American Civil Liberties Union

One of the questions I’ve been asked about my post last week on Milo Danger and his DIY paintball-armed drone is: what does that mean for privacy?

Part of the answer is that the paintball drone is a reminder that drones are a generative technology—not a closed system, but an open platform where the full flower of human ingenuity and creativity will be able to express itself. We clever humans are likely to think of 1,001 surprising new uses for drones. Some of those uses will be very beneficial—and sometimes just cool. That is one of the reasons why, despite the looming threat of pervasive drone-based surveillance, we at the ACLU have not taken the position, urged by some, that all drones should just be banned in domestic airspace.

The Wall Street Journal today published (alternate link) an in-depth review of a new, relatively unknown program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Although we have been warning about the dangers of the program for months, and I testified before Congress about the issue in July, the Journal’s story conveys how controversial the program was even inside the government. It also describes the broad scope of new authority the government is granting itself.

This summer, at the Black Hat security conference, a security researcher presented details of a troubling security flaw: An electronic lock system, used in more than 4 million hotel rooms around the world, is vulnerable. The researcher, Cody Brocious, revealed that with less than $50 in electronic parts, a device can be built that will open one of the vulnerable locks in seconds. Just a few months after Brocious revealed the flaw, hotels in Texas reported a string of thefts by burglars from rooms, all protected by vulnerable locks.

Today, the FTC announced a settlement with Epic Marketplace, an online advertising company that had abused a security flaw in popular web browsers in order to covertly “sniff” other websites visited by consumers.

According to the FTC complaint, for a period including between March 2010 and August 2011, the online advertising company Epic Marketplace probed the browsing history of visitors to popular websites including CNN, the Red Cross, and Orbitz in order to determine which other web sites those consumers had previously visited. The pages revealed by this snooping included those relating to fertility issues, impotence, menopause, incontinence, disability insurance, credit repair, debt relief, and personal bankruptcy.