While the validity of the charges in the Megaupload indictment will take years to work its way through the courts, and many will have little sympathy because of the amounts of money the defendants earned, consider the case of British student Richard O'Dwyer.

O'Dwyer set up a site in his basement, TV Shack.net. He didn't download copyrighted material, he just provided links to it. His site was hosted on servers located in the UK, not the U.S. His site did not violate laws in the U.K. But the U.S. charged him with criminal copyright violations and sought his extradition. A few weeks ago, a court in the U.K. ordered his extradition. He will now come to the U.S. where he is facing two crimes, each with a 5 year penalty. [More...]

The FBI has published a solicitation seeking applications capable of massive social media datamining. It says it is conducting "market research."

The Federal Bureau of Investigations is conducting market research to determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social media application. The tool at a minimum should be able to meet the operational and analytical needs described in the attachment.

......All submitted solutions should include price estimates for the respective solution(s) which will be reviewed and used for market research and planning purposes.

You can download the solicitation packet here, or read it here. [More...]

The Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee has released a new report warning of the potential for privacy invasion in proposed cybersecurity intitiatives, especially those providing for sharing of information between the government and private sector. The full report is here.

It is important that our nation develop and operate cybersecurity programs and policies to these vulnerabilities. These programs, however, pose a potential threat to Americans’ privacy rights and civil liberties. As proposals have arisen that would enable the federal government to move toward monitoring all information transferred over private networks, individuals face the risk of being subjected to the equivalent of a perpetual “wiretap” on their private communications and web browsing behavior.

[More...]

A federal judge in Virginia has refused to stay a federal subpoena issued to Twitter for three user accounts associated with Wikileaks. The opinion is here.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp had asked the Court to stay the subpoena pending an appeals court challenge. A federal magistrate judge upheld the subpoenas in November.

The [Magistrate]Judge rejected the users' claims under the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment as well as their other arguments. She says there is no right of privacy in your IP address if you turn it over to a third party like Twitter. Wikileaks has said in the past it believes similar subpoenas went out to Google and Facebook.

The Government sought the subpoenas in connection with its grand jury investigation into Wikileaks. You can read the subpoena here. The judge that issued Wednesday's opinion said the three had little chance of prevailing in the appellate court. [More...]

This video featuring Hillary Clinton,produced a few weeks ago by the State Department, is yet another example of the differences between a Republican and Democrat Administration. Can you imagine it coming from a Secretary of State appointed by Romney or Gingrich?

The media's obsessive focus on Iowa is beyond annoying. Who cares which Republican wins? What matters is keeping a Democrat in the White House and gaining enough of a Democratic majority in Congress to reduce the need to compromise and capitulate. Whether it's civil liberties, Medicare or the war on drugs, Republicans are always worse. They really don't deserve the attention they have been getting lately.

On December 14, the Suffolk District Attorney issued a subpoena to Twitter for information related to Occupy Boston and some members of Anonymous. The ACLU moved to quash on First Amendment grounds. Today, the judge upheld the subpoena.

Twitter released the subpoena to the account holders of those named, @p0isAn0n @OccupyBoston #BostonPD #d0xcak3, who in turn posted it online. You can read it here. The subpoena also sought “IP address logs for account creation and for the period December 8, 2011 to December 13, 2011."

In this pastebin press release, an Anonymous member or supporter posted the reasons the subpoena was invalid.

More here.

It's good that Twitter provided the subpoena to the affected account holders. It's bad that a judge has upheld a subpoena for a hashtag. The ACLU has said it may appeal.

TSA searches have been expanding in recent months, thanks to its 25 Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response Teams which conduct random checks without suspicion. First authorized in 2005, they are now increasingly being used at train stations. The checks are being noticed at LA's Union Station. An additional 12 teams are planned for 2012. Since last summer, the VIPR teams have conducted 9,300 suspicionless searches.

What's a Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response Team? According to TSA:

The U.S. has added another surveillance drone to the Southwest border to aid in the war on drugs. It's in Sierra Vista, AZ.

The Predator-B drone is based at the National Air Security Operations Center in Sierra Vista, a few miles north of the Mexico border in southeast Arizona, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said.

The addition brings CBP's fleet of surveillance drones along the nearly 2,000-mile southwest border with Mexico to six. Four are based at the Arizona center, and two more overfly the border from Corpus Christi, Texas.

The addition was authorized in the supplemental budget provisions of August 2010. CBP's press release is here. CBP's list of top seizures for 2011 is here.

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has rejected South Carolina's Voter ID law on the grounds that it discriminates against minorities.

The law, passed in May and signed by Gov. Nikki Haley ®, requires voters to show a driver’s license or one of several other forms of photo identification.

....The rejection leaves the state with the option of trying to get the law approved by a federal court or passing another law and submitting it to the Justice Department.

It's good to see the Justice Department stepping up to the plate.

The Justice Department, concluding that there is no legal basis to place greater restrictions on the purchase of guns by lawful immigrants as opposed to citizens, is dropping a policy that did just that.

Here's the letter the ATF has sent out to federal gun licensees.

The Department of Justice (the Department) has recently concluded that, as a matter of law, applying a more stringent State residency requirement for aliens legally present in the U.S. than for U.S. citizens is incompatible with the language of the GCA. As a result, ATF will be revising the regulations in 27 C.F.R. Part 478 to conform to the Department’s conclusions by removing the separate 90-day residency requirement for aliens. Once the regulations have been revised, both U.S. citizens and aliens legally present in the U.S. will be subject to the same requirements for State residency

The Guardian and CNN have good recaps of Bradley Manning's hearing this week.

David Coombs, Manning's lead defense counsel, seemed for focus on two major issues - the Army's lack of response to Manning's emotional and behavior problems as well lack of security in the SCIF where Manning worked in Iraq.

The judge/hearing officer is to make his recommendation to the special Court Martial Convening Authority. by Jan. 16 as to whether Manning should face a full courts-martial proceeding. If convicted of the charges, Manning faces a potential life sentence.

The Department of Justice has released its findings into the investigation of East Haven, CT police practices. A fuller version of the findings is here.

Based on our investigation, we find that the East Haven Police Department engages in discriminatory policing against Latinos including: targeting Latinos for discriminatory traffic enforcement; treating Latino drivers more harshly than non-Latino drivers after traffic stops; and intentionally and woefully failing to design and implement internal systems of control that would identify, track, and prevent such misconduct.

The pattern or practice of discriminatory policing that we observed is deeply rooted in the Police Department’s culture and substantially interferes with the ability of the Department to deliver services to the entire East Haven community.

Background is here and here.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced today that Maricopa County has been terminated from the controversial 287(g) Secure Communities program as a result of the Justice Department's report today finding civil rights violations.

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is troubled by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program.

DHS will utilize federal resources for the purpose of identifying and detaining those individuals who meet U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) immigration enforcement priorities. The Department will continue to enforce federal immigration laws in Maricopa County in smart, effective ways that focus our resources on criminal aliens, recent border crossers, repeat and egregious immigration law violators and employers who knowingly hire illegal labor.”

Now it's time to end Secure Communities.

The ACLU has released a report on domestic use of drones. Shorter version: They are coming, to be used as tools of law enforcement in spying on all of us.

Unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life. Many Americans have heard of these aircraft, commonly called “drones,” because of their use overseas in places like Afghanistan and Yemen. But drones are coming to America, and, as an ACLU report concludes, protections must be put in place to guard our privacy

It is anticipated that the FAA will propose new rules early in 2012 that would make it easier for law enforcement agencies to get permission to use drones in the U.S.

The full report is here.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has released its investigative report on Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa Sheriff's Deaprtment. It finds serious civil rights violations. The full report is here.

The report finds "a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations." The Department is seeking a written agreement from the Department and implementation of federal oversight. If it refuses, it will file a civil suit to force compliance. [More...]