News & Commentary

The NYPD may soon become the latest police department to begin paying private license plate tracking corporation Vigilant Solutions for access to the company’s nationwide location database, according to a report in the New York Daily News and documents unearthed by Ars Technica's Cyrus Farivar. By contracting to access Vigilant's rapidly growing National Vehicle Location Service (NVLS), where police will find over two billion records of ordinary Americans’ movements, the NYPD may also sign on to some very questionable secrecy provisions found in the company’s terms of service agreement.

I just returned from spending two weeks in Alaska challenging a law that withholds almost all Medicaid coverage for abortion from qualified women. Alaska is really far away, and two weeks is a long time to be away from my family, including my two-year-old daughter.

Federal agencies served with a Freedom of Information Act request are refusing to release documents related to their purchase, use and disclosure of zero-day exploits, keeping the American public in the dark about a practice that leaves the Internet and its users less secure.

I gave birth to my first child 8 weeks ago and took the bar exam last week. For a time, this grueling combination did not seem possible – and not because of the exhausting nature of both experiences. But thanks to the Illinois Bar Examiners, who granted me and three other nursing mothers the essential accommodations to pump breast milk for our babies during the exam, I now await the test results.

It's a short walk from my hotel here in Cape Town to the waterfront. From there you can see Robben Island, the notorious prison where Nelson Mandela and other freedom fighters were incarcerated during the darkest days of apartheid.

Edward Snowden recently pointed out how the victories of the LGBT movement in this country might never have happened if the government had the ability to conduct “perfect surveillance.” For decades, LGBT people had to fight official government persecution, including aggressive surveillance and targeting by law enforcement.

“You did it, honey.”

Updated 3/3/2015

The people have spoken. And, today, the Federal Communications Commission listened. A majority of FCC commissioners voted in favor of historically strong open Internet rules.