A webcam scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district expanded Tuesday to include a second student alleging his school-issued laptop secretly snapped images of him. The brouhaha commenced in February, when a student of Lower Merion School District was called into an administrator’s office . Sophomore Blake Robbins was shown a picture of himself that officials suggested was him popping pills. The family claimed it …  Read More →

A webcam scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district expanded Tuesday to include a second student alleging his school-issued laptop secretly snapped images of him. The brouhaha commenced in February, when a student of Lower Merion School District was called into an administrator’s office . Sophomore Blake Robbins was shown a picture of himself that officials suggested was him popping pills. The family claimed it was candy. An invasion-of-privacy... 

A former NSA executive who is fighting government charges of leaking classified information was part of a group that pursued several sanctioned paths to report concerns about an agency spy program, but was repeatedly frustrated by the government’s inaction, according to a report Wednesday. Thomas Drake, now reduced to working at a Washington, D.C.-area Apple store while awaiting his trial, first notified his superiors at the National Security... 

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court provided no clear indication Tuesday whether it would uphold a voter-approved measure requiring California authorities to take a DNA sample from every adult arrested on felony accusations. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments for about an hour, in a civil rights lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union aimed at striking down the law. The ACLU argued... 

We’re not sure what’s more humorous: That California Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, maintains two unencrypted Wi-Fi networks at her residence, or that a consumer group sniffed her unsecured traffic in a bid to convince lawmakers to hold hearings about Google. A representative for Consumer Watchdog — a group largely funded by legal fees, the Rose Foundation, Streisand Foundation, Tides... 

How much does it cost to convince a federal judge your clients were victims of President Bush’s once-secret warrantless spy program? $2.63 million. That’s the combined payment a team of eight lawyers is demanding from the government after proving their clients were illegally wiretapped under a once-secret National Security Agency spy program adopted in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. The hourly rates range from $506 an hour... 

Welcome to the surveillance society. That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union concluded Tuesday with a report chronicling government spying and the detention of groups and individuals “for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.” The report, Policing Free Speech: Police Surveillance and Obstruction of First Amendment-Protected Activity (.pdf), surveys news accounts and studies of questionable... 

At least three lawsuits have been filed against search engine giant Google for collecting Wi-Fi user data through its Street View cameras. The lawsuits have been filed in California, Massachusetts and Oregon. They allege that Google violated federal and state privacy laws in collecting fragments of data from unencrypted wireless networks as its fleet of camera-equipped cars moseyed through neighborhoods snapping …  Read More →

A controversial remote administration program that a Pennsylvania school district installed on student-issued laptops contains a security hole that put the students at risk of being spied on by people outside the school, according to a security firm that examined the software. The LANrev program contains a vulnerability that would allow someone using the same network as one of the students to install malware on the laptop that…  Read More →

“I was expecting you,” suspected bomber Faisal Shahzad reportedly told the border patrol agents who seized him from his Dubai-bound flight Monday evening. And clearly the suspect should have been expecting agents, given the trail of clues he allegedly left behind and the wealth of media reports detailing the steps investigators were taking to close in on him. But even though Customs and Border Protection agents were also expecting... 

The number of wiretaps authorized by state and federal judges in criminal investigations jumped 26 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released Friday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. Federal officials requested 663 of the wiretaps, while 24 states accounted for 1,713 orders.... 

Prosecutors are claiming that a federal judge is hampering a criminal investigation into a webcam scandal at a Philadelphia suburban school district. The evidence prosecutors are seeking is connected to a federal civil lawsuit in which the plaintiff’s lawyers claim that the Lower Merion School District secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students using school-issued laptops without the pupils’ knowledge or consent. U.S.... 

A webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district is broadening, with lawyers claiming the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students using school-issued laptops without the pupils’ knowledge or consent. Some of the images included pictures of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed,” according to a Thursday filing in the case. Pupils’ online chats were also captured, as... 

The two American lawyers who were illegally wiretapped by the Bush administration asked a federal judge Friday to order the government to pay $612,000 in damages, plus legal fees for their attorneys. The demand (.pdf) comes two weeks after U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said the former administration wiretapped the lawyers’ telephone conversations (.pdf) without a warrant, in violation of federal law. It was the first ruling addressing... 

A former senior National Security Agency official was slammed with a 10-count indictment Thursday after allegedly leaking top secret information to a reporter at a national newspaper. Thomas Andrews Drake, 52, was a high-ranking NSA employee with access to signals intelligence documents when he repeatedly leaked classified information to the unnamed reporter, who ran stories based on the leaks between February 2006 and November 2007, the indictment...