Politics and Law

The FBI has undertaken what is law enforcement's highest-profile effort at crowdsourcing to date: asking for help identifying two suspects linked to this week's Boston Marathon bombing.

"Someone out there knows these individuals," Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office, told reporters this afternoon. He asked the media and the public for help in "identifying and locating these individuals."

The photos published on the FBI's Web site show two men, one wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a backpack, and the other wearing a white baseball cap, around the scene of the blasts. … Read more

The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a controversial data-sharing bill that would authorize e-mail and Internet providers to share confidential information with the federal government.

By a 288-127 vote today, the House adopted the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, which supporters say is necessary to protect American networks from electronic attacks and intrusions. The vote signals more support for the bill than it enjoyed last year, when it cleared the House by a narrower margin but died in the Senate. (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)

CISPA is "so important to our … Read more

A controversial data-sharing bill being debated today in the U.S. House of Representatives authorizes federal agencies to conduct warrantless searches of information they obtain from e-mail and Internet providers.

Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, proposed a one-sentence amendment (PDF) that would have required the National Security Agency, the FBI, Homeland Security, and other agencies to secure a "warrant obtained in accordance with the Fourth Amendment" before searching a database for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Grayson complained this morning on Twitter that House Republicans "wouldn't even allow debate on requiring a warrant before a search.&… Read more

A dozen U.S. senators warned the IRS today against warrantless snooping on taxpayers' confidential e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter messages.

In a stiffly worded letter (PDF) to the tax collection agency, they asked the "IRS to confirm that it will immediately establish a warrant requirement when it wants to obtain e-mail and other electronic personal correspondence" from American companies.

The letter also asked the IRS to "provide a timeline" for updating its internal procedures to guarantee that the contents of electronic files would be accessed only after agents follow the privacy-protective traditional procedure of obtaining a … Read more

Amazon may be cooking up its own anonymous mobile payments system.

Published yesterday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Amazon patent application appropriately dubbed "Anonymous mobile payments" describes a system that would let mobile users pay for items without having to reveal their name, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal details to the seller.

The invention follows in the footsteps of other mobile payment systems. However, Amazon takes it a few steps further.

Beyond shielding the personal information of the buyer, Amazon's system would use a special code, or temporary identifier, to conduct … Read more

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet companies and e-mail providers will be prohibited from making legally binding promises to protect your privacy, thanks to a vote this afternoon in the U.S. House of Representatives.

By a 5-8 vote, the House Rules committee rejected a bipartisan fix to the CISPA data-sharing bill that would have ensured companies' privacy promises -- including their terms of use and privacy policies -- remained valid and legally enforceable in the future.

The vote came after Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who's the committee's influential chairman, urged his colleagues to vote against … Read more

One of the runners in yesterday's Boston Marathon captured some sobering video footage from a head-mounted cam as the first of two bombs went off.

In their search for suspects, authorities looking into what is now being described as a terrorist act have appealed to the public to share any photos and videos they may have taken in Downtown Boston yesterday. The attack took three lives and injured more than 100 people.… Read more

The White House today delivered a formal veto threat against a controversial data-sharing bill called CISPA that would allow intelligence agencies to collect personal information about Americans from private companies.

In a statement this afternoon, President Obama's aides said they "would recommend that he veto the bill," which is scheduled for a House of Representatives floor vote this week.

A House committee approved CISPA last week without four key privacy amendments. Sought by CISPA opponents, the amendments would have curbed the National Security Agency's ability to collect confidential data. (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)

The White … Read more

The head of the Internal Revenue Service said today the agency would abandon its controversial policy that claimed the right to read taxpayers' e-mail without first obtaining a search warrant.

Steven Miller, the IRS' acting commissioner, said at a U.S. Senate hearing that the no-warrant-required policy would be ditched within 30 days for e-mail, but he did not make the same commitment for other private electronic communications.

"We intend to do that" for e-mail, Miller said, in response to prodding from Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has become a frequent champion of civil liberties in … Read more