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Judge Susan Illston, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said the laws, which underlie a tool known as a “national security letter,” violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles. In her order, Judge Illston ordered the government to stop issuing national security letters or enforcing their gag orders, although she said enforcement of her judgment would be stayed pending appeal.

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A key difference: where Staples seemed to think they were located.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Staples Inc. Web site displays different prices to people after estimating their locations. More than that, Staples appeared to consider the person’s distance from a rival brick-and-mortar store, either OfficeMax Inc. or Office Depot Inc. If rival stores were within 20 miles or so, Staples.com usually showed a discounted price.

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The lawmakers — Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) 00 want to know if Google’s behavior “constitutes a violation” of a privacy settlement Google and the Federal Trade Commission signed last year. Breaches of the settlement could bring fines of as much as $16,000 per violation per day.

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The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.

Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

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The attendees included veteran Washington policymakers and cyberdefense experts. But one person — an engineer named Dan Kaminsky who specializes in an arcane set of rules governing how people connect to the Internet — stood out.

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Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said he would recommend that “more study” be given to a provision in the bill that would give the U.S. attorney general new authority to seek court orders compelling Internet service providers to block the sites’ domain names or Web addresses. A vote to bring the bill to the Senate floor for debate is scheduled for this month.

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The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and “massive intercept” gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country.

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According to a U.S. District Court opinion in the case of three WikiLeaks associates, it should.

Judge Liam O’Grady ruled Thursday that the associates had no reasonable expectation of privacy when they used Twitter services, even if the information in question was known only to Twitter and not publicly disclosed. The government is seeking data from their accounts including their devices’ Internet protocol (IP) addresses, which can reveal information about location, and data on people with whom they communicated.

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From big defense contractors to smaller, specialized start-ups, companies are cashing in on healthy demand for software and other technology that can sort through and analyze mountains of government and private-sector data to help track down criminals or look for signs of terrorist activity.

Police, for example, might use video-analysis software to spot a suspicious package in a crowded train station and correlate it to the license plates on a nearby car to find a potential suspect.

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For more than a year, federal prosecutors have argued in U.S. District Court that the use of the stingray device — which can locate a mobile phone even when it’s not being used to make a call — wasn’t a search, in part because the user had no reasonable expectation of privacy while using Verizon Wireless cellphone service. Under that argument, authorities wouldn’t need to obtain a search warrant before using one of the devices.

The defendant in the case, Daniel David Rigmaiden, is facing fraud charges. His quest to force the government to provide information about the device used to locate him was the subject of front-page article in The Wall Street Journal in September.

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Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., says it shipped the Internet “filtering” devices to Dubai late last year, believing they were destined for a department of the Iraqi government. However, the devices — which can block Web sites or record when people visit them — made their way to Syria, a country subject to strict U.S. trade embargoes.

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Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it’s not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.

A stingray’s role in nabbing the alleged “Hacker” — Daniel David Rigmaiden — is shaping up as a possible test of the legal standards for using these devices in investigations. The FBI says it obtains appropriate court approval to use the device.

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“The number of these networked devices has skyrocketed in the past two years,” said Don Bailey, of cyber-security firm iSec Partners, who has been studying the vulnerability problem along with colleague Mathew Solnik. “They aren’t just in automotive systems but in security systems, industrial control systems, medical devices.”

At a conference in August the two iSec researchers demonstrated how they could unlock and start a car by sending certain text messages to the car’s alarm system. The researchers said the real problem isn’t the possibility that hackers will start stealing cars. The ramifications are much broader. The same basic approach could be used by hackers to disrupt businesses or vital services.

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The bill, by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), would amend a 1986 law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which extended restrictions on government wiretaps to data transmissions as well as phone calls.

Critics of the earlier law say it has become outdated and doesn’t adequately address new technology like geolocation and long-term data storage.

“Today, this law is significantly outdated and out-paced by rapid changes in technology and the changing mission of our law enforcement agencies after September 11,” said Sen. Leahy, who also authored the 1986 law.

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Location information is emerging as one of the hottest commodities in the tracking industry–the field of companies that are building businesses based on people’s data.

Some companies are using the data to build better maps or analyze traffic patterns. Others send users advertisements for services near where they are located. Some insurers hope to use the data to provide discounts to better drivers.

On Tuesday in Washington, D.C., a Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans a hearing to consider whether a federal law is required to protect consumer privacy on mobile devices. The hearing was spurred by the public outcry over recent findings that Apple Inc. and Google Inc. gather location-related data from iPhones and Android phones. Both companies are set to testify.

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According to research firm Gartner, at least through 2015.

Analysts at the firm estimate that Apple’s iOS operating system will be on more than half of tablets in the world for the next three years, although Google Inc.’s Android will grow steadily. By 2015, they say, iOS will be on 47.1 percent of tablets, with Android on 38.6 percent and Research In Motion’s QNX tablet system on 10 percent.

Any projections that look so far in the future should be taken with a grain of salt, especially when they concern such a rapidly changing industry. Apple Insider pointed out recently that Gartner has radically revised its predictions about the smartphone market over the past couple of years. But the predictions offer some interesting theories about how the tablet market will pan out.

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An organization called Palindrome Advisors thinks so, and it launched a program Wednesday that aims to match executives in technology and other industries with nonprofits that need their help.

“In technology terms, think of Palindrome as a ‘match.com’ for industry leaders and the boards of nonprofits,” the group’s founder, Zaw Thet, told Digits in an email.

Palindrome has 100 executives signed up already–including Twitter’s president of global revenue, Adam Bain; Apple’s director of iPhone apps, Dag Kittlaus; and Ellen Siminoff, a founding executive and former senior vice president at Yahoo. The list of advisers is mostly from the tech world, but there are some outliers, including those in government, the energy business and even nightclubs.

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Distracted driving is a big worry for many parents, but one start-up is betting that its technology will help alleviate some of those concerns. California-based Location Labs is selling a tool that detects when the phone is in a moving car and limits the owner’s ability to make calls and texts.

The system locks the driver’s cellphone screen, redirects calls to voicemail, blocks text message alerts and lets parents log on via the Web and see what is happening with the device while the teen is driving. In case of emergencies, parents can set three key contacts who are allowed to get through. And teens can override the system if they’re a passenger rather than a driver, but Location Labs will alert their parents when that happens.

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At least one researcher thinks so. Arthur O’Connor, a doctoral student at Pace University in New York, is testing whether social-media popularity–as measured by Facebook “likes,” Twitter followers and YouTube views–is correlated with stock prices.

In a pilot study, Mr. O’Connor found a “statistically significant” correlation, although he tested only three brands–Starbucks Corp., Nike Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.–over a 10-month period. The more social-media fans a brand had, the better its stock was likely to do, even accounting for general market conditions.

The finding held true even though the three companies studied had very different returns. During the test, Starbucks stock increased 29 percent, Nike grew 14 percent and Coke fell by nearly 6 percent.

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“Modern technology allows private entities to observe the activity of Americans on a scale that is unimaginable, and there is no general law” governing the collection and use of that data, Sen. Kerry told the Senate Commerce Committee.

The Massachusetts lawmaker said he was working with others and soon planned to introduce a “privacy bill of rights.”

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Lawrence E. Strickling, an assistant secretary of commerce, is expected to call for the legislation at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, said a person familiar with the matter.

This person said the administration will back a law that follows the outlines of a report issued by the Commerce Department in December. The administration wants any new rules to be enforceable and will look to expand the Federal Trade Commission’s authority, this person said.

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The algorithm contest, the largest of its kind so far, is part of a trend toward using such prizes to help find the best answers to complicated data-analysis questions.

Data-mining competitions have been around for a while–most notably the $1 million Netflix Inc. prize awarded in 2009 for a model to better predict what movies people would like. But the $3 million health prize, which is sponsored by California managed-care company Heritage Provider Network Inc., raises the stakes. And the start-up handling the competition, Kaggle Pty. Ltd., is aiming to build a business by conducting even more.

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The tool, called uProtect.it, works like this: Users get the app and activate it on Facebook with a bookmark. Then they write a comment and choose which of their friends can see it. Instead of the comment being posted normally on Facebook, uProtect.it posts a message saying that the comment is encrypted and can be seen by clicking on a link. Only those friends who are allowed to see the message can decode it when the link is clicked; even Facebook doesn’t have access.

“Essentially you’re creating an encrypted atmosphere on Facebook, and Facebook can’t control it,” said Michael Fertik, the founder and chief executive of Reputation.com Inc., which makes the app.

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