The Constitution provides a clear and simple rule for any time the government wants to search someone: it has to get a warrant, except in cases of emergency. However, the ACLU has documented how police across the U.S. are sidestepping that requirement when tracking people's location using their cell phones.

As Congress moves to take up the complex issues of cybersecurity, the National Security Agency is gaining traction in its aggressive campaign to secure statutory authority to monitor private computer networks in real time to prevent cyber attacks.

The Washington Post reports, that the NSA's quest to lead...

In the middle of one of the most contentious debates in Congress about intellectual property in recent memory, the MPAA appears to have finally found an analogy that it believes will persuade skeptics to support slash-and-burn piracy bills now before Congress: Google in China.

On Thursday, Variety

Today a remarkable "left/right" coalition that includes ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, TechFreedom, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and my own organization, the Center for Democracy & Technology, has launched a campaign urging Congress to require warrants when the...

In the wake of a number of high-profile computer invasions, Congress is looking to fight back against malicious hackers. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently announced hearings identifying its preferred legislative vehicle in that race: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the Obama...

It's always refreshing when a Member of Congress uses point-blank declarative statements that leave little room for misinterpretation. Such was the case today when Rep. James Sensenbrenner, (R-WI), opened a hearing on a bill that would require major ISPs, private and non-profit companies, libraries, coffee shops and diners...

When Apple announced its iCloud service, commentators spilled much ink wondering if the data of users would be safe from hackers. But an equally important angle to the story was ignored: whether the data in the cloud has enough legal protection to keep it from the prying eyes of the...

Government and private institutions from the Pentagon to Wall Street regularly face significant threats from unseen and unknown assailants in cyberspace -- from casual hackers to nation-state actors. The bipartisan desire in Washington to craft a national cybersecurity plan to address this broad range of threats has led to a...

Lewis Carrol once famously said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will do." But today, with the ascent of smartphones and other mobile devices, there are likely to be quite a few people who know exactly where you are going and where you have been. And...

Americans have always loved to watch a good odd-couple law enforcement pairing, from Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker to Tom Hanks and a French mastiff. Earlier this week, we got the real-life equivalent when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) released a memorandum of...

Last week Senator Al Franken made an important speech, calling Internet neutrality "the First Amendment issue of our time." If I had heard that claim a few years ago, I would have thought it verged on political hyperbole. But after reading the comments filed by major ISPs in...

At what age does society believe children should be able to manage their own online activities and their own personal information? Certainly a nine-year-old requires close adult supervision. And while a 12-year-old may be more Internet savvy, it is not unreasonable for the law to require parental involvement in decisions...

How do you use your Internet connection? Is it simply a way for you to get access to the news and entertainment handpicked by your ISP and offered up on portals like comcast.net, verizon.net, or rr.com? Is all you see and read at the mercy of some unseen editor, like...

After months of privacy missteps and growing user unrest Facebook pressed the reset button on its user privacy controls, announcing a set of simpler, top-level privacy controls that allow users to make informed and meaningful choices about how their personal information is shared and accessed...

[This posting has been updated.]

North Carolina tax collectors want Amazon.com to turn over the names, addresses and a full list of everything any resident of the that state bought from the online retailer in the last seven years. That's right, every book, every CD, every DVD or videotape, about...

In the wake of Google's announcement on Monday that they were redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored version of search through Hong Kong, there has been speculation about the impact of that action on other U.S. companies operating in China. Now GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name...

It's an old adage that bad cases make bad law, and today an Italian court made bad law that could sap the vitality from the Italian Internet and impact Internet freedom far beyond the Italian peninsula. The court convicted David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development, Peter Fleischer,...

Google's Buzz was a bust right out of the starting gate. The new stealth social media service--Buzz was launched without the usual public advance notice--was fraught with privacy concerns. The result was an immediate user backlash and firestorm of criticism from nearly every corner of the blogosphere. The ill-conceived release...

For the little we know about Google's bold decision to defy the stranglehold of censorship imposed on it by the Chinese government, there are volumes more we don't. I can imagine august business schools in years to come will dissect "The Google Ultimatum" in textbooks dedicated to corporate business strategies...

When a celebrity speaks about a cause of significant importance a lot of us listen. When that celebrity has the ability to make a real impact on that cause, we listen even more closely. And so is the case as it relates to U2's Bono, a respected human rights advocate...