’s testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail. The  legal dust-up, unsealed late Tuesday, concerns a 1986 law that already allows the government to obtain a suspect’s e-mail from an ISP or webmail provider without a probable-cause warrant, once it’s been stored for 180 days or more. The government... 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a planned trip to Washington next week for President Barack Obama’s 47-country nuclear security summit conference. He made the decision after learning Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal at the conference, a senior government official said on Friday. Israel is believed to be This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National... 

In what is no doubt going to become a very controversial decision, The New York Times is reporting that President Obama said Monday that he will revamp American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, even in self defense. The report also states the president is carving This story comes to us via Homeland  Read More →

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties Knight In Shining Armor many were expecting. Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted . The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the... 

Web tool will increase transparency, collaboration as part of Open Government Initiative Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced the launch of a new online public engagement tool designed to solicit input from the public on ways to enhance transparency, participation, collaboration and innovation at the Department—part of President Obama’s Open Government Directive. “Creating This story comes... 

From healthcare to public debt, pundits are attacking President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address from almost every conceivable angle. When it comes to Obama transparency, Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy attorney Kurt Opsahl points out that the chief executive told the American public one thing Wednesday night and a federal appeals court another just a few weeks ago. The issue at hand surrounds lobbying. “It’s... 

President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address to unveil a new plan for a better and quicker response to bioterrorism threats and attacks. Government leaders will be told to rethink their plans for medical countermeasures so that quick, reliable and affordable antidotes will be available during any public health emergency, White This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America’s... 

A federal judge is dismissing lawsuits accusing the government of teaming with the nation’s telcos to funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision was a major blow to the two suits testing warrantless eavesdropping and executive branch powers implemented following the 2001 terror attacks. The San Francisco judge said the courts are... 

Brian Ross reports that although there is no specific threat President Obama has ordered a “surge” of federal air marshals to be in place by Feb.1 in what officials said was a “race against time,” with other suicide bombers believed to be in the terrorist pipeline. Under a preliminary plan according to the report, the officials This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert... 

President Obama stated for the first time on Saturday that a branch of Al Qaeda based in Yemen was behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing of  Read More →

It took seven months but President Obama has finally found someone to take the cybersecurity czar job no one wanted. Howard Schmidt,  a former Microsoft security executive and a one-time cybersecurity adviser to President George W. Bush, has been appointed to the position of cybersecurity coordinator, according to a White House announcement Tuesday. Schmidt served as vice chair, and then chair, of the President’s Critical Infrastructure... 

This is an item worth paying attention to. It seems as though many folks have concluded that last week’s incursion by Iranian forces into Iraq, and onto an old oil well, was a minor, meaningless story. A popular, benign, interpretation is that it was just a few, rogue Iranian forces foolishly hoisting a flag onto a This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America’s trusted source... 

The Obama administration announced Tuesday it supports loosening international copyright protections to enable cross-border distribution of special-format reading materials for the blind, a move that puts it at odds with nearly all of U.S. industry. The government announced its support for the underlying principle of the WIPO Treaty for Sharing Accessible Formats of Copyrighted Works for Persons Who are Blind or Have other Reading Disabilities....