Blog of Rights
Chris
Calabrese
Christopher Calabrese is the legislative counsel for privacy-related issues in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office (WLO). Prior to joining the WLO, Calabrese served as project counsel to the ACLU Technology & Liberty Project (TLP).  As legislative counsel, Calabrese leads the office's advocacy efforts related to privacy and the responsible use of technology, developing proactive strategies on pending federal legislation and executive branch actions concerning data collection, surveillance, and identification systems.
11/16/2011
E-Verify

Oversharing Is Never a Good Thing, Especially When it’s With DHS

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:55pm

Sometimes sharing is bad. Don’t worry. We don’t plan to rush into kindergartens across America and break the news to all the 5-year-olds, but it’s true. Especially when it comes to national security and your privacy, it may be necessary to collect and use certain information, but wrong to share it.

When a federal government advisory committee recently revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (which contains both the Secret Service and the TSA) is in the “process of creating a policy framework and technology architecture for enhancing DHS's information-sharing capabilities,” it immediately raised these types of concerns and today we sent a letter to DHS outlining those concerns.

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01/23/2013
Online Privacy

Hurray for Google Transparency, Now Where is Everyone Else?

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:16pm

Google released its latest transparency report today. They’ve made some interesting additions and the overall number of government requests is on the rise. But before we get to that, there is one major overriding point: good for Google and where is everybody else? The only other major company to release these types of numbers is Twitter. Where are Verizon and Facebook and Microsoft? How about AT&T, Amazon or Comcast? I could make this list endless but the major salient fact is that Google has paved the way (this is their 7th report) and there hasn’t exactly been a stampede to follow suit.

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05/17/2012
PCLOB

The Limits of Oversight and the PCLOB

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:32am

(Update below)

Today, the nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) were voted from the Senate Judiciary Committee for full consideration in the Senate. It looks like the Senate is finally going to act to nominate five people to fill this vital oversight board. While this is an important step, it’s also something of a good government scandal and certainly a cautionary tale about the limits of oversight.

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02/20/2013
Anti-Immigrant Laws

Not the Usual Suspects: E-Verify Worries a Motley Crew

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:39pm

Today the ACLU and a wide variety of other organizations sent a short letter to the Hill describing our concerns with the E-Verify program. These types of letters aren't unusual – in DC groups frequently try to showcase the breadth of support or opposition to particular programs. But what is surprising is how many groups that have little or nothing to do with immigration are worried about E-Verify.

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09/11/2012
ECPA

Email Privacy Faces a Key Test Next Week

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:14pm

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced late yesterday that he will bring legislation before the committee requiring law enforcement to use a probable-cause warrant to access all non-public internet communications such as email. This legislation is a key piece of efforts to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), first passed in 1986 and not substantially updated since.

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06/15/2012
Domestic Drones

Ban on Arming Domestic Drones: Let’s Draw a Line in the Sand

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 7:44am

Last week Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and the House of Representatives drew an important line in the sand. Holt offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill to bar any DHS funding for “the purchase, operation, or maintenance of armed unmanned aerial vehicles.” (The amendment was adopted and the bill has passed the House.) While moves to arm domestic drones are widely seen as beyond the pale and have not really been contemplated (with the exception of one sheriff in Texas who mused about mounting less-lethal weapons like rubber bullets on unmanned aircraft), we believe it’s crucial to get ahead of any possible trend.

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01/24/2012
Location Tracking

Supreme Court Decision on GPS Tracking: A Spur to Action for Congress

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:59am

It's time for Congress to catch up with new technology and support the GPS Act!

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10/18/2011
GPS Act

Location Privacy: Anyone Sensing a Theme Here?

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:00pm

The goal of the GPS Act is to protect privacy by preventing cell phones and other mobile devices from becoming portable tracking devices.

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10/04/2012
Consumer Online Privacy

Corporate America: We Want to Track You

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:44pm

On Monday an extraordinary letter went out from a who’s who of major corporations claiming a mandate to track all of us on the internet.  In tone and substance, it is an amazing, over-the-top screed against efforts to give consumers even modest controls over who watches us as we surf online.

The letter was triggered by Microsoft’s announcement in May that when it ships its new browser, IE 10, the browser’s default setting will be Do Not Track.  Microsoft heard the vast preference of its users and is giving them the default setting they want—no tracking of their movements and habits online. Consumers who want to get targeted ads will still be able to do so—and in fact will get a chance to turn that preference on when the program loads. As we said at the time, this is exactly the right decision, a powerful tool for giving back American’s their privacy online.

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09/24/2012
ECPA

Warrant for Email? An Update

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:22pm

Last Thursday we moved half a step closer to legislation requiring police to get a warrant before viewing personal email or other private electronic communications, such as documents and photos stored in the cloud (with Google, Yahoo or any other provider).  For more background on the amendment see here; for explanation of why it’s a half a step and what comes next please keep reading.

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