Distributed identity system can prove the facts that make identities reliable, while minimizing the data that needs to be shared—with government, among others—in doing so.

When the time comes to formulate policy on spending transparency, ask not what technology leaders can do for you, Mr. Trump, but what the DATA Act can do for them.

The IRS’s effort to strip away the privacy of all Coinbase users is more broad than the government’s effort in recent cases dealing with cell site location information.

DHS is gamely trying to press states to make the national ID law workable. Its inventiveness in rewriting the law and improvising deadlines draws into question whether the agency is acting with dispassion or with vindictiveness toward states that it sees as opportune victims of federal punishment.

A single vote does have an infinitesimally small chance of swaying any particular election, but the chances get better as you go down the ballot and with years of being a voter.

Consistent with precedents both longstanding and recent, the Court should recognize that telecommunications customers can have property rights in such data, and that when the government seeks to seize and search such data, it generally requires a warrant.

Upcoming debate at Cato Institute: Should Libertarians Vote? It’s sure to rock the world of liberty.

What does it take to make a state‐​level Republican policymaker work to grow the power of the Obama Administration? Not much!

If fully implemented, REAL ID would be a de facto national ID card administered by states for DHS. The back‐​end database system would be vunerable to hacking risks and access by corrupt DMV employees anywhere in the country.

For the tiniest increment in national security—inconveniencing any foreign terrorist who might use a driver’s license in the U.S.—REAL ID increases the risk of wholesale data breaches and wide‐​scale identity fraud. It’s not a good trade‐​off.

Transparency is a legacy issue for President Obama, who campaigned in 2008 on promises of true reform. The transparency movement is a reform movement based on a vision of modern government. Sunstein and Yglesias make modest arguments against transparency that don’t appear to recognize the government’s long, systematic exclusion of the public from its processes or the resulting atrophy of Americans’ civic muscles. Thus, they too easily conclude that transparency is not necessary because it’s not useful.

The weird world of data gives us a lot to grapple with if we’re going to protect our privacy.

The service agreement you have with your cell provider creates a contractual property right, so the government should need a warrant to get your data.

Though it has called the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test and its odd corollaries into question, the Supreme Court has not provided a clear path for lower courts. Judge Gorsuch’s opinion in U.S. v. Ackerman is a game attempt at finding the right path.

Consumers can demand less aggrandizement of terror incidents from the media and politicians.