Texas House Passes TSA Anti-’Groping’ Bill

From the TIME NewsFeed:

In another bout of tough press for TSA, the Texas House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill on Friday that prohibits 'intrusive touching' when people are seeking access to public buildings and forms of transportation.

The bill, sponsored by Republican House member David Simpson, comes after some very viral stories about airport security checkpoints. First there was the pat down of a six-year-old that spread across the Web, causing outrage among Washington lawmakers. A few weeks later there was a former Miss USA, Susie Castillo, who opted out of the screening at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and posted a video about how 'violated' she felt during her pat down, saying, through tears, that the woman touched her vagina four times. Simpson told MSNBC that his bill was meant to outlaw all 'indecent groping searches,' which is precisely the practice many people feel these stories represent, and the bill went on to the Senate yesterday.

How Safe Are TSA's Porno Scanners?

From Mother Jones:

An interesting new round in the airport scanner wars: Why won't TSA make its scanners available for independent scientific assessment—the same kind of assessment required for medical imaging machines?

That's the question asked of White House science adviser John Holdren by five researchers at UC San Francisco and one at Arizona State University in a letter titled, There is Still no Rigorous Hard Data for the Safety of X-Ray Airport Passenger Scanners.

Supremes Say Police Can Create Conditions To Enter Home Without A Warrant

From Techdirt:

We've been discussing various ways that our government and the courts have been slowly chipping away at the 4th Amendment, what with warrantless wiretaps, searching laptops, TSA agents groping people, etc. And the Supreme Court just took a huge chunk out of the 4th Amendment in saying that police can raid homes without a warrant if there are 'exigent circumstances' -- even if those 'exigent circumstances' are created by the police themselves.

The law, to date, had been that police cannot enter a home without a warrant unless they had both (a) probable cause and (b) "exigent circumstances" in which getting a warrant would not make sense. In this case, police were searching for a drug dealer who had gone into an apartment complex. Outside of one apartment, they smelled marijuana -- which created probable cause. At this point, they should have obtained a warrant. Instead, they banged on the door and shouted police. At which point they heard a scramble inside, and busted in the door, claiming that they believed the scramble was the possible destruction of the drugs. The argument then was that this noise -- even though it was entirely created due to police action -- represented exigent circumstances that allowed them to bust in the door without a warrant. The Kentucky Supreme Court said that while the noise might be exigent circumstances, since it was illegally created by the police, it could not be used.

Tragically, the Supreme Court -- by an 8-to-1 vote -- has now disagreed, saying that this is perfectly consistent with the 4th Amendment.

Calorie Camera: Should Children's Lunch Choices be Recorded?

From That's Fit:

Childhood obesity is definitely a current health hot topic. In the United States, where obesity among kids has increased exponentially in the last 30 years, much of the discourse has centered around the nutrition that children receive while at school. As many schools alter their lunch menus and even debate banning cafeteria staples such as chocolate milk, Texas elementary schools are taking a different approach.

Using federal funding, elementary schools in San Antonio have begun installing 'calorie cameras' which photograph the lunch trays of every student that passes by them. The images are then analyzed and each child's calorie-intake is tracked. Students are aware that they are being monitored and all data is given over to the parents, as well as being used by researchers.

A new Ohio law could be an invasion of privacy for charged felon

From WTOL.com:

Certain civil rights groups say a new state law in Ohio could violate your civil rights.

Taking effect July 1st, law enforcement will now take a DNA swab upon a felony arrest. Right now, police can only request a sample or a judge can order someone give a sample if that someone has been convicted of a felony.

'How far do we allow law enforcement to go without the individual's consent or without a court order?' asked Toledo defense attorney Jerry Phillips. 'You can't legislate away your constitutional rights.'

The idea behind the law is to possible match a suspect's DNA to other crimes by using the state's DNA database. With a match, police could have the opportunity to keep their suspect in custody for a longer period of time.

Secret service questions a Tacoma seventh grader for a Facebook comment about President Obama and suicide bombers

From KCPQ:

A Tacoma seventh grader faced federal interrogation at school for what he posted on his Facebook page. His mom said it all happened without her knowledge or permission.

Timi Robertson said she had just finished lunch with a friend Friday when she got a phone call from her son's school.

"I answered it, and it's the school security guard who's giving me a heads up that the Secret Service is here with the Tacoma Police Department and they have Vito and they're talking to him," Robertson said.

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention.

"I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers," says LaPinta.

Dropbox's privacy commitment questioned after terms change

From IT PRO:

Dropbox users have been forced to reconsider the security of the files after revelations the provider will decrypt and release customer information to law enforcement authorities.

Dropbox, which has quickly become popular with individuals and small agencies, has inserted a clause in its terms of service which states the company will turn over files to the authorities if they ask for them.

In a move heralded as “not surprising but disappointing” by analysts, the decision brings Dropbox into line with the terms of other cloud providers, including Amazon and Google.

Researchers Disclose iPhone and iPad Location-Tracking Privacy Issues

From Mac Rumors:

A pair of security researchers today announced that they are sounding the privacy warning bell about the capability of iOS 4 to track the location of an iPhone or iPad on an ongoing basis, storing the data to a hidden file known as 'consolidated.db' in the form of latitude and longitude and a timestamp for each point.

All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called 'consolidated.db.' This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. The coordinates aren't always exact, but they are pretty detailed. There can be tens of thousands of data points in this file, and it appears the collection started with iOS 4, so there's typically around a year's worth of information at this point. Our best guess is that the location is determined by cell-tower triangulation, and the timing of the recording is erratic, with a widely varying frequency of updates that may be triggered by traveling between cells or activity on the phone itself.

While the consolidated.db file has been known for some time and has played a key role in forensic investigations of iOS devices by law enforcement agencies, the researchers note the data is available on the devices themselves and in backups in unencrypted and unprotected form, leading to significant privacy concerns. Once gathered, the data is saved in backups, restored to devices if necessary, and even migrated across devices, offering a lengthy history of a user's movement.

Bill would require parental consent for TSA pat-downs of minors

From The Daily Caller:

Under fire after a video surfaced online of a 6-year-old Kentucky girl undergoing an enhanced pat-down at the New Orleans airport, a new bill would require Transportation Security Administration agents to obtain parental permission before performing new invasive pat-down techniques on children at airports.

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, unveiled the legislation last week.

“If you’re going to do a pat-down — which I’ve got a serious problem with in the first place — then you’re going to have to have parental consent and that parent has to be there,” Chaffetz, a longtime critic of TSA, said during an MSNBC interview Monday.

Rep. Mica: TSA 'Out of Control'

From Newsmax:

Rep. John Mica says the Transportation Security Administration has become a huge bureaucracy that has “spun out of control” and cries out for reform.

The Florida Republican, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also says it makes no sense to hire additional air traffic controllers for night duty to deal with the problem of sleeping controllers.

Mica was first elected to the House in 1992, and as chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee he was a major force in the creation of the TSA following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Tell Government and the Travel Industry: No More TSA Pat-Downs for Kids

From PRNewswire-:

Traveler advocate We Won't Fly is organizing a mass 'Call Flood' campaign to force the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to stop touching children, as they did to 6-year-old Anna Drexel last week. The campaign is focused on TSA administrator John Pistole, President Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, Disneyland and other travel industry participants that serve families.

The goal of the campaign is to highlight the immorality of TSA pat-downs of minors, force the TSA to immediately and permanently halt all touching of minors and encourage travel industry players to join us.

In a December 2010 interview, expert in the fight against child sexual abuse Ken Wooden said that TSA patdowns could 'desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children.'

Administration Releases Strategy to Protect Online Consumers and Support Innovation and Fact Sheet on National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

From NIST:

Today, the Obama Administration released the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), which seeks to better protect consumers from fraud and identity theft, enhance individuals' privacy, and foster economic growth by enabling industry both to move more services online and to create innovative new services. The NSTIC aims to make online transactions more trustworthy, thereby giving businesses and consumers more confidence in conducting business online.

'The Internet has transformed how we communicate and do business, opening up markets, and connecting our society as never before. But it has also led to new challenges, like online fraud and identity theft, that harm consumers and cost billions of dollars each year,' said President Obama. 'By making online transactions more trustworthy and better protecting privacy, we will prevent costly crime, we will give businesses and consumers new confidence, and we will foster growth and untold innovation. That's why this initiative is so important for our economy.'