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04/17/2013
CISPA

Thank You Mr. President – In Big Win for Privacy, Administration Issues CISPA Veto Threat!

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:32pm

Over the last few months, more than 50,000 ACLU supporters signed our petition to the president urging him to veto CISPA if it made it to his desk. Not only did the president hear your calls – yesterday, he answered them with a resounding win for your privacy and civil liberties and threatened to veto CISPA, the dangerous privacy-busting cybersecurity bill.

The president's veto threat echoed many of our concerns, and those that he raised last year when he threatened to veto CISPA 1.0. We have long warned that CISPA threatens Americans' privacy and civil liberties by allowing for companies to share our private information, like our internet records and the content of our emails, with the government. Yesterday's veto threat makes it clear that in spite of recent amendments, CISPA still fails to adequately protect our privacy. As the veto threat states:

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12/12/2012
Government Surveillance

Nation’s Top Spies Still Mum on How Many Americans They’ve Surveilled

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:29pm

Last month I wrote about how Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been rebuffed in his multi-year effort to get answers to very basic questions about how the government uses the sweeping authorities granted under the FISA Amendments Act (FISA).

Wyden spearheaded two more letters to the National Security Agency (NSA) Director and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).  Again, he was denied answers.

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05/07/2013
FISA

They’re Watching: FBI Business Records Requests Jump 900 Percent Compared to 2009

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:14pm

Last week served as yet another reminder of the threats posed to Americans' privacy by the post-Patriot Act surveillance state...

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04/15/2013
CISPA

Smashing Success: Thousands of ACLU Supporters Petition President to Veto CISPA, Get Full Page Ad in Politico

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Kaitlyn Newman, Campaigner, ACLU Action at 5:14pm

You did it! In the two months since Reps. Rogers (R-Mich.) and Ruppersberger (D-Md.) reintroduced their privacy-busting bill CISPA, 49,513 (and counting) ACLU supporters signed one of our biggest petitions of all time, urging President Obama to protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties and veto CISPA!

To make sure members of Congress hear your passionate plea as well, we've printed a full-page ACLU Action ad opposing CISPA in today's Politico – the go-to newspaper for the who's who of Capitol Hill! Hopefully, the president and your legislators caught a glimpse of the compelling graphic while they drank their morning coffee.

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03/28/2013
CISPA

CISPA's Problem Isn't Bad PR, It’s Bad Privacy

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:28am

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) made the argument last week that the privacy community’s significant concerns with CISPA, the privacy-busting cybersecurity bill, don’t stem from actual problems with the bill language, but rather from a misunderstanding of the bill itself. Speaking on behalf of himself and his co-sponsor, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), he told The Hill, “We feel that the bill clearly deals with privacy, that the checks and balances are there, but [we] know there's still a perception and we're still trying to deal with that.”   

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03/19/2013
CISPA

With CISPA, "It's all just a little bit of history repeating..."

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:48pm

The Propellerheads may have been talking about fashion trends when they sang that "to me it seems quite clear that it's all just a little bit of history repeating." But that sentiment rings loud and true today when talking about the privacy-busting cybersecurity bill CISPA.

Leaders of the House Intel Committee reintroduced CISPA with the same privacy flaws as last year. While they suggested at its unveiling that they worked with the privacy community and addressed our concerns, they didn't. This is the same bill, with the same problems.

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03/15/2013
Cybersecurity

Intel Officials Admit "Cyber Pearl Harbor" Unlikely Soon, Agree Cyber Should be Kept in Civilian Hands

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:27pm

Privacy protection, and the debate about whether to house information-sharing programs in a civilian or military agency, dominated three congressional hearings on cybersecurity this week.

In separate hearings Tuesday in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, leaders of the intelligence community called cyberattacks the greatest threat to the U.S. at this time—but admitted that the kinds of catastrophic attacks imagined by reporters and cyber experts were only a "remote" possibility in the near future.

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03/12/2013
Cybersecurity

ACLU to Congress: Keep Cybersecurity Information Sharing Out of Military Hands!

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:49pm

As Congress debates cybersecurity legislation, one of the most significant questions legislators are tackling addresses where to house...

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03/05/2013
Cybersecurity

ACLU to Congress: Keep Cybersecurity Information Sharing Out of Military Hands!

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:58pm

UPDATE: Due to a winter storm approaching Washington, D.C., tomorrow's House Homeland Security Committee hearing on cybersecurity has been postponed for a later date.

As Congress debates cybersecurity legislation, one of the most significant questions legislators are tackling addresses where to house an information sharing program that would allow the private sector to hand over Americans' most private online information to the government: in a civilian or a military agency?

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03/04/2013
FBI

NYT Reports on Hate Crimes FBI Refused to Investigate, Uncovered by ACLU Racial Mapping FOIA

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:25pm

On Friday, The New York Times published an excellent report about the FBI's failure to investigate two 2007 hate crimes that was based on FBI documents the ACLU of Northern California, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on the FBI's Racial Mapping program.

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