The Supreme Court on Monday upheld (pdf) Indiana�s voter-identification law, declaring that a requirement to produce photo identification is not unconstitutional and that the state has a �valid interest� in improving election procedures as well as deterring fraud. EPIC had submitted a brief (pdf) detailing problems with the law. "Not only has the state failed to establish the need for the voter identification law or to address the disparate impact of the law, the state's voter ID system is imperfect, and relies on a flawed federal identification system."
People learning through genetic testing that they might be susceptible to devastating diseases wouldn't also have to worry about losing their jobs or their health insurance under anti-discrimination legislation the Senate passed Thursday. The 95-0 Senate vote sends the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act back to the House, which could approve it early next week. President Bush supports the legislation. The bill, described by Sen. Edward Kennedy as "the first major new civil rights bill of the new century," would bar health insurance companies from using genetic information to set premiums or determine enrollment eligibility. Similarly, employers could not use genetic information in hiring, firing or promotion decisions.
The FBI on Wednesday called for new legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for "illegal activity." The suggestion from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which came during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, appears to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks. Mueller seemed to suggest that the bureau should have a broad "omnibus" authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well. If any omnibus Internet-monitoring proposal became law, it could implicate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. In general, courts have ruled that police need search warrants to obtain the content of communication.
The Supreme Court of New Jersey became the first court in the nation yesterday to rule that people have an expectation of privacy when they are online, and law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information. In state proceedings, the ruling will take precedence over what attorneys describe as weaker U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hold there is no right to privacy on the internet. "The reality is that people do expect a measure of privacy when they use the Internet," said Grayson Barber, a lawyer representing the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among other groups that filed friend-of-the-court briefs (pdf) in the case.
States are moving to conduct familial searches of criminal databases, looking for close-to-perfect matches with DNA from crime scenes. A partial match with a convicted criminal could implicate a brother or daughter or father of the convict. Such searches, advocates say, constitute a powerful law enforcement tool that, experts say, could increase by 40 percent the number of suspects identified through DNA. But the technique is arousing fierce objections from privacy advocates, who maintain that it turns family members into genetic informants without their knowledge or consent. They complain that it takes material collected for one purpose and uses it for another. And with the nation's DNA database disproportionately comprised of minority offenders, they say, it amounts to placing a class of Americans under greater scrutiny merely because their relatives have committed crimes.
In schools across the country, cell phones go on and cell phones get confiscated, often on a daily basis. Students may lose their beloved phone for the rest of the school day. But they don't expect to lose their privacy. "Schools need to understand that just because a student uses a cell phone when he or she is not supposed to doesn't mean the school has a license to go in and read their private messages," said Ann Brick, an ACLU staff attorney in San Francisco. "It's like rummaging through their private letters."
The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database. The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes, and it will build on a growing policy among states to collect DNA from many people who are arrested. Thirteen states do so now and turn their data over to the federal government. Although fingerprints have long been collected for virtually every arrestee, privacy advocates say the new policy expands the DNA database, run by the FBI, beyond its initial aim of storing information on the perpetrators of violent crimes.
The Bush administration said that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority. The administration in May 2007 gave DHS authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response. But Congress delayed launch of the new office last October. Critics cited its potential to expand the role of military assets in domestic law enforcement, to turn new or as-yet-undeveloped technologies against Americans without adequate public debate, and to divert the existing civilian and scientific focus of some satellite work to security uses.
Microsoft has proposed a tiered approach to protecting the privacy of people targeted by online advertising, saying advertisers should get permission before using sensitive, personally identifiable information to deliver ads. Microsoft filed comments on Friday in response to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's request for comments on its proposed privacy principles that would be self-administered by the online advertising industry. Microsoft's proposal operates under the idea that the greater the risk to privacy, the greater the protection data should receive, Microsoft officials said.
Pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained a Memorandum of Understanding (pdf) between the FBI and the Virginia State Police that limits the state's open government law. The agreement requires the state agency to comply with federal regulations that restrict the disclosure of public records about the Virginia Fusion Center that would otherwise be available to the public. But many other documents that EPIC is seeking about the fusion center and communications between the State Police and federal agencies have not yet been disclosed. At a hearing today in Richmond, a District Court judge required the State Police to produce all records that EPIC has sought by Monday, April 14. The Virginia Governor is currently considering a bill that would limit the state's open government and privacy laws for the Virginia Fusion Center.
D.C. officials are giving police access to more than 5,000 closed-circuit TV cameras citywide that monitor traffic, schools and public housing � a move that will give the District one of the largest surveillance networks in the country. "The primary benefit of what we're doing is for public health and safety," said Darrell Darnell, director of the city's Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. But camera opponents counter that the devices are not an effective crime deterrent and can result in an intrusion on citizens' privacy. "When you look at [police] statistics, the first thing you noticed was that they don't account for displacement, where you put a camera up on one street and the drug dealer goes to the next street," said Melissa Ngo, senior counsel and director of the Identification and Surveillance Project at the District-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. "That is not cutting down on crime so much as moving it."
California first lady Maria Shriver is among more than 30 celebrities and other high-profile patients who had their confidential records breached at UCLA Medical Center, medical officials said. The woman responsible, whose name was not released, is the same employee who sneaked into actress Farrah Fawcett's medical records, officials told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. That worker was fired in May 2007 after UCLA learned of the widespread breaches, but patients were not notified, the hospital said. In all, the woman improperly looked at 61 patients' medical records in 2006 and 2007, according to state and local medical officials.
The online behavior of a small but growing number of computer users in the United States is monitored by their Internet service providers, who have access to every click and keystroke that comes down the line. The companies harvest the stream of data for clues to a person's interests, making money from advertisers who use the information to target their online pitches. The practice represents a significant expansion in the ability to track a household's Web use because it taps into Internet connections, and critics liken it to a phone company listening in on conversations.
The two Sacramento sheriff detectives tailed their suspect, Rolando Gallego, at a distance. They did not have a court order to compel him to give a DNA sample, but their assignment was to get one anyway � without his knowledge. The practice, known among law enforcement officials as �surreptitious sampling,� is growing in popularity even as defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates argue that it violates a constitutional right to privacy. Critics argue that by covertly collecting DNA contained in the minute amounts of saliva, sweat and skin that everyone sheds in the course of daily life, police officers are exploiting an unforeseen loophole in the requirement to show �probable cause� that a suspect has committed a crime before conducting a search.
Maine has until Wednesday to agree to driver's licenses changes demanded by the federal government or face the consequences of having Maine driver's licenses rejected as valid identification at the nation's airports come May 11. DHS all but told the state Monday that it was the country's "weakest link" and that the state needed to change its licensing ways or face the fed's wrath. Maine is now the lone state not to have been given an extension to long-delayed Real ID regulations, after three fellow protesting states -- Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- got their extensions in the last two weeks despite not pledging allegiance to Real ID.
The Internet must be open during the Beijing Olympics. That was the message a top-ranking International Olympic Committee official delivered Tuesday to Beijing organizers during the first of three days of meetings - the last official sessions between IOC inspectors and the Chinese hosts before the games begin in just over four months. Beijing routinely blocks Chinese access to some foreign news Web sites and blogs, a practice it has stepped up since rioting broke out over two weeks ago in Tibet. Kevan Gosper, vice chairman of the IOC coordinating commission, said restricting access to the Internet during the games "would reflect very poorly" on the host nation.
