Supreme Court makes unfortunate decision about drug data

The US Supreme Court has decided that Vermont can't legally prohibit the data mining of drug prescription information. Marketers, government spies, and blackmail artists = 1. Regular folk = 0.

Thursday technology link round-up

• The FBI confiscated a bunch of servers in Virginia and brought down "tens" of sites that are not part of any criminal investigation

What is terrorism, really?

The indispensible Glenn Greenwald, of Salon.com, describes the recent arrests of two US-based Iraqi citizens on terrorism charges and explains what 'terrorism' really means.

WSJ: Privacy researcher follows the money

Researcher Chrisopher Soghoian began filing public records requests to federal law enforcement agencies in 2009, seeking records showing how much the agencies have paid in retreival fees to telecommunications companies. He's hoping to find some answers to the question: how often do these agencies ask AT&T and other telecoms for the personal data of consumers? 

Science wants to read your mind

And it can! Scary news from the DARPA crates is making the rounds on the internet, radio and television news. Check it out here.

Time to purchase a new shredder

Napolitano admits 80 percent of terror cases interrupted without use of data mining, intel-led policing

In her address to the Brennan Center in New York earlier this week, DHS director Janet Napolitano admitted that up to 80 percent of terror cases have been interrupted due to either citizen vigilance or to community policing. She said:

Is internet use a “human right”?

That's the conclusion reached by an independent UN investigator charged with looking into the practice of banning people from the internet after "three strikes" of copyright infringement. The practice is law in the UK and France.

What do you think? Should the government be allowed to prevent people from accessing the internet if they are repeat copyright infringers? The US government doesn't think so.

Read more at ArsTechnica.

Senator Ron Wyden introduces GPS tracking bill

Wyden's bill would require that law enforcement get a warrant in order to access your GPS data from telecommunications companies. Right now all they need is a subpoena, which a judge has never seen. He has support from Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who ArsTechnica reports said:

"I take the Fourth Amendment very seriously. The law enforcement community is going too far..I happen to think that's wrong."

Could it be? $635 billion spent on homeland security since 2001?

G.W. Schultz of the Center for Investigative Reporting cites the National Priorities Project. They say, yes. That's the number.

Read more.