March 23, 2007 3:31 PM PDT
Tech Politics Podcast: Spying and porn, a heady mix in D.C.
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Another legal setback for the Net porn ban, and lots of national security letters, but no database.
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Join CNET News.com's Harry Fuller and Declan McCullagh for a look at two of the hot topics in Washington this week. First, a federal judge threw out the law aimed at protecting children from online porn. The judge found filtering software was adequate. Will the government try to defend the rejected law?
Also in D.C., there were hearings into the FBI's use of so-called national security letters, which are written requests for confidential information that do not require a judge's signature and cannot legally be disclosed by the recipient. There is now clear evidence that the FBI was issuing many more NSLs than it admitted to Congress, and apparently the agency wasn't even keeping a database.
As Declan says, you have the world's largest police force (FBI) working for the world's largest law firm (Department of Justice), and they don't have a database?
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