Ways to surf the web anonymously to protect your clients

Why should you care about your information on the internet, you ask?

When you use the internet, all your traffic originates from your IP address. A quick internet search will map your IP address to your city, and it is becoming increasingly easier to map that IP address to something as narrow as a street location. However, Tor masks your IP location, which means that you will not accidentally reveal your location if, say, you’ve traveled to meet with a client.

 Article here (via the lawyerist).

Don't want to be "followed" online? Try these tips.

You probably already know this, but lots of people are tracking your activity online. Advertisers, social networks, content providers, the NSA. It’s actually kind of creepy how many people know what you are doing.

Article here (via the Lawyerist blog). 

The NSA is intercepting attorney-client privileged communications

This last Monday, according to the ABA Journal, NSA chief Keith Alexander acknowledged the NSA is scooping up attorney-client communications, but said that it is “affording appropriate protection” to those communications.

article here

NSA, Homeland Security settle lawsuit over parodies of their logos

The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in a settlement made public Tuesday that they were wrong to ban a leading custom-merchandise retailer from selling t-shirts, mugs, and posters that poked fun at the agencies.

The agreement puts to rest a First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government brought last year by a t-shirt designer, Dan McCall, who hawked merchandise on Zazzle.com that parodied the official seal of the NSA with jokes referencing the spy program disclosures. Another design imprinted on mugs featured a look-alike Homeland Security logo for a “Department of Homeland Stupidity.”

Article here. 

Attorney - client communication intercepted by the NSA - What happens?

When the National Security Agency realizes it has intercepted an attorney-client communication through its monitoring program it "minimizes" the impact by stopping the monitoring of that communication and "identifying it as an attorney-client communication in a log maintained for that purpose if the client is someone known to be under criminal indictment in the United States. Otherwise, it is read.

Story here, via State Bar of Michigan blog.

From the article: [the guidelines don’t] apply to all attorney-client calls. It provides only for the minimization (and protection) of the calls of “a person who is known to be under criminal indictment in the United States”—someone who has already been charged under US law. This is because indicted persons have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel. People who aren’t indicted don’t have this right, and so their calls are not minimized.

IRS used Google Maps to spy on taxpayers and organizations

Agents from the IRS are using Google Maps as part of their tool kit to audit taxpayers and organizations, The Daily Caller has learned.

A redacted IRS letter dated Sept. 8, 2011 [Priv. Ltr. Rul. 2013-13-031] reveals that at least in one case the IRS’s examiners used photos of a property, obtained through Google Maps, as evidence to revoke the 501(c)(4) status of a homeowner’s association.

Article here. and Article here. 

Secret NSA court order released allowing collection of internet data

A secret court order that authorized a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email and internet data was published for the first time on Monday night, among a trove of documents that also revealed a judge's concern that the NSA "continuously" and "systematically" violated the limits placed on the program.

article here. 

T-shirt maker sues the NSA and DHS over his t-shirt designs.

An American T-shirt maker sues the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security over his t-shirt designs.

Article here.

Dan McCall sells T-shirts, mugs and posters, often with satirical messages. To ridicule electronic surveillance disclosures, he paired the NSA’s official seal on T-shirts for sale with the slogan: “The only part of the government that actually listens.”

McCall, who runs LibertyManiacs.com from an office in his home, filed the suit last week in federal court in Baltimore. He says the agencies violated his First Amendment rights, and is being assisted in his suit by Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog organization.

NSA's data collection doesn't apply to US Citizens -- until it does.

The NSA (National Security Agency) is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, as reported in an article in the Washington Post yesterday. 

From the article: Although the collection takes place overseas, two senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that it sweeps in the contacts of many Americans. They declined to offer an estimate but did not dispute that the number is likely to be in the millions or tens of millions.

What's my expectation of privacy in a cellphone call?

The answer: not very much at all. But you knew that already, when the NSA and related scandals broke earlier this year. The good news is that an organization has made the FBI release records of its of cellphone surveillance technology. Article here.

From the article: "The FBI says it uses the tools to track the locations of individual suspects. But the technology is controversial because, by design, it collects data on innocent bystanders’ phones, and it also interferes with cellphone signals in a way that may be prohibited under a section of the federal Communications Act."