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privacy Tag

I came across this New York Post article about 12,000 kids not allowed to return to school after the Christmas holidays over lack of COVID-19 consent forms. Interest piqued because government sucks. It turns out Mayor Bill de Blasio required a consent form to test your child for COVID without a parent present and would not accept test results from a private doctor.

The former cop accused of being the notorious “Golden State Killer” made a dramatic first court appearance on Friday afternoon in a wheelchair.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was shackled to the chair with handcuffs as he confirmed his name but did not enter a plea. The balding, unshaven alleged serial killer appeared weak and struggled to answer the judge's questions.

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court ruling was declassified and released this week. The ruling reveals that the Obama administration engaged in widespread violation of NSA surveillance rules. The Obama administration was reprimanded by the FISA court for illegal searches that constitute "very serious Fourth Amendment issue.” According to previously classified documents, this admission of methodical and long-term violations of Americans' Constitutional rights was made on October 26th of 2016.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Federal agents have persuaded police officers to scan license plates to gather information about gun-show customers, government emails show, raising questions about how officials monitor constitutionally protected activity." The activity revealed in the emails suggests that the known incidents are limited to border control and occurred in California in 2010. The WSJ continues:
Emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency crafted a plan in 2010 to use license-plate readers—devices that record the plate numbers of all passing cars—at gun shows in Southern California, including one in Del Mar, not far from the Mexican border. Agents then compared that information to cars that crossed the border, hoping to find gun smugglers, according to the documents and interviews with law-enforcement officials with knowledge of the operation. The investigative tactic concerns privacy and guns-rights advocates, who call it an invasion of privacy. The law-enforcement officials say it is an important and legal tool for pursuing dangerous, hard-to-track illegal activity.

In August, I wrote about a proposed rule in Alabama whereby Alabama’s Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board wanted personal information on beer buyers.  The requirement that private citizens who buy beer for personal consumption provide their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and dates of birth was rejected; however, some troubling elements of the initial proposed rule stand. WAAY 31 reports:
For taprooms like Old Black Bear, the customer always comes first. So the idea of creating an extra burden for them at the register didn't seem right. "Just seemed like too much of a burden for them not to at least discuss it with somebody first to try and get our side of it," Owner Todd Seaton said. That burden was set to come in the form of a new requirement from the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board proposed earlier this month following a new law passed earlier this year. The law allowed breweries and brew pubs to sell beer for off-site consumption. The new rule would've required them to record the names, addresses, telephone numbers and birth dates for those looking to take beer off site for consumption. . . . .However after receiving a good bit of public comment, during a board meeting on Wednesday, the board decided against the rule . . . .

The Associated Press, Gannett Co., and Vice Media LLC have filed a suit against the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gather details how agents hacked into the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The Justice Department fought with Apple for over a month, trying to convince the company to allow the government into Syed Farook's iPhone after he and his wife Tashfeen Malik, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, killed 14 people in San Bernardino, CA, in December 2015. The FBI took Farrok's phone as evidence, but couldn't open it due to a passcode. Apple refused to help, saying it would risk privacy of other customers. Then somehow, call it a miracle, the FBI managed to crack into the iPhone all by themselves!

Back in March, Alabama's governor, Robert Bentley, signed into law legislation that will legalize brewers' direct sale of beer to customers for home consumption. Alabama.com reported at the time:
The new law will:
  • Allow breweries that make less than 60,000 barrels per year to directly sell up to 288 ounces of its beer per customer per day for off-premise consumption.
  • Allow breweries to deliver up to two donated kegs of its beer to a licensed charity event.
  • No longer require brewpubs to open only in historic buildings, historic districts or economically distressed areas.
That "288 ounces . . . per customer per day" limitation has resulted in a proposal from Alabama's alcohol regulators that has raised more than a few eyebrows.  They want breweries to require customers provide personal information so that the breweries can provide that, along with individual sales information, to Alabama's Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board.

Would ya look at that... The federal government didn't need to start a privacy flame war with one of the countries largest electronic purveyors after all. Monday, the LA Times reported the FBI was able to unlock one of the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhones without the assistance of Apple:

One day before Apple and prosecutors were to face off in court, the U.S. Department of Justice was granted a request to cancel the Tuesday hearing on whether Apple should assist the FBI in bypassing security measures in a locked iPhone used by a San Bernardino terrorist. The hearing was cancelled by U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym at 5:30P.M. PDT. The earlier order requiring Apple to assist the FBI unlocking the phone was temporarily stayed. "On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone," the government said in court documents filed on Monday. "If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. ("Apple") set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case." Department of Justice spokeswoman Melanie Newman said in a statement that the government only learned of the unlocking method this past weekend. "We must first test this method to ensure it doesn't destroy the data on the phone, but we remain cautiously optimistic. That is why we have asked the court to give us some time to explore this option," Newman said to Ars Tecnica.

In the latest round of legal battles between Apple and the FBI over accessing data in an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, Apple has fired back at the FBI with a scathing brief accusing the government of massive overreach in their efforts to get Apple's assistance in unlocking the phone. As Legal Insurrection reported last month, the iPhone 5C belonging to one of the shooters was seized as evidence by the FBI. The FBI obtained a warrant to search the contents of the iPhone, but ran into trouble with its passcode. The government wanted Apple to help them bypass the iPhone's security measures, but Apple refused, arguing that doing so would unacceptably put the privacy of other customers' iPhones at risk. The District Court of Central California issued an order for Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone, and Apple objected. This set of several rounds of jousting, both in court and in the arena of public opinion. How a law from more than two centuries ago is governing a case about iPhone security

A legal fight between Apple and the FBI is highlighting some critically important issues in the debate between privacy and security. After the San Bernardino attacks, an iPhone 5C belonging to one of the two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, was among the evidence gathered by the FBI. The FBI obtained a warrant to search the contents of the iPhone, but Farook's iPhone, like most people's, is protected by a passcode that encrypts the data on the phone and prevents anyone without the code from accessing it. Apple's security systems are designed to prevent hacking attempts like "brute-force attacks" by requiring delays after wrong passcode guesses and an auto-delete function that is activated after ten incorrect attempts. The FBI went to court to obtain an order to get Apple to help them get around these security features and access the data on Farook's phone. Court orders Apple to help the FBI; Apple refuses to comply