NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data: Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system. [WSJ]
‘The Hallmarks of a Totalitarian State’: Germany’s high court has declared laws enabling British-style total surveillance of drivers illegal. Privacy advocates and commentators applaud the ruling, but they ask if the court is trying to stop the laws from snowballing into a police state — or just water them down. [Spiegel]
The Invasion of Spitzer’s (Financial) Privacy: It’s insane. That a man’s withdrawal of hunks of cash to pay a prostitute should attract the attention of law enforcement is brave-new-world. [Mondoweiss]
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