By Dan Barrett, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Vermont, ACLU of Vermont at 12:20pm
The Vermont Supreme Court gave electronic privacy a big boost this morning when it approved restrictions placed upon police when conducting searches of electronic devices.
The case originated when police in Burlington, Vermont were investigating a report of a person applying for credit cards online using someone else's identity. Once the police narrowed the investigation to a street address where they thought the perpetrator might live, they asked a judge to issue a search warrant for “all computers or electronic media” located in the house—even though the house had multiple residents.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:24pm
We haven’t pulled punches in our criticismof the HolderJusticeDepartment, so it’s especially important that we give credit where credit is due. In support of an important case brought by the ACLU of Maryland defending the right to record, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division forcefully and unequivocally endorsed our view in an unusual (but welcome!) 11-page letter to the Baltimore Police Department.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:05pm
In a recent post I pointed out various ways that license plate recognition devices could be combined with other databases to invade privacy.
One obvious use for ALPR that I did not mention is speeding tickets. If you’ve gotten from point A to point B in less time than would be possible at the speed limit, it would be simple to have the system automatically spit you out a citation. Surveillance drones could also be used for traffic enforcement.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:20am
A few links that have caught our eye this past week:
The Citynewswatch blog in Charlotte, NC has a nice post on that city’s new license plate reader program, among other surveillance systems (pity any city that hosts a major national or international event these days). Among many other good points, Citynewswatch highlights the fact that they are being funded via our deeplytroubling civil asset forfeiture laws. I didn’t mention it in my blog the other day but the ALPR program being pushed in Utah by the DEA is being similarly funded.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:38pm
A few links that have caught our eye this past week:
Paul Rosenzweig has posted a nice piece on Lawfare on the reasons to be skeptical of the need for cybersecurity regulation. He breaks cybersecurity down into its constituent parts (as we have urged) of cybercrime, cyber espionage, and truly catastrophic “digital Pearl Harbor” attacks. He suggests that the first two do not justify regulation, and (like us) is skeptical about the degree of risk of the third. In explaining that skepticism, he provides an elegant analysis of the electric grid, the taking down of which is a frequent cyber-attack scenario, and makes the point that the pro-regulation viewpoint “mistakes vulnerability for risk”—in other words, there can be a vulnerability in a system, but still a low risk that anyone will actually be able to or try to exploit it.
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 Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 6:07pm
(Update below)
The DEA has withdrawn its request to Utah for permission to install license plate scanners on the Interstate there—but it’s not clear if the agency is abandoning the installation or if it just plans to go ahead without the state’s cooperation (something it has already claimed the power to do).
(I wrote about the DEA plan last month in this post, and also wrote about ALPR in twofollowup posts.)
