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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02/21/2013
Domestic Drones

Drone ‘Nightmare Scenario’ Now Has A Name: ARGUS

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:06am

The PBS series NOVA, “Rise of the Drones,” recently aired a segment detailing the capabilities of a powerful aerial surveillance system known as ARGUS-IS, which is basically a super-high, 1.8 gigapixel resolution camera that can be mounted on a drone. As demonstrated in this clip, the system is capable of high-resolution monitoring and recording of an entire city. (The clip was written about in DefenseTech and in Slate.)

In the clip, the developer explains how the technology (which he also refers to with the apt name “Wide Area Persistent Stare”) is “equivalent to having up to a hundred Predators look at an area the size of a medium-sized city at once.”

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10/04/2012
Video Surveillance

Police Cameras Outside Your Door

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:56am

The ACLU of Michigan recently put out an interesting report on surveillance cameras. Like other ACLU reports on cameras (such as those by our affiliates in Illinois and Northern California, and the materials on our national site) it summarizes the policy arguments against cameras. But it also focuses on a uniquely disturbing application of surveillance cameras: their deployment in residential neighborhoods.

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06/07/2012
Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Plenty to Hide

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:57pm

A commentator on my recent post about the DEA installing license plate scanners on the nation’s interstate highways asks, “If you aren't doing anything illegal why would you care if someone captures your license plate number?”

Another commentator countered: “If I'm not doing anything illegal, why do the police need to record my license plate number?”

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06/29/2012
RFID chips

Newest School RFID Scheme is Reminder of Technology’s Surveillance Potential

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:42pm

It’s funny how unpredictable the course of technology is. A few weeks ago it was reported that a Texas school district plans to implant RFID chips in student IDs, and use them to track the whereabouts of students. RFID chips, of course, are what make all kinds of contactless technologies work, from toll booth speed passes to contactless transit passes and entry keys. We have seen attemtps to use RFID’s in schools before and have opposed such efforts, not only because we don’t want to see this kind of intrusive surveillance infrastructure gain inroads into our culture, and because we should not be teaching our children to accept such an intrusive surveillance technology, but also because RFIDs are a generally insecure technology not appropriate for use with children.

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03/08/2013
Domestic Drones

We Already Have Police Helicopters, So What’s the Big Deal Over Drones?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:26am

As drone regulation legislation works its way through Congress and the 30 (so far) state legislatures where it has been introduced, one question that we hear a lot these days is, “we’ve had police helicopters for a long time, what’s so different about drones?”

For one thing, police helicopters do raise privacy issues. Because of the expense of using manned police aircraft, privacy invasions have not risen to the level that legislators have felt compelled to address them, but incidents do happen. In 2005, for example, a police helicopter supposedly monitoring a street protest in New York City instead trained its infrared camera for a prolonged period on a couple making love on a pitch-black rooftop patio. Any police helicopter that followed a citizen around town for no reason, or hovered over the backyard of innocent homeowners whose daughter was sunbathing with her friends, would probably draw complaints. With drones, scenarios like those are bound to happen much more frequently. And that’s because there are some critical distinctions between manned and unmanned aircraft.

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08/22/2012
Protestors' Rights

First Amendment Violations to Watch for at the RNC and DNC

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:11am

We know that photographers have been having problems all over the country with police harassment, and that demonstrators’ free speech rights have also been under assault. But with the Democratic and Republican political conventions coming up, we have all too much reason to expect that free speech rights will be swallowed up in the vortex of those events, which have become constitutional black holes in recent years.

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12/12/2012
Domestic Drones

The DIY Armed Drone

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:32pm

I was on a radio show earlier today (the “Your Call” show on KALW, a local public radio station in San Francisco) when a man called in to tell how he had successfully built his own armed drone, using commercially available equipment. He did not use a real gun, but a paintball gun (many paintball guns are comparable to real guns in weight).

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06/22/2012
Data Mining

Weird Computer-Generated Quiz Produces Customer Service Fail

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:20pm

I lost my credit card yesterday and had a very telling experience on the phone with American Express trying to get it replaced. After I gave them various pieces of information, the customer service agent said they would ship me a new card to the billing address on file. Just when I thought I was done, she then read something to the effect of, “For security purposes, I am going to ask you a question. The information this question is based on is not connected to your account, but was obtained from third-party information services.”

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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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03/15/2013
Domestic Drones

Five Reasons Why the Courts Aren’t Enough to Ensure Drone Privacy

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:07pm

Yesterday the drone regulation bill in the Washington state legislature died, having failed to meet the cutoff date for moving to the House floor. Although our lobbyist there thought the bill would have passed both houses had the Democratic leadership allowed it to get there, they did not. Boeing lobbied against the bill, as did law enforcement.

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