In a column recently published by POLITICO, Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist and American Civil Liberties Union’s Laura Murphy write, “In the age of the Internet, your privacy is not Fourth Amendment safe. Government agents cannot tap your phone without a warrant issued by a judge based on some indication you are involved in wrongdoing, but the government claims the authority to read your emails without a warrant. The government can’t open your postal mail or seize papers from your home without a warrant, but it says it can read any private and sensitive documents you’ve stored in the Internet ‘cloud.’”

The court determined National Security Letters are not “narrowly tailored on their face, since they apply, without distinction, to both the content of the NSLs and to the very fact of having received one.” The government claims prohibiting recipients from talking about NSLs is “necessary to serve national security in ongoing investigations,” but the government “has not shown that it is generally necessary to prohibit recipients from disclosing the mere fact of their receipt of NSLs.”

The $7 million deal announced today ending a multi-state investigation of the Google Wi-Spy scandal does virtually nothing to thwart the Internet giant’s repeated privacy violations, Consumer Watchdog said. The public interest group said Google should pay an amount that would affect its profits.

The Muslim-American Civil Liberties Coalition (MCLC), Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility (CLEAR) and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) have released a report, “Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and Its Impact on American Muslims.”

The report outlines how the surveillance has created a “pervasive climate of fear and suspicion. It highlights racial and religious profiling by the police, which has effectively criminalized Muslims and effectively chilled free speech and activism in Muslim communities.

A United States federal appeals court has ruled suspicionless searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment but border patrol agents do need “reasonable suspicion” in order to conduct forensic examinations of a person’s devices.

Anti-choice activist Jill Stanek recently published online the name and photo of a woman who passed away following a late abortion at the Maryland clinic of Dr. Leroy Carhart. The name and picture of the woman, I’ll call her Marie, along with information about her job, marriage, and pregnancy were soon all over the internet. Protesters plastered Marie’s picture on signs and marched outside Dr. Carhart’s clinic and held a “vigil” outside the emergency room where she was treated. Internet commentators characterized Marie’s husband, parents, and sister, who traveled with her from out-of-state for the three-day procedure, as everything from bad Catholics to killers.

The movement to restrict drone use by law enforcement, colleges, universities, government agencies, businesses and private individuals is having an impact because those behind it are concerned about what the world will be like in the future and not what it is like now. Those raising concerns about drones are focused on what a future world where drones engage in wholesale surveillance and dominate United States airspace could be like. They recognize the time to have lawmakers take action is now, not later when the drone industry has fully grown and become a fixture in American industry and a special interest that holds political leaders captive.

Legislation sponsored by two members of the House of Representatives has been introduced to regulate how the government uses drones. The legislation would require law enforcement to get a search warrant or some other kind of judicial approval for surveillance before using drones to investigate criminal wrongdoing. It would, however, allow drone use for fire and rescue missions, monitoring droughts, assessing flood damage or chasing a fleeing criminal.

President Barack Obama signed a major cybersecurity executive order hours before he delivered his State of the Union address. The order was highlighted in his address as he spoke about the current threat he believes the government faces from cyber-attacks.

A classified intelligence assessment shows the United States is “the target of a massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign that is threatening the country’s economic competitiveness,” according to the Washington Post.