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Just days before leaving office Loretta Lynch secretly signed an order to allow any branch of government, including local law enforcement, access to the NSA’s data mine on the American people. She created a mechanism by which the Fourth Amendment can be circumvented by law enforcement agencies of any type and description, foreign and domestic, in the area of digital information.

Police officers may only conduct a search following a traffic stop if they believe there is probable cause a crime was committed, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday in a child pornography case involving a bicyclist pulled over for rolling through a stop sign. Torrance police stopped bicyclist Paul Macabeo in 2012 after following him a short distance with their patrol car's headlights off. They acknowledged he was not riding erratically and did not try to flee. Macabeo was arrested after the officers searched his phone and said they found photos of underage girls. The state's highest court said that...

FBI Director James Comey is again warning about the bureau’s inability to access digital devices because of encryption. In a speech Tuesday, Comey said default encryption built into smartphones is “making more and more of the room that we are charged to investigate dark.” He said the FBI is working to collect information on the issue so that “next year we can have an adult conversation in this country.” …

If there is anything on which Americans across the political spectrum agree, it is the inviolability of the Constitution. It is our national scripture, invoked by all and rejected by none. Conservatives attending the first tea party rallies in 2009 often waved copies of the document. The most memorable moment of the recent Democratic National Convention was when the father of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq demanded of Donald Trump, "Have you even read the United States Constitution?" But one portion of our national charter has eroded to the point of invisibility: the Fourth Amendment. It says,...

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Republican-led effort to allow the FBI to access a person’s Internet browsing history, email account data and other electronic communications without a court order in terrorism and spy cases. The measure from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) would have also extended the government’s authority to conduct surveillance over potential “lone wolf” attackers. [ ] A majority of the Senate backed the proposal in a 58 to 38 vote, but it needed 60 votes to advance. [ ] The measure inspired a fierce backlash...

They’re coming for your home. Right now. I suggest you save it. I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say. Except, this isn’t The Matrix. You’re no actor, like Keanu Reeves, playing a distraught programmer-hacker named “Neo.” Nor am I an actor, like Laurence Fishburne, playing your guide “Morpheus.” This is real life, baby. Your home or apartment—and the neighborhood in which you live—is under siege. “Agents”—sans black glasses and black business suits—who work for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have written a new regulation called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) that...

President Barack Obama on Friday called on Sen. Rand Paul to drop his “quirky” objections to pending international tax treaties so they can move forward in Congress. Obama said the treaties will help U.S. authorities investigate and crack down on offshore tax evasion. Paul has argued that they would infringe on Americans’ constitutional right to privacy because their tax data and personal financial information would be shared with other countries. Treaties cannot go into force unless ratified by the Senate, and the objection of any one senator halts action on legislative business pending in that house of Congress, as Paul...

A federal judge in Brooklyn has ruled that the government can't force Apple to help break an iPhone's passcode security. No, it's not the San Bernardino shooting case, a similar situation where the FBI is seeking to compel Apple to provide custom software to help it access data on a criminal's iPhone...

Donald Trump on Friday urged a roomful of voters to boycott the tech giant Apple so long as its chief executive, Tim Cook, refuses to comply with a court order to assist the FBI with hacking into the cell phone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. "First of all Apple better give the security for that phone," the Republican presidential hopeful said during a campaign rally in Pawleys Island, S.C. "What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such time they give that security number. How do you like that?" "I just thought of it," Trump noted,...

A 2015 court case shows that the tech giant has been willing to play ball with the government before—and is only stopping now because it might ‘tarnish the Apple brand.’ Apple CEO Tim Cook declared on Wednesday that his company wouldn’t comply with a government search warrant to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers, a significant escalation in a long-running debate between technology companies and the government over access to people’s electronically-stored private information. But in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted...

An Open Memo To Lou Dobbs As CEO, Tim Cooks obligation is to execute the corporate mission. Briefly stated, a corporation must deliver product to customers and return on investment to shareholders. It is not his job to make the nation secure from geo-political terrorism. Your suggestion that Mr. Cook will be culpable when another attack occurs was a stinking cheap shot. Obama has the job of making us secure and is failing us. Today on the sister network Fox News Channel, Obama was heard calling for improved cyber security. Do you see an irony? By resisting encroachment by the...

LOS ANGELES Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday said a court order demanding the company create a "backdoor" into the cellphone data of the San Bernardino, Calif., attackers was "chilling" and "dangerous." In a letter to customers, Cook expressed his opposition to the court order. "The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand," Cook wrote. "Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That...

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc. turned down the FBI’s demand using a 1789 federal ordinance to build a “backdoor” into iPhones allowing law enforcement to defeat encryption as he explained in a “Customer Letter” this morning posted to the company’s website. Apple’s letter kicks off the highest profile defense of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment we are likely to see in our lifetimes

There's a lot about Ted Cruz that should worry constitutionalists considering voting for the senator in the presidential election of 2016.Recently, Infogram published brief but illuminating biographies of several of Cruz's key foreign policy advisors. The information disclosed in these revelations could trouble many constitutionalists otherwise keen on the senator and who rely on him to restore the rule of law to the White House.The first person highlighted in the article is the chairman of Cruz's foreign policy team, Chad Sweet.Sweet's professional and political background betrays Cruz's claims of being someone who promises "not to continue going in the same...

A majority of Americans say they support warrantless government surveillance of the Internet communications of U.S. citizens, according to a new poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It's at least somewhat important for the government to sacrifice freedoms to ensure safety, most say in the survey. ...

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun.

(CNSNews.com) - Coming soon, a new checkpoint experience for airline passengers. Testifying before a House Oversight subcommittee on Tuesday, Peter Neffenger, the new head of the Transportation Security Agency, said he envisions "a day where the checkpoint looks very different from what it does today. With the exception of the full-body scanners, "We're still largely dealing with ...the same kind of checkpoint we've had for the past decade or more. And I think we're on the cusp of a very different looking checkpoint experience in the next five years."

A nice catch by Sam Stein of HuffPo from Rand’s interview with Boston Herald Radio. Skip to around 11:00 for the key bit.I … did not expect a competition between Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul over who could conjure up a better Nazi allusion for Republicans. Or rather, I didn’t expect it until the election turned to foreign policy. “There have been a lot of dumb ideas put out,” Paul said, speaking with Boston Herald Radio. “One that the Mexicans will pay for a wall, [which] was probably the dumbest of dumb ideas. But putting a wall up between...

Attorneys in Baltimore are reviewing hundreds of convictions after an investigation revealed that police there have secretly used cell phone surveillance tools in nearly 2,000 criminal cases. Following a report in USA Today that exposed the extent of the Baltimore Police Department’s use of cell-tracking technology to locate suspects sought in connection with low-level crimes, lawyers in the city’s public defender office now tell the paper they plan to ask the court to toss out “a large number” of convictions.

On a summer's day in 1987, Minneapolis police surrounded a woman's home in the northeast corner of the city and heard their suspect's voice inside. "Tell them I left," said Robert Darren Olson. The officers forced their way in. An Amoco gas station attendant had been shot dead on University Avenue the day before, and one of the suspects, the money and the murder weapon were already in custody. Police had been tipped off that their second suspect, the getaway driver, spent his nights at the duplex. They found Olson hiding in the closet. He was later convicted of aggravated...