Technology companies contend that court-imposed gag orders are being used too often by law enforcement and they violate the Bill of Rights. The companies also complain that law enforcement is casting a wide net over online communications — often too wide — in their investigations. “The Justice Dept is pushing the envelope,” said Jennifer Granick. Big companies like Apple and Microsoft have the wherewithal to push back, but smaller companies may cave rather than risk an expensive fight.   read more

An egg industry group's discussions about thwarting the sale of an eggless vegan spread were inappropriate, a yearlong investigation by the USDA has found. The investigation also determined that the American Egg Board should not have paid for pro-egg ads to appear online. While some of the antics involving the egg board and Hampton Creek may seem comic, the investigation underscores the murky and often contentious space occupied by checkoff programs, and the gaps in the USDA's oversight.   read more

Several consumer-advocacy groups praised the FCC's plan. The proposal was a good defense "against internet service providers' unpermitted use of personal information," Free Press Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia said. Drawing on customer information can help broadband providers make more money from digital advertising. Verizon, for example, bought AOL last year for $4.4 billion and is spending $4.8 billion more to buy Yahoo in a bid to build an ad business.   read more

Mitchell and Jessen earned $81 million to run the CIA torture program. Lawyer Ladin said allowing CIA officers to be questioned proves that the federal court system can "handle" high-profile cases involving torture. "No victim of terrorism interrogation has ever had their day in court," Ladin said. "The fact this case is moving forward shows that the victims will be able to seek accountability from two men who profited from their pain without the case being ignored due to 'state secrets.'"   read more

The expansion was first approved in 2012 then held up by environmentalists waging a legal campaign. Environmentalists with WildEarth Guardians had sued the Interior Dept to challenge the mine expansion, which extracts coal from publicly owned reserves, saying it would make climate change worse. "(Federal mining officials) want to say that this is a drop in the bucket. But every drop matters," Nichols said. "This is a huge resource locking in hundreds of millions of tons of carbon emissions."   read more

Visa CEO Scharf said 2014 the card networks, banks, merchants and trade groups got together "in a room"... The defendants argued that inviting merchants "in the room" makes allegations of a conspiracy implausible because retailers were the ones affected by the new rules, but the judge disagreed. "We would expect the giant retail chains to be involved in the planning..." Alsup wrote. "Run-of-the-mill merchants, like our plaintiffs, are the ones to suffer under the liability shift."   read more

President Obama’s central plank in his strategy to combat climate change is in danger. His plan to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from the nation’s power sector could be undone within a matter of weeks by an unlikely bipartisan collection of senators that includes staunch Republican climate change deniers as well as Democrats who support the administration’s strategy. They want to force the government to assume that burning forests to generate electricity is "a renewable energy source."   read more

On one recording, a DMV worker tells a person asking for an ID that she's not guaranteed to get one. Other workers incorrectly say that no temporary voting credentials are available. Another DMV worker says it could take weeks to get an ID without a birth certificate. "This evidence makes clear that the State does not have — and is incapable of implementing — a functioning safety net for its strict voter ID law," said an OWI attorney.   read more

“It could be the case that people’s political orientations are an anchoring point for applying their knowledge — rather than the other way around,” the Pew report said. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who is working to get members of his party to accept climate change, said that language used to discuss the issue has, in part, created the gap in the perceptions of liberals and conservatives. Part of it is that climate change has been framed as a question of belief, he said.   read more

New York’s first legal hemp farm in decades has taken root under a pilot program that’s part of a national resurgence of a plant that’s prized for making food, clothing and shelter but long banned along with its smokable cousin. Hemp has been used for millennia as a source of oil, protein and fiber used in clothing, rope and paper. Modern uses include cosmetics, nutritional supplements, biofuels, building materials and pharmaceuticals.   read more

When Karen Savage and Cherri Foytlin wrote an article about the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill of 2010, they thought it might get a few moments of attention and then fade away. More than three years later, Savage and Foytlin are still defending their article after being sued by a scientific consulting company. The battle is headed to the highest court in Massachusetts. Arguments are scheduled for Friday.   read more

The FOIA requests that Jeffrey Scudder eventually filed have aimed to uncover not the juicy details of any specific historical event, but the annals of the agency's internal scholarly magazine, Studies in Intelligence. Scudder's latest lawsuit — co-filed with academics Ken Osgood, a history professor the Colorado School of Mines; Hugh Wilford, a history professor California State University; and Mark Stout, who directs Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins — goes a step farther.   read more

The sprawling encampment that's a living protest against the four-state Dakota Access pipeline has most everything it needs to be self-sustaining — food, firewood, fresh water and shelter. Everything, that is, except permission to be on the federal land in North Dakota. Federal officials say they won't evict the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires camp, due to free speech reasons, even though it's on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land.   read more

When Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy in 2015 — its second time in three years — environmentalists and regulators were prepared for the company to figure out ways to shunt liabilities and maximize returns. But no one could have envisioned what happened next. Patriot handed over millions of dollars of environmental obligations to a nonprofit company run by a man named Tom Clarke, who owned a chain of nursing homes and a tourist attraction that had fallen behind on its bills.   read more

Hackers have targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states in recent months, a Homeland Security Department official said Friday. The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns that foreign hackers might undermine voter confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections.   read more

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from the bench Friday for defying the U.S. Supreme Court on gay marriage, more than a decade after he was ousted for disobeying a federal order to take down a 2 ½-ton monument to the Ten Commandments. The nine-member Alabama Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore without pay for the remainder of his term. While the court stopped short of outright removing him as they did in 2003, the punishment has the same effect.   read more