David Ingram reports:
The Obama
administration on Friday urged a secret U.S. court that oversees
surveillance programs to reject a request by a civil liberties group
to see court opinions used to underpin a massive phone records
database.
Justice Department
lawyers said in papers filed in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court that the court’s opinions are a unique exception
to the wide access the public typically has to court records in the
United States.
If the public had
a right to any opinion from the surveillance court, the possible
harms would be “real and significant, and, quite frankly, beyond
debate,” the lawyers wrote, [Can there be such a thing in a
Republic? Bob] citing earlier rulings from the court.
The American Civil
Liberties Union had asked the court last month to release some of its
opinions after Britain’s Guardian newspaper revealed a massive U.S.
government database of daily telephone call data, prompting a
worldwide debate about the program’s legality.
Read more on Reuters.
(Related) Is “vague”
intended to keep the court from asking you to disclose your source?
Orin Kerr writes:
In the New
York Times, Eric Lichtblau has a major scoop describing some
of the secret rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,
aka the FISC (and sometimes just called “the FISA court”).
According to Lichtblau’s sources, described as “current and
former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions,”
the FISA court has issued over a dozen significant rulings. Some of
the rulings are “nearly 100 pages long.” Although Lichtblau
purports to summarize the rulings, I find his descriptions a
frustrating read. Maybe it’s just me, but I find Lichtblau’s
writing to be sufficiently vague that his distillation of the
opinions leaves me with more questions than answers. In this post, I
want to go through what Lichtblau says about the Fourth Amendment
rulings of the FISA court and why his descriptions leave me confused.
I’ll try to get to the statutory issues in a future post.
Read more on The
Volokh Conspiracy.
(Related)
John Naughton nails it:
Over the past two
weeks, I have lost count of the number of officials and government
ministers who, when challenged about internet surveillance by GCHQ
and the NSA, try to reassure their citizens by saying that the spooks
are “only” collecting metadata, not “content”. Only two
conclusions are possible from this: either the relevant spokespersons
are unbelievably dumb or they are
displaying a breathtaking contempt for
their citizenry.
Read more on The
Guardian.
...because you can never
have too many tools.
Adapter is a free versatile media
converter for PC & Mac that lets you convert files from one
format to another and supports virtually all popular audio, video and
image file formats. It is totally free
Related tools –
OnlineConvert,
FreeFileConverter.
“Meeting tools are
conspiracy tools” Bug Brother
Meet.fm is a web-based tool that lets
you easily set up a meeting online with a group of people –
friends, partners, colleagues etc. It makes it easy to collaborate
with others in real time and is accessible from any device
(smartphone, PC, tablet). You simply go to their website, select a
channel name URL (http://meet.fm/yourname) and sign up for
an account. Then you invite others (by email or SMS) to your channel
by sharing your channel name URL.
Once you start a meeting on your
channel, you can then share you computer screen, share files from
your computer or from popular online services (Dropbox, Google Drive,
Evernote and others), message your guests or share your webcam. You
can remove any guest from your channel at your will.
Additionally, for those who don’t
have access to the Internet, there is an option for them to access
your channel using a phone by dialing a number with a pass code,
which are provided to you (the host) in your email upon registration.
Related tools – MeetingKing,
MeetWithMe.
There aer many bits and
pieces like this one out there. Perhaps enough to assemble my “Are
you ready for college computing?” test.
Free
Digital Citizenship Lesson Plans for Middle School Students
The beginning of the school year is a
great time to conduct lessons on digital citizenship and digital
literacy. The knowledge and skills gained in those early lessons can
serve students throughout the school year. Google has a good set of
lesson
plans on digital citizenship and digital literacy that middle
school teachers should take a look at. The lesson plans are divided
into three sections; becoming a digital sleuth, managing digital
footprints, and identifying online tricks and scams.
These digital citizenship lessons are
part of Google's Good
to Know site. Good to Know is an excellent site on which you can
find good and clear explanations of web basics.
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