By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:34pm
Schools collect a wealth of information on students. Some of this—such as grades, discipline problems, and household income—makes sense for educators to collect and can be vital to the protection of civil rights. Some—such as pregnancy, mental health, victimization, and criminal histories—is excessive. But under proposed rules from the Obama administration, all of it is about to be shared much more widely.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:58pm
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved with bipartisan support a sweeping update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access all electronic communications, including email, Facebook posts, photos and cell phone communications. It was a long-fought battle and a huge step forward in updating our privacy laws.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:51pm
While the Internet community came out in force to protest the free speech and privacy threats posed by the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an international trade agreement with the same stated goals—and potentially greater threats—was being negotiated behind closed doors. While the First Amendment can be served by intellectual property protections that incentivize content creation, IP laws can easily be misused. Like PIPA and SOPA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) is another misguided and overbroad attempt to crack down on counterfeiting and piracy over the Internet. There has been excellent analysis of the issue by sources including EFF, Tech Dirt and Ars Technica, but we have also been watching this issue and wanted to summarize what’s at stake.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:18am
Monday's House hearing on TSA security measures examined whether airport security measures have been truly effective at preventing terrorism, or just create an illusion of safety.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:05pm
We rely on the media to help us make informed decisions by presenting not just the details of important issues, but also a variety of perspectives and opinions surrounding them. Unfortunately a new proposal from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would weaken important existing protections that ensure our free access to media of all varieties.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:08pm
UPDATE: The State Department's response to the ACLU is posted here.
The ACLU sent a letter yesterday to the State Department thanking Secretary Clinton for the department’s unwavering defense of basic free speech principles in the backlash over the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video. While the video was blamed for riots, violence, and unrest in many countries, the Obama administration stayed strong against calls at home and abroad to take down the video (though it did, rightly, receive some criticism for “asking” Google to take another look at whether the video violated the company’s terms of service).
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:16pm
Although the conflict between government classification rules and practices and the First Amendment rights necessary to promote a free and open society is nothing new, recent developments may indicate an alarming shift away from basic First Amendment principles.
A recent article by the Washington Post showed surveillance of federal employees has been stepped up government-wide. According to the article, last year the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began spying on its scientists, claiming to be looking for the unauthorized sharing of trade secrets. The scientists, however, claim they were being targeted for blowing the whistle on an unethical review process. According the story, such invasive surveillance in the name of national security is spreading. The spyware sold by one software company, SpectorSoft--which claims to have clients in dozens of federal agencies--can do far more than just spy on email. According to the Post, “It could be programmed to intercept a tweet or Facebook post. It could snap screen shots of their computers. It could even track an employee’s keystrokes, retrieve files from hard drives or search for keywords.”
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:49pm
Last year Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, found a strange device attached to his car. When he posted a photo of it online, the FBI showed up at his home two days later. They wanted their GPS tracking device back. The FBI had been tracking Afifi’s movement for months without his knowing about it. Moreover, the agency did so without a warrant and apparently based on the flimsy rationale that his friend wrote a blog they felt was questionable. This type of warrantless tracking seems to be an increasingly common government practice.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:19pm
Late last month a Montreal homicide detective was found guilty of accessing a police database to pass citizens’ information to an organized crime ring to help it ship stolen vehicles overseas. We always keep an eye on these kinds of stories because abuse is one of the risks that is created by governments’ collection of personal data on citizens at all levels. These include records containing sensitive medical and employment history, contact details like email addresses or phone numbers, and even bank and credit card information. But when proponents argue for new databases, the fact that at least some of these records are almost certain to be exposed by crooked insiders is rarely accounted for.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:00am
Last June I wrote about a police officer whose driver's license record was repeatedly accessed by a state-run database without proper authorization. She is an attractive woman and her fellow officers were treating her record like a Facebook page. She was stalked, harassed and eventually forced to leave town.
