| July 9, 2008 | - Senator Barack Obama alienated many supporters by voting to authorize the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expands the government's power to spy on Americans without a search warrant and provides retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms that had cooperated with the government's previously illegal wiretaps. Earlier in the campaign, Obama had promised to filibuster any bill that provided such immunity.
| Source:
NYTimes
|
| June 20, 2008 | - A sweeping revision of surveillance law, extending the NSA's domestic wiretapping program and granting immunity to telecom companies that have helped them spy on Americans, passed the House and was expected to pass in the Senate. The bill, explained Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), "abandons the Constitution’s protections and insulates lawless behavior from legal scrutiny.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
Time
Source 3:
NYT
|
| October 24, 2007 | - The Government Accountability Office reported that more than 755,000 names now appear on the U.S. terrorist
watch list.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 18, 2007 | - The Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that provided the government with subscribers' phone and e-mail records.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 18, 2007 | - The Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that provided the government with subscribers' phone and e-mail records.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 22, 2007 | - The Pentagon announced it would close Talon, the database created after September 11 to monitor and store information about security threats and peace activists.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 19, 2007 | - It emerged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will allow the National Security Agency to intercept telephone calls, emails, and other Internet communications made by British citizens across American networks.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| August 12, 2007 | -
China Public Security, a U.S.-financed company contracted by the People's Republic, was outfitting the city of Shenzen with 20,000 surveillance cameras and issuing identity cards to record each citizen's name, address, employment status, education, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical-insurance status, reproductive history, and landlord's phone number. “If they do not get the permanent card,” said a China Public Security executive, “they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 27, 2007 | - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that no one in the Bush Administration had voiced objections to the NSA's wiretapping program. FBI director Robert Mueller testified that the surveillance program was “much discussed” by other officials, and Senate Judiciary chair Patrick Leahy of Vermont sent Mr. Gonzales a transcript of his testimony and asked him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 18, 2006 | - The Chinese government announced that it would begin issuing identity numbers to fresh vegetables.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 26, 2006 | -
President Bush said that it was “disgraceful” for newspapers to report on a secret intelligence program to trace bank records.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 22, 2006 | -
AT&T revised its privacy guidelines, removing a stated promise not to “access, read, upload or store data contained in or derived from private files.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| April 28, 2006 | - It was revealed that in 2005 the FBI had, without court approval, obtained from bank and credit card companies and telephone and Internet companies information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 7, 2006 | - A whistleblower accused AT&T of providing the NSA with full access to customer phone calls and Internet usage records.
| Source:
Wired News
|
| March 19, 2006 | -
Google was ordered to provide selected search data to the federal government.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 17, 2006 | - 46 percent of Americans polled said President George W. Bush should be censured over the NSA warrantless-wiretapping program.
| Source:
Democracy Now
|
| January 20, 2006 | -
Google refused to comply with a Bush Administration subpoena demanding the records for a week's worth of search queries. Yahoo! and Microsoft, however, complied fully, while America Online said it had complied partially.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 25, 2005 | - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that there was "absolutely nothing wrong" with President Bush authorizing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 24, 2005 | - It was reported that the NSA had, with Presidential approval but without warrants, spied on much more Internet and phone traffic than was previously acknowledged.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 22, 2005 | - The House voted to extend the Patriot Act by five weeks.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 21, 2005 | - The FBI was spying on Greenpeace, Catholic Worker, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and PETA.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| November 15, 2005 | - The U.K. was building a database that will track the movements of every vehicle on its roads.
| Source:
The Register
|
| November 6, 2005 | - The FBI, under the Patriot Act, was issuing 30,000 “national security letters” a year, 100 times as many as it has issued historically. The letters, which recipients are ordered never to discuss, often demand the release of banking data, credit reports, and other private information.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| July 22, 2005 | - In New York City, police began random bag checks of subway passengers.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| July 18, 2005 | - Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that he would have an RFID identity tag inserted into his body.
| Source:
ZDNet.com
|
| June 24, 2005 | - It was revealed that the Defense Department, in violation of the federal Privacy Act, has been building a database of thirty million sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. “If you don't want conscription,” said the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, “you have to give the Department of Defense, the military services, an avenue to contact young people.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 20, 2004 | -
Congress passed a $388 billion spending bill. The bill had $15.8 billion worth of “extras,” including $25,000 for the study of mariachi music and $2 million to buy back the presidential yacht, sold by Jimmy Carter in 1977. The yacht, the U.S.S. Sequoia, currently rents for $2,500 an hour. The bill also allows hospitals and HMOs to refuse to provide abortions, and gave two committee chairmen and their assistants access to income tax returns, without regard to privacy laws. Republicans acknowledged the mistake of the latter provision, and vowed to repeal it.
| Source 1:
USA Today
Source 2:
USA Today
Source 3:
sequoiayacht.com
Source 4:
LA Times
Source 5:
AP
|
| August 9, 2004 | - The American Civil Liberties Union warned that the federal government has been using corporations to carry out surveillance of citizens because private firms are not subject to many privacy and civil-liberties laws.
| Source:
Wired
|
| November 27, 2003 | - Advanced Digital Solutions announced that it has developed a system to use subdermal implants to make credit-card payments using radio frequency identification, or RFID. Privacy advocates were not amused: "If we establish a robust credit-card network based on RFID chips implanted under the skin," said one, "we are also creating the infrastructure for potential government surveillance."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 28, 2003 | -
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the federal government is building a computer system that will mine the nation's health data for evidence of disease outbreaks. Officials hope the system will be able to quickly detect a smallpox or other bioweapons attack; privacy groups were concerned because of links between the program and the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project.
| |
| November 12, 2002 | -
“This could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is Darpa, and the agency is the FBI.
| |
| October 22, 2002 | -
Welfare families in Michigan can be required to submit to drug testing, a judge ruled, because the state's interest in not paying for illegal drugs is stronger than a citizen's right to privacy.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - First Lady Laura Bush went on CNN and scolded the news media for violating the privacy of her twin 19-year-old daughters, who have repeatedly made the news for violating liquor laws.
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