NSA phone snooping upheld by Senate Republicans' filibuster

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Senate Republicans rose to the defense of the National Security Agency on Tuesday by filibustering a bill that would have halted the agencys phone-snooping program, saying it is now more critical than ever amid advancing terrorism in the Middle East and fears of homegrown terrorism in the U.S.

The vote, in which 41 Republicans and one Democrat banded together for the filibuster, leaves the most controversial part of the Patriot Act in place.

It also ends efforts to rein in the NSA program for the foreseeable future because Republicans will take control of the chamber early next year and are unlikely to revisit the issue.

This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who pointed to the advance of Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria. The threat from ISIL is real. Its different from what weve faced before. And if were going to overcome it if our aim is to degrade and destroy ISIL, as the president has said then thats going to require smart policies and firm determination.

Pressure will now build on President Obama to make changes on his own. He has put some limits on the NSA, but asked Congress for guidance and said he strongly supported the legislation the Republicans defeated.

Still, the NSAs snooping days may be numbered. The controversial sections of the Patriot Act are up for renewal next year, and unless Congress can reach an agreement, those powers will expire.

Tuesdays vote was a blow for privacy advocates, who won overwhelming support in the House this year for a bill that dramatically curtailed NSA snooping and other bulk-records collection by the government.

The advocates tried to build a similar conservative-liberal coalition in the Senate, but most Republicans balked.

Tonight, Senate Republicans have failed to answer the call of the American people who elected them, and all of us, to stand up and to work across the aisle, said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who pressed for the vote, fearing GOP infighting would doom chances for a bill next year.

Mr. Leahy accused Republicans of scare tactics to try to preserve the Patriot Act authority.

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NSA phone snooping upheld by Senate Republicans' filibuster

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NSA surveillance bill defeated in Senate

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Legislation to keep most Americans' phone records out of government hands was defeated in the Senate, dooming for now prospects of national security reforms that supporters said would protect the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

A motion failed Tuesday to get the necessary 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the bill sponsored by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), with most Republicans voting against. The final vote was 58 to 42.

One of its most outspoken foes was incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said stopping the National Security Agency from collecting telephone dialing records "would end one of our nation's critical capabilities to gather significant intelligence on terrorist threats."

Citing the recent beheadings of U.S. citizens in Syria, McConnell said: "This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced just before the vote that she strongly supported the bill, dubbed the USA Freedom Act. Feinstein's support had been in doubt.

"I supported the USA Freedom Act because it may be the best opportunity to reform the metadata collection program while maintaining the government's ability to use this tool to prevent terrorist attacks at home and abroad," she said.

Born of Edward Snowden's revelations that the NSA was secretly archiving data from nearly every telephone call made in the United States, the Leahy bill would have required the NSA to request such records from telephone companies rather than collect and store the information itself.

Except in emergencies, U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI would have had to seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to access and use the data, and only in cases involving suspected terrorism or espionage. A similar procedure is used now to access the NSA database, but critics said the current system is open to abuse.

"The bill contains key reforms to safeguard Americans' privacy by prohibiting the indiscriminate collection of their data," Leahy said. "It also provides for greater accountability and transparency of the government's surveillance programs."

At issue are telephone company records of customers and the phone numbers they have dialed, including date, time and duration of calls, but not the conversations themselves.

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NSA surveillance bill defeated in Senate

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Key GOP senators oppose NSA phone records measure

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FILE: An aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah.(AP)

The Senate on Tuesday blocked a bill to end bulk collection of American phone records by the National Security Agency, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's primary proposal to rein in domestic surveillance.

The 58-42 vote was two short of the 60 needed to proceed with debate. Voting was largely along party lines, with most Democrats supporting the bill and most Republicans voting against it. The Republican-controlled House had previously passed its own NSA bill.

The legislation would have ended the NSA's collection of domestic calling records, instead requiring the agency to obtain a court order each time it wanted to analyze the records in terrorism cases, and query records held by the telephone companies. In many cases the companies store the records for 18 months.

The revelation that the spying agency had been collecting and storing domestic phone records since shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was among the most significant by Edward Snowden, a former agency network administrator who turned over secret NSA documents to journalists. The agency collects only so-called metadata numbers called, not names and not the content of conversations. But the specter of the intelligence agency holding domestic calling records was deeply disquieting to many Americans.

The bill had drawn support from technology companies and civil liberties activists. Its failure means there has been little in the way of policy changes as a result of Snowden's disclosures.

Pressured to act, Obama in January proposed curbing the NSA's authority and the House in May passed a bill to do so. While the measure was pending, the NSA continued to collect American landline calling records, though the program does not cover most mobile phone records.

The law authorizing the bulk collection, a provision of the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act, will expire at the end of 2015. That means Congress would have to pass legislation re-authorizing the program for it to continue.

For that reason, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, abandoned her previous opposition to the bill. "If we do not pass the bill, we will lose this program," Feinstein said on the Senate floor.

"This bill increases trust and confidence and credibility of our intelligence system," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

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US Senate fails to move forward on NSA reform bill

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The U.S. Senate has voted against a bill that would rein in the National Security Agencys bulk collection of telephone records within the country, possibly killing any NSA reforms until next year.

Supporters of the USA Freedom Act, in a Senate vote late Tuesday, failed to get the 60 votes needed to end debate and move toward a final vote on the legislation. Fifty-eight senators voted to end debate, while 42 voted against it.

While supporters said the legislation is needed to restore public trust in U.S. intelligence services, opponents said the NSAs widespread collection of U.S. phone records is needed to keep the country safe from terrorism.

The legislation, sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, would have gutted the NSA phone records collection program at a time when the U.S. faces major threats from homegrown terrorists, said Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican. If the U.S. has another terrorist attack, the first question we will be asked is, why didnt we know about it, and why didnt we prevent it? he said.

Supporters cannot cite a single example of this program ever being abused, Rubio said. We are dealing with a theoretical [privacy] threat.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, countered that the bill is needed to restore confidence in U.S. intelligence gathering services, after the public learned about widespread surveillance programs through leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The public is concerned that the NSA had been collecting and storing enormous amounts of information about American citizens, he said. The data collection at issue was not limited to those suspected of terrorist activity.

Leahy criticized opponents of the bill for using scare tactics to defeat the legislation. He promised to keep fighting for NSA reforms.

The bill had support from President Barack Obamas administration and a wide range of U.S. tech companies and civil rights groups.

The Senate bill would require the NSA to use specific targeting terms when collecting U.S. telephone records, and would require the government to issue reports on the number of people targeted in surveillance programs.

It would give communications providers options for how to report the number of surveillance requests they receive, and require the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to appoint a panel of advocates to argue in support of individual privacy and civil liberties during consideration of surveillance requests.

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US Senate fails to move forward on NSA reform bill

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NSA Surveillance To Continue: Senate Votes Against USA Freedom Act

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A bill to limit the National Security Agencys surveillance has failed in a night vote by the U.S. Senate. The USA Freedom Act, created in the wake of Edward Snowdens NSA revelations, was unable to garner the minimum 60 votes to move forward. The final result was 58-42 against.

It was the first attempt at reining in the NSA during the post 9/11 era. Its failure means the agency will continue to have access to U.S. citizens phone records, despite support for the bill from the House of Representatives, the White House and even the NSA.

Tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo also supported the bill.

In addition to stopping the mass collection of phone records, the bill would have forced the government to disclose the number of people whose data had been collected and if they were American or not. It also would have created a panel of advocates for privacy and civil liberties in the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Court that would have ruled if law enforcement officials could spy or not.

For detractors of the bill, the victory is merely part one of a bigger fight to retain powers for data-collecting national security agencies. On June 1, 2015, section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire, which will curtail the NSAs legal ability to continue its data collection.

Its unclear whether Congress will reauthorize Section 215.

Tuesday nights vote to retain the status quo is an indication Section 215 may be in the balance, especially given that the House passed the Freedom Act in May.

In a fierce yet short debate prior to the vote, senators gave their thoughts on the act.

"This is theworst possible timeto be tying our hands behind our backs," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The substance of this bill is totally flawed, said Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. Fellow Republican from Indiana Dan Coats asked: Why do we have to rush this through in a lame-duck session? Id urge my colleagues to think through something that were going to regret later.

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NSA Surveillance To Continue: Senate Votes Against USA Freedom Act

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Irving Peress, dentist who was subject of Sen. Joseph McCarthys hearings, dies at 97

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In more than four decades as a New York City dentist, Irving Peress pulled teeth and filled cavities in unremarkable obscurity.

But for a few months 60 years ago, he was the focus of national attention: exhibit A in Sen. Joseph R. McCarthys campaign to warn the nation of the communist threat to the American way of life and the extent to which it had already penetrated the countrys vital institutions.

Dr. Peress, who died Nov.13 at 97, was a primary target in McCarthys drive to ferret out the communist fifth column in the U.S. Army, into which the dentist had been drafted during the Korean War.

He was commissioned an officer in 1952 and signed an oath affirming that he had never been a member of an organization that sought to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means.

But he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to protection against self-incrimination when asked if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party or any affiliated body. This got him put under Army surveillance, but he was promoted nevertheless from captain to major in October 1953.

An anonymous source told the Senates Government Operations Committee about it. McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican sitting on the committee and serving as chairman of its subcommittee on investigations, decided to hold hearings into communist saturation of the Army.

He wanted to know: How could someone under surveillance for communist connections get a promotion in the Army? This looked like yet another example of coddling communists, the senator said, adding that there was somewhere at the Pentagon a secret master who had somehow engineered Dr. Peresss promotion.

In hotbeds of anti-communism around the nation, the question was asked: Who promoted Dr. Peress?

Several times during his testimony before McCarthys committee, Dr. Peress invoked the Fifth Amendment. McCarthy called him a Fifth Amendment communist. Dr. Peress said anyone attacking him for exercising this right was himself guilty of subversion. He repeated that he never sought the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

To McCarthy, Dr. Peress remained the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our Armed Forces.

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Irving Peress, dentist who was subject of Sen. Joseph McCarthys hearings, dies at 97

Snoopers flights: Air raid!

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If the Founders and Framers knew about U.S. marshals' reported airborne collection of cellphone data from thousands of innocent Americans while pursuing criminals, they surely would shout, Get a warrant!

First reported by The Wall Street Journal, this program began outrageously violating Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure around 2007. Cessna aircraft, covering most of the U.S. population from five unidentified metro-area airports, carry devices that mimic cell towers, fooling cellphones into reporting their general locations and unique registration information.

These devices supposedly distinguish between innocents' cellphones and those of fugitives, drug dealers and others under criminal investigation. But they can gather data from tens of thousands of phones, encrypted or not, in a single flight. And while court orders supposedly are obtained for these flights, those orders are sealed.

Given how wide a net is cast, it's hard to see how those court orders could be as specific about what's to be searched, for what purpose as search warrants must be under the Fourth Amendment.

The ACLU's chief technologist says judges approving this dragnet surveillance program likely don't realize its scale. Such widespread snooping on innocents is the result of overreaching law enforcers and compliant judges disregarding constitutional wisdom.

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Snoopers flights: Air raid!

Law professor focuses work on Second Amendment

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UMKC Law School professor Allen Rostron did not begin his legal career intending to work in the area of Second Amendment rights, or be a full-time law professor. After graduating from Yale Law School, he worked as a tax attorney. He soon found, however, that he did not enjoy the work. At the time of his change of focus, gun control was getting a lot of media attention and when an opportunity presented itself, he took a position at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The decision began a path that he still follows today.

Rostron was recently invited to be part of a planning team on former New York City Mayor Michael Bloombergs gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety. As part of this group, Rostron focuses on recent decisions about the Second Amendment made by the Supreme Court after many years of the court not having any significant opinions about it.

When the Supreme Court decides something and you think well, that answers the question, it raises just as many questions, Rostron said.

That leaves lower courts around the country trying to figure out which laws are fine as they are written and which laws need some adjustment or even to be struck down. Groups on both sides of the issue gather to strategize to influence those decisions.

According to its website, Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities. Their voices of the movement are moms, mayors and survivors.

There are groups that oppose gun control because they see it as an infringement upon the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Rostron said that in the recent Supreme Court decisions, the court has said that there needs to be a historical point of view taken. If a gun law is being decided on, a modern public policy perspective should not be the only perspective. The Supreme Court says that these decisions should begin by looking at what the right to keep and bear arms traditionally meant.

That creates a real need to know the history, Rostron said. There is a real need for historians to delve back into what was the situation with guns 200 years ago or more. What kind of laws did they have and what did they think you had a right to do and what did the right not cover. Its a very rich, interesting, historical exploration.

The courses Rostron teaches at UMKC have a healthy amount of discussion. He teaches a Seminar on Gun Law & Safety, but all of his courses have some amount of discussion about rights that citizens hold.

Students are willing to debate the gun control issue because its not as personal as more hot-button issues like abortion or affirmative action.

I have found guns to be in the category of some other things like maybe religion very controversial and people have very strong views about it, but theyre not afraid to get into it a little bit with other students or with the teacher, Rostron said.

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Law professor focuses work on Second Amendment

California Towns Unusual Gun Law to Get Federal Appeals Court Ruling

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On Monday, the long-running debate over gun laws is moving to center stage, out in San Francisco.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments concerning whether an unusual gun law passed by voters in Sunnyvale, Calif., late last year is constitutional.

A coalition of gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, claims the law, which bans anyone from owning gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Sunnyvale, on the other hand, claims the law does not impinge on Sunnyvale residents Second Amendment rights to own a firearm within the home for self-defense because such large-capacity magazines are neither necessary nor even useful for self-defense because defenders seldom fire more than two shots. Restricting such magazines makes sense, Sunnyvale argues, because theyre frequently used in mass shootings, including the massacre at Newtown, Conn., at the end of 2012.

So who is right?

A U.S. District Judge in San Jose, Calif., in March upheld the law, finding that while the Sunnyvale law implicated the Second Amendment, the burden placed by the law on a Sunnyvale residents Second Amendment rights is relatively light.

Wrote Judge Ronald M. Whyte:

The Sunnyvale law passes intermediate scrutiny, as the courtwithout making a determination as to the laws likely efficacycredits Sunnyvales voluminous evidence that the ordinance is substantially tailored to the compelling government interest of public safety.

Still, the caselaw concerning firearm restrictions has been developing for a relatively short period of time. In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark case called District of Columbia v. Heller, ruled that the Second Amendment protects ones right to own a firearm in ones own home.

But the court left for another day (and, until then, lower courts) a variety of issues, including whether and to what degree firearms can be carried outside the home, and the degree to which semi-automatic weapons can be regulated as well. The law on these issues is not well settled, meaning the judges of the Ninth Circuit have leeway in the Sunnyvale case to chart their own path.

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California Towns Unusual Gun Law to Get Federal Appeals Court Ruling

Ferguson: New video shows officer Wilson accosting man on his own property for simply filming him – Video

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Ferguson: New video shows officer Wilson accosting man on his own property for simply filming him
Ferguson resident Mike Arman alleges that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was arrested by embattled police officer Darren Wilson in 2013, and that the subsequent police report...

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Ferguson: New video shows officer Wilson accosting man on his own property for simply filming him - Video

Another Court Affirms Googles First Amendment Control Of Search Results

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Europe and the U.S. continue to drift further apart on Google. Even as European parliamentarians and regulators seek ways to restrain Googles discretion over search results, U.S. courts continue to affirm Googles right to do whatever it wants with search results paid and organic.

A California state court in San Francisco recently granted Googles case-ending motion in lawsuit against the company (per GigaOm). The action, filed in June of this year in San Francisco Superior Court, was called S. Louis Martin vs. Google Inc.

Drafted and filed by the non-attorney publisher of San Francisco Bay Area Tourism website CoastNews.com, the complaint alleged unfair and deceptive business practices against Google.

The basic factual allegations included the claim that CoastNews ranked at the top of search results on Bing and Yahoo for San Francisco neighborhood keywords but didnt rank in a comparable position on Google. Plaintiff Martin asserted that Googles unfair and monopolistic business practices cause him lost revenue and future growth and harmed consumers, as well.

Martin asked for a jury trial and sought roughly $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Google prevailed by framing plaintiffs claim as a SLAPP lawsuit. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. SLAPP suits are usually filed by corporations or other powerful interests often to intimidate or silence less-powerful critics.

The irony here is that the corporation (Google) was claiming that this individual plaintiff (Martin) was trying to silence its First Amendment-protected speech. The Superior Court agreed.

In its motion, essentially to dismiss the case, Google cited various prior cases and precedents that establish Google has total discretion over the content of its search results as a protected expression of its First Amendment free speech rights.

The 2003 decision Search King, cited above, was the first case (to my knowledge) to hold that Googles editorial control of search results was protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. That was reaffirmed earlier this year in a US District Court case called Zhang et al.v.Baidu.com (also cited above).

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Another Court Affirms Googles First Amendment Control Of Search Results

Letter To The Editor: First Amendment Guarantees Freedom Of Speech

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Posted Nov. 17, 2014, 9:53 am Letter To The Editor

Dear Editor,

In the United States of America, and to an even stronger extent in the State of California, the First Amendment to our federal Constitution (and its state counterpart) guarantees freedom of speech.

To petition, protest, and advocate before governmental bodies and public marketplaces are constitutional rights and therefore protected speech. This lawsuit is an attempt to bully me and silence dissent in the City of Santa Monica, where the pony ride and petting zoo have been the subject of criticism and protests for years, long before my personal involvement.

In consultation with counsel, I intend to file an ANTI-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion to protect my freedom of speech rights and those of others who might otherwise be deterred by coercive litigation from exercising their rights -- and to defend the rights of suffering animals, sentient beings with emotional lives worthy of dignity and compassion.

I have repeatedly made overtures to the pony ride operators, introducing Jason, Tawnis husband, to Phil Brock, the Parks Commissioner, to see if they might be willing to compromise and move their animal exhibits to a more spacious and tranquil environment, where the ponies could be taken off the metal bar and walked with a gentle lead at a city park.

The City Council resolution relating to the ponies directed City staff to explore alternatives elsewhere in the City for the pony ride to operate in a more congenial environment for the animals. To my knowledge, the pony operators have not been interested in compromise and have repeatedly refused to consider more humane alternatives.

While the operators repeatedly and publicly attack my character, I know that I have only told the truth, expressing my opinion, both in words and photographs, throughout this period of protest, in which 1,450 people signed my petition to shut down the animal exhibits. Additionally, records obtained under the California Public Records Act have surfaced past complaints about the animal exhibits.

Beyond that, I learned that a separate protest in 2005 resulted in approximately another thousand petition signatures from market visitors disturbed by the sight of ponies tethered to a metal bar, circling for hours on hard ground, unable to turn around or seek water on their own during a hot summer day.

Not only do local residents find these exhibits objectionable, some of my neighbors boycotting the Main Street farmers market, but Marc Bekoff, noted scientist and colleague of Jane Goodall, with whom I consulted months ago, calls the exhibits thoroughly inhumane -- adding, Tethering animals so they cannot have freedom of movement and the freedom to get away from harassment and noise is as inhumane as keeping the animals in tiny cages in petting zoos, where they suffer physically and emotionally.

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Letter To The Editor: First Amendment Guarantees Freedom Of Speech

A Computer Science Professor Found A Way To Identify Most 'Anonymous' Tor Users

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Tor was supposed to be an anonymous means of browsing the Internet, but a study by computer science professorSambuddho Chakravarty reveals that 81 percent of those using Tor can be de-anonymized by exploiting a technology in Cisco routers called Netflow. The ploy reveals a user's originating IP address, which is analogous to identifying someone's home address even if he or she uses a P.O. box.

By facilitating anonymity online, Tor enables people around the world to communicate securely and get around firewalls that might block certain sites in their countries. It's also the technology that facilitated the notorious Silk Road (and subsequent iterations), seeing people trade bitcoins for assorted black market paraphernalia through the mail. The nonprofit project enables freedom of the press around the world and, for at least a time, presented a means to mail-order drugs.

The Tor browser works by way of decentralization. Your Web traffic doesn't come directly to you, but instead arrives by way of a number of relays. Each relay makes it increasingly difficult to identify the traffic's ultimate destination, shielding you from being associated with it. The trade-off is one of speed for purported anonymity, but this Netflow exploit is only the latest among a few incidents that seem to be punching holes in the browser's popular conception as a bulletproof security fiend.

"That general understanding is wrong," Kevin Johnson, CEO of independent security consulting firm SecureIdeas,said. "Tor runs on top of a complex series of interconnections between apps and the underlying network. To expect that everything in that system is going to understand and respect it, it becomes very complex."

Consider Web traffic as though it were automobile traffic flowing down a highway. To assume that all Web traffic will follow Tor's anonymizing "rules" is akin to assuming that every car on the highway follows all the traffic regulations, but "as we know by looking at any news report, a number of people have accidents every day," Johnson said. "The exact same thing happens with Tor. Its a highway system with an application that says 'go this way,' and we expect all of our apps to follow those signs."

Johnson says that Cisco's Netflow, which sits at the heart of the exploit that can de-anonymize these Tor users, is comparable to the Department of Transportation's analytics on a given stretch of road. Instead of identifying the types of traffic -- 15 percent motorcycles, 25 percent sedans, 40 percent semi trucks, and so on --Netflow can break down Internet traffic into its various types, say 50 percent email, 35 percent Web traffic, and the remainder being Tor. Chakravarty'stechnique for exploiting Netflow works by injecting a repeating traffic pattern, such as the common HTML files that most Tor users are likely to be accessing, into the connection and then checking the routers flow records to check for a match. If it finds a match, then the user is no longer anonymous.

"When youre looking at those kind of attacks, they're done by government state agencies, usually foreign governments suppressing protesters or tracking dissidents. It's harder to do in America because there's so much other traffic," said Jayson Street, who bears the job title of Infosec Ranger atsecurity assessment firm Pwnie Express.

The takeaway is clear: Tor used by itself is hardly some one-stop shop to ensure anonymity online. "End users dont know how to properly configure it -- they think its a silver bullet," Street said. "They think once they use this tool, they dont have to take other precautions. It's another reminder to users that nothing is 100 percent secure. If you're trying to stay protected online, you have to layer your defenses."

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A Computer Science Professor Found A Way To Identify Most 'Anonymous' Tor Users

Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Silk Road Bitcoin Auction and Scotcoin Migration to Counterparty

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The price of bitcoin has dipped back below $400 following its remarkable surge last week.(IBTimes UK)

The price of bitcoin has dropped again slightly over the last 24 hours, making last week's surge look increasingly like a spike.

Most other major cryptocurrencies have seen a similar decline, with litecoin, dogecoin, and namecoin all falling by between 2% and 3%.

The worst hit of the big players was darkcoin, which fell by around 12% since yesterday. The anonymity-focussed cryptocurrency now has a market cap of less than $12 million having risen to almost $15m last week.

The US Marshals Service (USMS) is to auction a further 50,000 bitcoins seized from Ross Ulbricht, the alleged creator of the Silk Road online black marketplace.

It follows a similar auction of 30,000 bitcoins in June, from an estimated pot of 140,000 bitcoins - worth around $54 million at today's prices.

"On January 27, 2014, the United States District Court for the District of New York entered a Stipulation and Order for Interlocutory Sale of Bitcoins," the USMS announced.

"In this order, both the United States and Ross William Ulbricht agreed that 'the United States, in its sole discretion, may sell any portion or all of these bitcoins, on a date or dates and in a manner to be determined by the government.'"

The auction will take place on 4 December between 8am and 2pm EST, with any bidders required to register by midday on the 1 December.

Scotcoin, the unofficial national cryptocurrency of Scotland, has taken a major step forward in its development by migrating to the Counterparty.io solution.

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Cryptocurrency Round-Up: Silk Road Bitcoin Auction and Scotcoin Migration to Counterparty

People in Bitcoin: NYC Store Owner of Flat128 Elizabeth DuBois – Video

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People in Bitcoin: NYC Store Owner of Flat128 Elizabeth DuBois
Meet Elizabeth DuBois, store owner of Flat128, the British-Vintage merchandise store in the heart of Greenwich Village. From genuine British items like umbrellas, dresses and books, to vintage...

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People in Bitcoin: NYC Store Owner of Flat128 Elizabeth DuBois - Video