Free Future
04/25/2013
Location Tracking

The House Hearing on Location Tracking Law (or the Lack Thereof)

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:44pm

My colleague Catherine Crump testified before Congress today on location tracking and privacy, and the GPS Act that would increase legal protections for our location data. The hearing was before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations, and you can read her written testimony submitted here.

The chairman of the committee, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (D-Wis.), is a strong supporter of updating the law. He opened the hearing by acknowledging that the law has not kept pace with new technology—certainly a truism, and certainly true with regards to location tracking in particular, but one that is good to hear accepted as fact by powerful lawmakers.

Sensenbrenner also slammed the Justice Department for not sending a witness to the hearing. The reason, he reported, is that “it lacks a clear policy position on ECPA,” referring to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. When Sensenbrenner was reading Catherine’s bio, which included mention of her efforts to find out how the DOJ is interpreting

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04/25/2013
Location Tracking

ACLU testimony in hearing today on location tracking

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:59am

My colleague Catherine Crump is testifying today at a House committee hearing on location tracking and the proposed GPS Act. The hearing can be watched live here, and Crump's written testimony is online here.

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04/23/2013
Domestic Drones

ACLU Submits Comments to the FAA Urging Increased Privacy Protection at Drone Test Sites

By Scott Bulua & Stephen Elkind, NYU School of Law ACLU Technology Law & Policy Clinic at 3:02pm

The ACLU today submitted comments to the FAA on the agency’s incorporation of privacy into its drone “test zones” program. (You can read our comments here.) Through the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, Congress has required the FAA to develop a plan for incorporating drones into the national airspace, including the establishment of six test sites where such integration can be tested. The FAA has faced delays on the establishment of the test sites, which the FAA has attributed to privacy issues that have, until now, gone unaddressed. So on February 14, 2013, the FAA published proposed privacy requirements for test site operators. The ACLU’s comments on those proposed requirements commend the FAA’s effort to focus on privacy impacts, while also advocating for more meaningful protections.

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04/18/2013
Civil Liberties in the Digital Age

Newest Word to Take on Orwellian Overtones in Internet Age: “Trust”

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:44pm

What could be warmer and fuzzier than “trust”? Between two human beings, it’s a hard-won bond that binds them together. In society, it is a currency that helps create a prosperous and efficient economy and culture, as thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama and Bruce Schneier have argued. But recently the word has taken on a new cast of ambiguity, and seems to be fast becoming the newest entry in the lexicon of Orwellian formulations, along with such once purely warm and positive words such as “security,” “defense,” and “intelligence.”

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04/17/2013
Cell Phones & Smartphones

ACLU Files FTC Complaint Over Android Smartphone Security

By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:55am

Yesterday, we filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to investigate the major wireless carriers for failing to warn their customers about unpatched security flaws in the software running on their phones. These companies—AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile—have sold millions of smartphones to consumers running versions of Google’s Android operating system. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these phones never receive critical software security updates, exposing consumers and their private data to significant cybersecurity-related risks.

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04/16/2013
IRS

IRS Says It Will Respect 4th Amendment With Regard to Email, But Questions Remain

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 4:07pm

With tax day behind us, taxpayers may soon have something else to celebrate from the IRS. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee today, IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller was questioned aggressively about documents released by the ACLU last week that indicate that the IRS does not think it needs a warrant to read all emails and other electronic communications during criminal investigations. Under pressure from senators, Miller agreed to update IRS policy documents within 30 days to state that a warrant is required for access to all emails, regardless of their age.

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04/15/2013
Domestic Drones

The First State Laws on Drones

By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 3:13pm

On Thursday, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed into law the first bill in the nation protecting individuals from unfettered surveillance by unmanned aerial vehicles.

Virginia enacted the very first drones bill nationwide on April 3. Their bill imposes a two-year moratorium on law enforcement drone use, except in emergencies, in order to give the VA legislature time to put in place legal protections for domestic drone use. On Thursday, Idaho put those legal protections in place.

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04/15/2013
IRS

Reading of Emails Without Warrant Likely Extends Beyond IRS

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 8:23am

The ACLU released documents last week indicating that the criminal investigative arm of the IRS doesn’t think it always needs a warrant to read people’s email when investigating them for tax crimes. The revelation garnered widespread media attention (see examples here, here, and here). We called on the IRS to clarify its policy but, unfortunately, the agency issued only a brief, confusing statement that failed to explain its actual policy and practices. As we said last week, because our emails, text messages, and other electronic communications contain some of our most sensitive and private information, it is crucial that federal law enforcement agencies obtain a warrant from a neutral judge before accessing them.

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04/12/2013
Voices on Human Gene Patents

Voices on Human Gene Patents: It's Time to Free Our Genes

By Christopher E. Mason, Assistant Professor of Computational Genomics, Weill Cornell Medical College, Affiliate Fellow, Information Society Project of Yale Law School & Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Assistant Professor of Medicine, New Jersey Medical School at 12:29pm

Even though they’ve been in our families since the dawn of man, our genes do not belong to us. They’ve been claimed by companies that hold patents on the DNA from our cells. Over the past 20 years, at least 41 percent of our genes have become the intellectual property of corporations. These patent claims contradict an intuitive sense that our DNA is no less ours than our lungs or kidneys. More importantly, these patents, covering thousands of human genes, restrict our doctors’ ability to look at our DNA and plan ahead for our medical treatment.

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04/12/2013
IRS

Why Won’t the IRS Deploy Basic Web Security?

By Katie Haas, ACLU Human Rights Program & Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:45am

This tax season, when you visit the IRS’s website seeking tax information, can you be certain that no one else is monitoring which pages you browse?

Unfortunately, right now the answer to that question is “no.” Unlike Facebook, Twitter, Google Mail (Gmail), and virtually every bank and credit card company, the IRS, like most government agencies, does not use HTTPS for encryption and authentication on its website. If you try typing “mail.google.com” into your browser right now, you will see that the URL you end up at is actually “https://mail.google.com.” That “s” after the “http” may seem insignificant, but it means a lot. It signifies that Google is using Secure Sockets Layer encryption, or SSL, to both encrypt and authenticate its communications. When you visit google.com and you see “https” at the beginning of the address, it lets you know that your connection is secure, and that third parties – such as your internet service provider, employer, or university cannot monitor what you’re doing through the use of network interception technology.

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