The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that it seized 63.7 Bitcoins—currently valued at roughly $2.3 million—in ransom payments made to the hacking group Darkside, following the targeted cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in May. According to an anonymous FBI agent’s affidavit, law enforcement tracked several transfers of Bitcoin and ultimately found that 63.7 [...]
The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a second case involving the scope of the government’s ability to invoke state secret privilege and declined to hear a case challenging the male-only military draft on the basis of gender discrimination. When the court last reviewed the male-only draft rule in the 1981 decision Rostker v. [...]
The Louisiana Senate voted 20-17 Monday to lift certain penalties for people charged with possessing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, specifically noting that they should not be jailed. Originally introduced by Rep. Cedric Glover (D), House Bill 652 “amends the penalty for distribution or possession with intent to distribute narcotic drugs,” including marijuana and [...]
US Attorney General Merrick Garland unveiled two new gun safety measures Monday. First, the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed rule 2021R-08, which would alter the definition of a rifle to include any weapon that “has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder.” These “objective [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday on an immigrant status case regarding noncitizens seeking to change their immigration status from temporary protected status (TPS) to lawful permanent residency. The court decided that noncitizens with temporary humanitarian relief from deportation cannot partake in the “adjustment of status” process to obtain lawful permanent residency in [...]
A US federal judge on Friday overturned California’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons, describing the ban as a “30-year-old failed experiment” and prompting a sharp retort from the state’s governor and attorney general. Judge Roger Benitez of the US District Court for the Southern District of California concluded that the ban on assault weapons infringed [...]
The G7 countries announced Saturday an agreement establishing a 15 percent global tax rate on large multinational corporations. Finance ministers from the US, UK, Canada, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy met in London to discuss the question of global taxation, which has been in discussion for almost ten years. As part of this deal, the [...]
In a 6-3 decision on Thursday, the US Supreme Court held that a former police sergeant did not violate the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) when he used his patrol car computer to access a police database for personal purposes. Sergeant Nathan Van Buren was paid $5,000 by an FBI informant to run [...]
Nevada’s governor on Wednesday signed a bill into law expanding voter access at a time when legislatures across the country are restricting access. The new law mandates that county and city clerks send mail ballots to all registered voters in the state no later than fourteen days before an election. Governor Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, [...]
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday expanding a Trump-era ban on investments into a collection of Chinese companies allegedly tied with China’s military. Last November then-president Donald Trump issued an executive order forbidding US investors from conducting “any transaction in publicly traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are designed to [...]
