Law

Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web without taking the privacy precautions that competitors have, CNET has learned.

The vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets.

Unlike Google and Skyhook Wireless, which have compiled similar lists of these unique Wi-Fi addresses, Microsoft has not taken any measures to curb access to its database. … Read more

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' … Read more

scoop Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed.

The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago.

The French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice took a thinly veiled swipe at an online civil liberties group that's arguing a Colorado woman can't be forced to decrypt her laptop for police inspection.

In a legal brief filed yesterday in what is likely to be a precedent-setting case, the Justice Department claimed that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had previously agreed that being forced to type in your passphrase was legal and did not violate Americans' rights to self-incrimination.

Prosecutors are hoping to convince a federal judge to order Ramona Fricosu, accused of running a mortgage scam, to decrypt an … Read more

The Transportation Security Agency violated federal law when installing controversial full-body scanners in U.S. airports without following proper procedures, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., rejected arguments from the Obama administration that the TSA was exempt from laws requiring federal agencies to first notify the public and seek comments.

"It is clear that by producing an image of the unclothed passenger, (a full-body) scanner intrudes upon his or her personal privacy in a way a magnetometer does not," wrote Judge Douglas Ginsburg for the three-judge panel. … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice is determined to make sure that a case in Colorado will set a legal precedent allowing it to force Americans accused of crimes to decrypt their computers' hard drives.

Phil Dubois is equally determined not to let that happen. The Colorado Springs-based attorney is representing Ramona Fricosu, accused of a mortgage scam, who is refusing to divulge the passphrase to an encrypted laptop found in her bedroom.

Dubois, who specializes in criminal defense and Internet law, says requiring Fricosu to decrypt the hard drive would be a clear violation of his client's Fifth … Read more

The scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch's News of the World is growing, with new allegations that his papers bribed police to use cell phone-tracking technology to find the exact whereabouts of news subjects, as well as to obtain information about the royal family, and also targeted former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, according to reports.

Two former News of the World journalists said the practice of using the illicit cell phone tracking was known as "pinging" in the newsroom, according to The New York Times. The technology, for which one reporter said the News of the World paid nearly $… Read more

Controversial legislation to require Internet providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months has run into an unexpected obstacle: a former supporter.

"This bill needs a lot of fixing up," Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and previous chairman of the House Judiciary committee, said at a hearing today. "It's not ready for prime time."

The bill in question is H.R. 1981, which says Internet providers must store for "at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account," unless it's a wireless provider … Read more

Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.

The National Sheriffs' Association will say it "strongly supports" mandatory data retention during Tuesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.

Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough.

"The limited data retention … Read more