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.
01/31/2012

Will Congress Take Privacy Out of Your Netflix Queue?

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:41am

The Senate is considering a bill that will have a big impact on your Netflix account. Here's why you should care.

Read More»
01/13/2012
Facebook

Facebook: Making Your Political Opinions Less Private Since 2012

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:48pm

Facebook's willingness to search and collect users’ private political preferences and thoughts, which they may have shared only with their closest friend in a private email, is troubling.

Read More»
10/11/2011
Do Not Track

Yes, They Really Know It's You

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:39am

Behavioral targeting tracks consumers around the web by monitoring every click and then selling and sharing that information to advertisers so they can target you specifically.

Read More»
05/17/2011

Equality for Email!

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:07pm

Today Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) took an important step toward giving all of us who live our lives online a measure of true digital privacy. He announced (via Twitter — not bad for one of the senior members of the Senate!) that he was filing the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011. It may not roll off the tongue, but it does do something even better — it protects all of your private digital communications with a search warrant backed by probable cause.

Read More»
01/28/2011

Spying On Surfing: Why We Need a "Do Not Track" List

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:37pm

The new model of Internet advertising scares the heck out of us. It's called behavioral targeting. What that amounts to, in a nutshell, is following you around the web from site to site recording your movements and using that record to sell you personalized ads. All those ads that pop up on the side of articles on your favorite websites like ESPN.com or NYTimes.com are often not provided by those sites, they are from third parties that you've never heard of, with names like Lotame Solutions Inc. Using a variety of techniques, those companies are tracking where you go throughout the web.

Read More»
04/02/2012
Online Privacy

A Primer for the Online Privacy Multistakeholder Process

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:12pm

What the heck is a multistakeholder process (MSP)? The word multistakeholder is so obscure that my computer's spell check doesn't even recognize it, yet it's come to dominate the online privacy conversation in recent weeks. That discussion will begin in earnest today with a filing deadline for comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration describing how a process should work and what it should cover (the comments we submitted are here). So what's going on with this MSP and what's in it for consumers?

Read More»
03/27/2012
Consumer Online Privacy

FTC Report: A Roadmap for Future Success?

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:21pm

The FTC's newly released privacy report is a roadmap to success on consumer privacy — now it's up to Congress to follow the directions

Read More»
10/20/2011
ECPA

Aww, an Anniversary Present for Us, How Nice!

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:01pm

This week, our federal online privacy law turns 25. The ACLU is hosting a blog series that will address some of the many reasons why the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) is in need of an upgrade! Spread the word using #UpdateECPA, and to learn more about your dotRights, visit www.aclu.org/ecpa .

We were planning to do a blog post every day to draw attention to Electronic Communication Privacy Act's (ECPA) anniversary but Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) gave us an anniversary present and we couldn't resist doing an extra one to crow about it.

Read More»
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.

Read More»
10/01/2009
TSA

The Naked Truth

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:12pm

As we gear up for another holiday season, the Transportation Security Administration has added a new wrinkle: naked travel.

USA Today has just reported that the TSA has purchased “150 security machines at airport checkpoints that enable screeners to see under passengers' clothes”. These virtual strip searches allow TSA screeners to see detailed images of passengers' bodies. These machines have been around for a while, but it appears they have gone mainstream. This purchase will “vastly expand the use of the controversial body scanners.”

Read More»
Statistics image