Blog of Rights
Catherine
Crump

Prior to joining the ACLU, Crump clerked for the Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Crump graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School. She is a non-residential fellow with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

11/09/2011
GPS

Justices Press Government on Limits of Warrantless Location Tracking

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:48am

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard argument in an important case that confronts how to apply Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures to new technologies.

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11/07/2011
Cell Phones & Smartphones

How the Supreme Court's GPS Tracking Case Can Affect Your Cell Phone Privacy

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:34pm

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will confront the profound impact of new location-tracking technologies on Americans' privacy.

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10/25/2011
Web Filtering

Standing Up to Internet Censorship

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:01pm

In two different cases this week, the ACLU will be in court arguing that the government has unconstitutionally censored the Internet. Ever since the Supreme Court issued a fractured opinion on Internet filtering in 2003, when nine justices wrote five separate opinions, the right of Americans to have uncensored access to the Internet in public schools and libraries has been called into question.

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10/20/2011

Want to Read My Email? Not Without a Warrant.

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:51pm

Why should a warrant be required? Because email is deeply personal and private.

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10/04/2011
GPS

Tracked: The Supreme Court Shouldn't Let Technology Trump the Constitution

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:59pm

This term the Supreme Court will determine if the government needs to establish probable cause and obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS device to a person's car.

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06/27/2011

Warrantless GPS Tracking Case Heads to Supreme Court

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:31am

Today the Supreme Court announced it will consider whether the government may plant GPS devices on vehicles to track people without judicial supervision. In the case, United States v. Jones, the FBI and Washington, D.C., police attached a GPS device to Antoine Jones’s car and tracked his movements continuously for a month. This case provides an excellent opportunity for the Court to recognize that 24-7 GPS tracking is so intrusive that it should be prohibited under the Bill of Rights except when authorized by a court based on probable cause to believe that criminal activity is afoot.

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06/15/2011

Surveillance Programs Must Not Be Kept Secret

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:07pm

Technology moves so fast today that surveillance programs can now become routine before the public even learns of them. That is a problem because new surveillance programs can involve difficult value judgments and tradeoffs. How valuable are those programs in actually stopping criminals? How much privacy are we willing to give up for those benefits? What kinds of checks and balances do we think are necessary? In a democratic society, those are questions that should be answered not by law enforcement acting on their own as they install new technologies in the shadows — they should be decided by the people and their elected representatives after full democratic discussion and debate.

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05/31/2011

ACLU Files Brief Arguing Warrantless GPS Tracking Is Unconstitutional

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:57pm

On Friday, the ACLU of Delaware filed a brief with the Delaware Supreme Court arguing that law enforcement agents should not be permitted to attach a GPS device to a car without getting a search warrant. The brief explains that because GPS tracking is an invasive form of surveillance capable of revealing many private facts about a person, a lower court was correct to conclude that, “absent exigent circumstances, the warrantless placement of a GPS device to track a suspect 24 hours a day constitutes an unlawful search.”

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05/27/2011

Private Companies Shape What You Say and Read Online

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:54am

Online businesses exercise increasing control over what we say, what we read, and what we share online.

In Monday's New York Times, MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser wrote about ways in which large Internet companies such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo are increasingly using what they know about a person to decide what content to show that person. A search engine may use a person's past search terms to decide what results to display in response to future search queries. For example, if you've searched for flights recently, querying "Egypt" might yield tourism information instead of news about the revolution.

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05/25/2011

What’s the Difference Between Facebook and a Stranger on the Street?

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:55am

“Can you guys give us a list of every friend you’ve ever had? In alphabetical order, please.” This question, posed by a pair of geeky guys to two blondes, is part of a great satire of Facebook put together by the Australian show Hungry Beast. The video makes you stop and think about just how much personal information Facebook is learning about our friends, our families, and our lives — information most of us would never share with a stranger.

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