OPINION
May 22, 2013 | By The Times editorial board
Pushed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Obama administration may ask Congress for the power to snoop on more types of communication online. The timing couldn't be worse, given the outcry over the Justice Department secretly grabbing journalists' phone records and emails in its pursuit of government leakers. The bigger issue with what the FBI is seeking, though, is that it applies 20th century assumptions about surveillance to 21st century technologies. Congress passed the Wiretap Act in 1968 to give federal investigators the power to listen in on suspects' phone calls if they obtained a federal court's permission.
WORLD
March 7, 2013 | By Tom Kington
ROME -- Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was given a one-year jail sentence Thursday for breach of confidentiality after the publication of illegally obtained wiretaps by a newspaper controlled by his family. Berlusconi remains free pending appeals, and it's considered unlikely that the jail sentence will ever be enforced. But the verdict by a Milan court adds to a mounting number of legal tangles faced by Berlusconi, whose political coalition came in second in elections last month.
NATIONAL
February 26, 2013 | By David G. Savage
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a broad lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the government's program of secret wiretapping of international phone calls and emails, ruling that none of the plaintiffs has “standing” to sue because they cannot prove their messages were intercepted. The 5-4 ruling is the latest of many that has shielded the government's anti-terrorism programs from being challenged in court. Over the past decade, the justices have repeatedly killed or quietly ended lawsuits that sought to expose or contest anti-terrorism programs, including secret surveillance, mass arrests of immigrants from the Mideast and drone strikes that killed American citizens abroad.
NEWS
October 31, 2012 | By Michael McGough
Civil libertarians are upbeat after an argument in the Supreme Court this week over whether lawyers, activists and academics can challenge the constitutionality of a law authorizing the wiretapping of potential terrorists abroad -- who may be conversing or swapping emails with Americans. The plaintiffs, who carry on confidential conversations with foreign clients and sources, say the law chills them in the exercise of their rights. As is often the case, the civil liberties groups are pinning their hopes on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who has voted with liberals on the court in previous cases arising from the war on terrorism. Kennedy seemed receptive to the plaintiffs' argument that they have standing to sue because they fear that their confidential conversations with sources and clients are being monitored. “I think the lawyer would engage in malpractice if he talked on the telephone with some of these clients, given this statute,” Kennedy told Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
BUSINESS
October 30, 2012 | By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court justices were surprisingly skeptical Monday about arguments by a top Justice Department lawyer who in a hearing sought to squelch an anti-wiretapping lawsuit brought by lawyers, journalists and activists. At issue in the surveillance case is the government's power to secretly monitor international phone calls and email under a stepped-up monitoring policy approved by Congress four years ago. It allows U.S. spy agencies to target people or places overseas and to intercept all the phone calls and email to and from these people or places.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 14, 2012 | By Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times
A federal judge on Monday shot down Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano's bid to be released on bail during an appeal of his 2008 convictions for racketeering and wiretapping. Judge Dale Fischer, who presided over the private investigator's six-week trial, said she was not convinced the 68-year-old was no longer a threat to society, despite his attorney's pleas that Pellicano suffered from a serious eye condition and had neither the resources nor the motivation to engage in the intimidation and sleuthing that landed him in federal prison.