The National Security Agency (NSA) during the last years of the George W. Bush administration committed “flagrant” violations of Americans’ privacy rights by conducting illegal searches of phone records, according to newly disclosed government documents. The Obama administration released 14 documents that showed a judge serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reprimanded the NSA four years ago for going through the phone records of Americans without proper authorization.   read more

About 130 million Americans own smartphones, which from a personal privacy perspective aren’t all that smart given the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ability to pry into them. Secret NSA documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed to the German newspaper Der Spiegel that the U.S. government spends a lot of time thinking about and finding ways to infiltrate smartphones. The government can obtain all kinds of information about a person by hacking into just a single phone.   read more

The Obama administration has been accused of subverting the law and violating civil liberties by using border crossings as an opportunity to seize the personal property of individuals not accused of committing any crime. A fundraiser for the legal defense of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Private Bradley Manning, David House had his laptop, camera, thumb drive and cellphone seized by border patrol agents upon returning from a trip to Mexico in November 2010.   read more

Suspicion has lasted for decades over the mysterious crash of the plane carrying the United Nations’ top official more than 50 years ago. A new investigation of the accident says evidence may exist that could prove the aircraft was shot down, and that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) could possess some of this evidence.   read more

The biggest culprit, experts say, are cars and other forms of road transportation. Vehicles were found to cause 53,000 early fatalities, followed by power plants with 52,000. Steven Barrett, an MIT assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics who took part in the study, said a premature death was defined as one occurring about 10 years earlier due to exposure to air pollution than might otherwise happen.   read more

According to the brief, the NSA domestic spying program undermines one of the key reforms included in FISA: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which is supposed to supervise surveillance activities and which is “empowered…to consider each instance of placing an electronic wiretap.” “In contrast,” say Mondale and Hart, “the NSA’s program…delegates such oversight to the executive, leaving all further inquiries of the databases to the agency involved.”   read more

The full court held that because the text message was not labeled as either “classified” or “sensitive,” MacLean’s disclosure may be protected by the Whistleblower Act if he believed his leak helped expose dangers to public safety. George Randy Taylor, head of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association’s air marshal unit and also a former whistleblower, said MacLean had suffered legal harassment for “raising the B.S. flag on mismanagement.”   read more

With flavors like raspberry, peach and watermelon, e-cigarettes are proving an enticing sin for young people who may never have tried traditional cigarettes filled with tobacco. And though e-cigs may be less harmful than their predecessors, they are causing concerns among health officials who worry about the growing number of people smoking the high-tech alternatives.   read more

Civil libertarians envision RFIDs as tracking devices by the authorities to monitor the movements of law-abiding citizens. Privacy advocates worry about it contributing to a future where myriad data sources, public and surreptitious, feed into a central database that can be accessed by unknown parties, marketed everywhere and hacked at will. RFID proponents say the technology can be made safe and secure by using encryption and random number generators.   read more

At one time in American politics, the recall election was rarely used, and reserved for ousting politicians who had broken the law or committed ethical violations. But these days the recall campaign has become a popular tool of parochial politics embraced by both conservatives and liberals using it to remove elected officials whose transgressions amounted to making unpopular decisions.   read more

The preferred solution is to restrict the sales of common medications containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient used to make methamphetamine. That’s what Mississippi did three years ago, following along after Oregon put pseudoephedrine products like Sudafed, Advil Cold & Sinus, Allegra D and Claritin D back on a prescription-only basis. Officials in Mississippi claimed removing these medications from over-the-counter sales reduced meth lab incidents by 80%.   read more

The plume has polluted 13 trillion gallons of groundwater, and is advancing northwest at a rate of about 300 feet per year. It already has reached the Cedar River, which connects to Lake Michigan through a chain of lakes. There have been no human health studies conducted in Mancelona, and citizens are concerned that the decades of contamination may have caused an increase in the cancer rate.   read more

Scientists believe there is a minimum of 320,000 viruses in mammals awaiting discovery. About 70% of these—called zoonoses—have the capability to cross over into humans. Given the sheer size of this number, the researchers say it is more vital than ever to devote resources to identify possible threats to human health and find ways to mitigate them before large numbers of people become sick.   read more

If arrested and placed in the back of police car, anything said by a suspect can be used against them in court, including remarks captured on video. Numerous individuals in Florida have learned this lesson the hard way. Miranda rights inform suspects that they don’t have to say anything to police after being apprehended. This applies not only in an interrogation room at a police station, but also in the rear of a cop car.   read more

Microsoft and Google each filed litigation in June citing their rights under the First Amendment to explain their roles in the NSA intel gathering. This move was vital, the companies argued, to refute criticism that they had collaborated in the snooping. But after getting nowhere with these initial legal maneuvers, the Internet giants decided to join forces.   read more

“[T]he results from the first 12 months [were] striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed police officers wearing cameras on any given day, the department overall had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that officers with cameras used force 60% less often.   read more