Ali Breland

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that hacking someone’s computer counts as a “search,” meaning police must get a warrant to hack into someone’s computer. Senior US District Judge David Alan Ezra of the San Antonio division of the Western District of Texas court ruled that the FBI needed a proper warrant when it hacked Jeffrey Jerry Torres’s computer.

Torres is facing charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. Torres and others were allegedly caught by the FBI for using the dark web child pornography site, Playpen. “[The contention that] Mr. Torres did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his IP address is of no import. This was unquestionably a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes,” Ezra wrote. In February 2015, the FBI seized and then ran Playpen, for two weeks. In that time they installed malware on users computers to identify suspects. In a previous case, a judge had ruled that because when users accessed Playpen, via the dark web browser Tor, they made their IP address known to another computer to access Tor, thus giving up any reasonable expectation of their privacy of their IP address. Ezra disagreed with this, supporting the idea that Tor users had a reasonable expectation of privacy on the platform. The warrant that the FBI used in the Torres case also came under question because it was used to obtain information beyond the district that it was issued in.

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) hammered on the Senate floor the Obama Administration's deal to relinquish supervision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Sen Cruz said President Obama’s decision “poses a significant threat to our freedom,” and that “it will empower countries like Russia, China and Iran to be able to censor speech on the internet.” Sen Cruz said that he isn’t convinced that an international regulatory body would be free from influences that could lead to internet censorship. The senator also highlighted national security concerns. “Congress has received no insurance from the government to keep dot-gov or dot-mil” domain names, he said, which could facilitate “foreign phishing scams.”

A national security expert refuted this, saying that the transition wouldn’t affect .mil or .gov names. According to the expert, these are already under the jurisdiction of the federal government and would remain there regardless of who controlled IANA. That expert also argued that US supervision of ICANN and IANA would give some countries a political excuse to attempt to intervene in the affairs of the organizations, but that they would have no such leverage in the hands of an international body.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) tore into government surveillance methods, saying his committee will investigate one in particular — Stingray scanners. Stingrays are cellphone trackers that can be used to gain location data from phone users. The trackers have recently come under scrutiny from civil rights groups. "You will be shocked at what the federal government is doing to collect your personal information," Chairman Chaffetz said. "And they can't keep it secure, that's the point."

Chairman Chaffetz last November introduced the Stingray Privacy Act, a bill aimed at curtailing the implementation of the cell tracking technology. “The abuse of Stingrays and other cell-site simulators by individuals, including law enforcement, could enable gross violations of privacy,” he said at the time. Chairman Chaffetz’s comments come after the House Oversight Committee’s release of a scathing 241-page report on the Office of Personnel Management data breach.

Twenty-nine businesses, including ten tech giants, signed President Barack Obama's Equal Pay Pledge, the White House announced. In the pledge companies, including Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, are committing to take steps to address the gender pay gap. That commitment includes five points, including: acknowledging the role that business play in reducing the gap; conducting annual internal analysis on the gap; reviewing hiring and promotion practices for gender bias; conducting more “enterprise-wide equity initiatives;” and adopting other best practices to “close the national wage gap.” Other tech giants signing on include Akamai Technologies, Dropbox, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, MailChimp, and Mulesoft.

The new signatories joined on Women’s Equality Day, a holiday commemorating both the certification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, and women’s continued pursuit of equality.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) tore into the Federal Communications Commission's updated media ownership rules. The FCC’s rules dictate that entities cannot own both a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. The requirement isn’t new, but the FCC decided in August to keep the regulation in place after a review. In a statement, Chairman Goodlatte said the FCC had “overreacted” and that it was “likely to harm the objectives of smaller media outlets eager to compete.” “Today, the FCC continues its recent tradition of advancing unnecessary and burdensome regulations on a partisan basis while ignoring new technologies and market realities, with the likely outcome of harming competition,” he said.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) also noted its disappointment on the ruling in a letter to the FCC, and the group later sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the agency for documents regarding the decision. The NAB characterized the FCC’s decision as a “ ‘head in the sand’ approach” to the media marketplace.

A coalition of 28 organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology signed a letter expressing opposition to the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal to include social media in its review of visa-waiver applicants. The groups argued that such a proposal would not be effective, would cost too much and would impinge on privacy. The letter also expressed concern that Arab-Americans and Muslims could be unfairly targeted.

“The risk of discrimination based on analysis of social media content and connections is great and will fall hardest on Arab and Muslim communities,” the letter stated. “Cultural and linguistic barriers increase the risk that social media activity will be misconstrued.” The Department of Homeland Security published the measure on June 23. “Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case,” the department wrote.