Blog of Rights
Jay
Stanley
Jay Stanley is Senior Policy Analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, where he researches, writes and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues and their future.  He is the Editor of the ACLU's "Free Future" blog and has authored and co-authored a variety of influential ACLU reports on privacy and technology topics. Before joining the ACLU, he was an analyst at the technology research firm Forrester, served as American politics editor of Facts on File’s World News Digest, and as national newswire editor at Medialink. He is a graduate of Williams College and holds an M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia.

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05/06/2013
Biometrics

The Privacy-Invading Potential of Eye Tracking Technology

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:42am

Eye tracking technology received new attention recently due to its inclusion in the Samsung Galaxy IV phone, where it can (with mixed results, according to reviewers) let users scroll the screen with their eyes or dim the screen when they look away. Clearly this is a technology that has the potential for a lot of clever applications. But what are the privacy implications?

Eye tracking for research was used for over a century before computers (see the quick history outlined in this article). The earliest research, in the 19th century, actually involved direct mechanical contact with the cornea. Already by 1898, researchers were discovering some really cool phenomena of the human brain. Motion pictures were applied to the problem as early as 1905, and the first head-mounted eye-tracker was developed in 1948, which freed study subjects from having to keep their heads still. In the mid-1970s the first remote trackers were developed that were truly unobtrusive to the subject. By then, research and writing based on eye tracking was booming, not only on the part of psychologists but also the military.

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03/26/2013
Domestic Drones

Eight Factors That Will Shape How America Adapts to Drones

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:25pm

How domestic drones will affect our privacy depends on how the technology is used and deployed. And that depends on a lot of factors. Technologies never exist in isolation—their impact on society is always the result of interactions between the technology's potential, existing institutions and interests, and the law, architecture, and culture around them. We should put good privacy protections in place no matter what, but as drone technology unfolds, here are some of the factors that could influence the size and scope of their deployment within the United States:

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12/20/2012
Audio Surveillance

Adding Audio Recording to Surveillance Cameras Threatens A Whole New Level of Monitoring in American Life

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:06am

There has been a lot of attention recently to the issue of audio recording being added to surveillance cameras on public buses. This issue first came onto our radar in 2009, but resurfaced again in Maryland in October (see this October Baltimore Sun article). In December the Washington Post and The Daily reported that the practice is spreading widely across the United States.

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12/10/2012
Automobile Black Boxes

A Look at the Issues Raised by 'Black Boxes' in Cars

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:20pm

On Friday the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) formally proposed regulations requiring the placement of “black boxes” in cars. More properly known as “Event Data Recorders,” or EDRs, these are similar to the devices of the same name placed in aircraft, which record data about the vehicle’s operating characteristics in the seconds before a crash.

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10/05/2012
Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Would it be Easier to Fight Surveillance if the Soviets Were Still Around?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:05am

Sometimes the constant news on the surveillance front makes me wonder: would it be easier to fight new surveillance programs if the Soviet Union were still around?

On the one hand the Cold War was a bonanza for the military and for our three-letter security agencies, which were invested with a mission of world-historical importance at a time when the nation was truly facing an existential threat (nuclear war). These agencies saw their budgets and powers expand dramatically in ways that were unprecedented in a country that had always held a deep suspicion of government power in general and “standing armies” in particular. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, these institutions faced an existential crisis of their own.

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09/17/2012
Police Surveillance

New Public Safety Broadband Network: Tool For A Domestic Secret Police?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 6:19pm

Police in Tampa used smartphones and tablets to spy on protesters at the Republican National Convention, according to a report today from the National Journal.

Smartphones have proven to be an excellent tool for empowering individuals faced with sometimes unprofessional or abusive law enforcement officers, thanks to their built-in cameras and the constitutional right to record the police. But they also allow the police, according to the article, to blend in and transmit live video of protesters:

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08/29/2012
Brain Privacy

High-Tech “Mind Readers” Are Latest Effort to Detect Lies

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:41am

I recently wrote about how difficult it is to know which technologies on the horizon will turn into genuine privacy nightmares and which remain menacing but distant threats. One group of technologies that we’ve had our eyes on for a while are those that purport to read minds. On Sunday the Washington Post ran an article on a Maryland case where a murder defendant is trying to introduce fMRI “lie detector” evidence in his defense. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) allows researchers to look at neural activity in real-time by using powerful magnets to trace blood-flow changes in the brain.

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08/24/2012
Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Friday Links Roundup For August 24

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:36pm

On July 30, the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia announced a review of license plate scanning programs by law enforcement in the province. If the United States had an analogous institution embodying /enforcing our privacy values, maybe we’d see something like that here instead of untrammeled expansion and retention of license data. We’re still waiting for the “missing in action” Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to turn into something real. From 2007 until late 2011, neither President Bush nor President Obama even nominated anyone to fill the independent oversight board; we finally now have four members—but still no chair.

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07/03/2012
Artificial Intelligence

Privacy, Computers, and Consequences (Computers vs. Humans Part 2)

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:09pm

In a post yesterday I discussed the belief that as long as our behavior and communications are only scrutinized by a computer, our privacy has not been invaded. Many people have that sense because computers are so much dumber than human beings.

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06/21/2012
License Plate Scanners

More Federal License Scanners Reported

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:15pm

(Updated below)

LA Weekly has published an investigative report on the use of License Plate Scanners in Southern California. In addition to reporting that the rapid embrace of the technology by local law enforcement has led to “one of the most densely concentrated license plate recognition systems in the United States,” the article includes this signficant piece of news:

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