Privacy law

data

EU launches new data privacy rules amid enforcement uncertainty

It is unclear how many provisions of the new rule set will be interpreted and enforced. Only 40 percent of companies affected by the rules are expected to be fully compliant by May 25.

Municipal police officers watch screens in the video surveillance control room of the municipal police supervision centre in Nice February 9, 2015.

The French government’s new surveillance law opens the door to NSA-style mass surveillance

Technology
planeA Lufthansa aircraft flies past the headquarters of Germanwings during take-off from Cologne-Bonn airport.

In Germany, the public doesn’t always have a need — or a right — to know

Global Politics
Facebook

Meet the Irish man responsible for protecting millions of Facebook users

Arts, Culture & Media
Phone

Here’s a primer on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Global Politics

Obama proposes series of changes to rules governing NSA surveillance

Global Politics

President Barack Obama met the media on Friday and started the Q&A session with a series of proposals for changes to the rules and laws that govern the NSA surveillance program. It’s unclear, at this stage, whether these changes, fairly modest in nature, will quiet the outcry that has been brewing.

James Rosen case prompts frank discuss about balance between First Amendment, national security

Global Politics

The Justice Department has launched an unprecedented crackdown on leaks within the government — going so far as to seize the phone records of several AP journalists and searching the personal email of a Fox News correspondent. The crackdown has prompted an outcry from media and civil rights advocates.

Transparency, Secrecy and Freedom: The History of Privacy and Democracy

As we learn more about the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs and leaker Edward Snowden, The Takeaway is looking at freedom in America, and freedom’s relationship to privacy. In a recent article for The New Yorker, staff writer and professor of American history at Harvard University  Jill Lepore explores the relationship between privacy, government transparency […]

Cell Phone Data a Legal Gray Area in the Courts

What happens when technology moves faster than the laws that govern it?  That’s the major question before courts across the country, as cell phones, and the overwhelming amount of data they hold, become evidence.   Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the  law that governs email communications, in 1986, a lifetime ago in the tech world. The […]

Don’t Mention It: Patriot Act

Ahead of the 2008 election, the Patriot Act was a major campaign issue. “I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom,” then-Senator Obama said in 2007. “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, […]