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.
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12/13/2012
NCTC

Vast New Spying Program Was Started in Secret on a Bogus Pretext

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:25am

The Wall Street Journal today published (alternate link) an in-depth review of a new, relatively unknown program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Although we have been warning about the dangers of the program for months, and I testified before Congress about the issue in July, the Journal’s story conveys how controversial the program was even inside the government. It also describes the broad scope of new authority the government is granting itself.

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07/30/2012
Government Surveillance

The Biggest New Spying Program You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:18pm

Update: Since this piece was posted, the ACLU has filed FOIA requests seeking more information on data-mining by the NCTC. Read more »

What if a government spy agency had power to copy and data mine information about ordinary Americans from any government database? This could include records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records. Literally anything the government collects would be fair game, and the original agency in charge of protecting the privacy of those records would have little say over whether this happened, or what the spy agency did with the information afterward. What if that spy agency could add commercial information, anything it – or any other federal agency – could buy from the huge data aggregators that are monitoring our every move?

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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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07/03/2012
National ID

Just In Time For Independence Day, A Renewed Call For A National ID Card

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:24pm

Leading yesterday’s New York Times op-ed page is a column by Bill Keller, Show Me Your Papers. It supports the faulty claim that we can solve our nation’s immigration woes if we just create a national ID system, and it specifically lauds a 2010 proposal by Sens. Schumer and Graham to create a biometric social security card that would function as a national ID for every American.

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04/17/2013
E-Verify

Mandatory E-Verify: A Giant Plunge Into a National ID System

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:23pm

Today's release of an immigration reform proposal from the Gang of Eight raises a host of civil liberties issues, many of which the ACLU will undoubtedly be commenting on in the coming days and weeks.

Today, I'm focusing on our concerns with one particular program, E-Verify. Currently, E-Verify is a largely voluntary system where employers can check with the Department of Homeland Security to see if someone is allowed to work. Basically it's a giant list of everyone – immigrants and citizens – legally in the United States.

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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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02/06/2013
ECPA

Will Congress and Law Enforcement Let Email Providers Keep Protecting Americans’ Privacy?

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:19pm

This was originally posted on the American Constitution Society blog.

The Hill broke a fascinating story last week: many major email providers are already requiring a warrant for the content of the communications they hold. What you say, this doesn't sound fascinating at all? It really is—just bear with me.

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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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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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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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