ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Congress Created a Monster

Those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says have been arguing since the late 1970s that congressional efforts to strengthen national security by weakening personal liberty are unconstitutional, un-American and ineffective. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's use of the CIA and the FBI to spy on his political opponents, has unleashed demons that now seem beyond the government's control and are more pervasive than anything Nixon could have dreamed of.  ... MORE

Government Eyes Are Watching Every Move You Make

by John W. Whitehead.  Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in   ... MORE

Ed Snowden Thinks A Global iPhone Attack Will Happen This Year As A Result Of The FBI's Battle With Apple

by Jason Lederman. A grim prediction in the wake the FBI's battle with Apple. In the wake of the FBI's legal battle with Apple, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has made a bold prediction. Snowden wrote in a pair of tweets today that he believes iPhones around the world will be globally compromised by August, due to the FBI's "refusal ... MORE

The Crypto Wars Are About Power, Not Terrorism

by Andrea Castillo.        The FBI may have been able to unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s work-related iPhone without conscripting Apple as an unwilling hacker, but that has not slowed down the government’s broader war on encrypted technologies one bit. It didn’t take long for another tragic terrorist attack, this one in Belgium, ... MORE

Apple Engineers Say They’d Rather Quit Than Help FBI

by Maya Kosoff.   Individual liberty still valued in some quarters. The public battle between Apple and the federal government has taken a defiant new turn, as some Apple engineers say they would refuse to help the federal government break into their company’s devices. Engineers at the company have already talked about who would have to help   ... MORE

Apple Says U.S Founders Would Be Appalled By DOJ Order

by Kevin Johnson and Elizabeth Weise.    Apple Inc. charged Tuesday that a court order forcing the tech giant to assist the federal government in unlocking the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook was based on non-existent authority asserted by the Justice Department. "According to the government, short of kidnapping ... MORE

Surprise! NSA Data Will Soon Routinely Be Used For Domestic Policing That Has Nothing To Do With Terrorism

by Radley Balko. Everyone is presumed guilty. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will  ... MORE

Obama And The Justice Dept. May Be Losing The P.R. Battle Over Encryption, But Watch The Larger War

by Scott Shackford.   Nobody believes it’s ‘just one phone.’   The government fight to access your private digital data has another front brewing. The Department of Justice wants to be able to listen in on conversations on WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging and phone service owned by Facebook. Everybody who knows anything about       ... MORE

VIDEO: John Oliver - Encryption (from HBO)

Obama Advocates Government Access To All Devices

by Jeff Mason.    No surprise that privacy invasion is the tyrant's choice. U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday made a passionate case for mobile devices to be built in such a way as to allow government to gain access to personal data if needed to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws. Speaking at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, Obama   ... MORE

Demand Congress Back Down On Privacy Intrusion

by Ron Paul.     The FBI tells us that its demand for a back door into the iPhone is all about fighting terrorism, and that it is essential to break in just this one time to find out more about the San Bernardino attack last December. But the truth is they had long sought a way to break Apple’s iPhone encryption and, like 9/11 and the Patriot Act, a mass   ... MORE

VIDEO: Apple Vs The FBI - Congressional Hearings

Katie Kieffer: Apple Is On Your Side

Somebody has to protect individual liberty.    Obama’s order for Apple to let him hack your iPhone is not about fighting terror—it’s about iPhone dominion. This is the equivalent of gun control except in the tech sector. Terrorism is one of the top two issues concerning Americans, including Millennials. You deserve to know why and how Obama’s ... MORE

Yoni Heisler: Apple Takes On The FBI In Congress: Nine Things You May Have Missed From Yesterday’s Hearing

by Yoni Heisler. The policy debate sparked by Apple’s legal battle with the FBI has galvanized the tech world and has understandably attracted worldwide attention. At the core, Apple’s battle with the FBI centers on how we should strike a balance between user privacy and the interests of national security. Yesterday, both Apple and the FBI appeared  ... MORE

Obama To Trash Reagan’s Restrictions On Domestic Spying

by Chriss W. Street.     A tyrant's sneaky misdirection play. With the pubic distracted by the FBI battling Apple for an iPhone backdoor, President Obama is secretly working to trash President Ronald Reagan’s restrictions on the number of federal agencies that can spy on Americans and others. At a secret meeting of the United States National   ... MORE

Ted Rall: What The Apple Vs FBI Flap Is Really About

[Hint: Edward Snowden]     The fight between Apple and the FBI has been framed as an epic battle between big tech and big government. Apple, says the Obama Administration, is siding with “its business model and public brand marketing strategy” ahead of public safety. That’s not it, says Apple CEO Tim Cook. He says his company is “a staunch     ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Apple's Involuntary Servitude

Liberty and safety are not in equipoise.     There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”   -Justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016).   After the San Bernardino massacre on Dec. 2, 2015, the FBI lawfully acquired the cellphone of one of the killers and     ... MORE

The FBI's Big Farce To Get Inside Your Phone

by Joshua Kopstein.     “The most important tech case in a decade.” Earlier this week, the U.S. government dropped a bombshell in its ongoing crusade against strong encryption: A court order demanding that Apple help the Federal Bureau of Investigation bypass the security features of an iPhone recovered from Syed Rizwan Farook, who, along with his ... MORE

The Apple-FBI Fight Isn’t About Privacy Vs. Security

by Brian Barrett.      Do not be misled. Throughout the ongoing fight between Apple and the FBI over custom access to an iPhone used by one of the two terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, the government has framed the argument as a simple trade-off: You must surrender a little privacy if you want more security. The scales don't balance quite ... MORE

VIDEO: Apple Is The Patriot