By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:07pm
Yesterday the drone regulation bill in the Washington state legislature died, having failed to meet the cutoff date for moving to the House floor. Although our lobbyist there thought the bill would have passed both houses had the Democratic leadership allowed it to get there, they did not. Boeing lobbied against the bill, as did law enforcement.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:57pm
A commentator on my recent post about the DEA installing license plate scanners on the nation’s interstate highways asks, “If you aren't doing anything illegal why would you care if someone captures your license plate number?”
Another commentator countered: “If I'm not doing anything illegal, why do the police need to record my license plate number?”
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:33pm
Last week’s Washington Post report that the CIA had requested that Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev be placed on a terrorist watch list raises an interesting point about total surveillance societies: in addition to all their negative implications for citizens, they actually bring some disadvantages for the authorities as well.
It’s not clear what information the CIA’s request was based upon, but reportedly it came from Russian authorities. It is also possible that Tsarnaev’s communications were flagged by US agencies such as the NSA. Either way, it seems as though there’s a real possibility that Tamerlan’s name came to the attention of the authorities through some dragnet-style surveillance technique.
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.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:31am
As I mentioned recently, lobbying by Boeing contributed to the defeat (for now) of drone privacy legislation in Washington state. In fact, we are starting to see a few of the many legislative proposals for regulating drones die in state legislatures (our updated chart on the status of such legislation is here). One of the reasons legislation has been shut down in some of these states is (poorly founded) concern that passing such protections will inhibit a state’s chances of winning one of the drone “test sites” that the FAA is in the process of awarding. Meanwhile, the drone industry association, the AUVSI, has also been opposing state privacy-protection bills, citing the unconvincing argument that existing laws and the courts are enough to ensure privacy. And drone boosters have always intimated that privacy rules will interfere with economic benefits that a booming drone industry will provide.
A big worry about U.S. law enforcement’s expanding use of drones is the lack of rules protecting from privacy violations. But drone manufacturers are also considering offering police the option of arming these remote controlled aircraft with non-lethal (for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas. This eye-opening new video from The Daily takes a closer look:
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The ACLU welcomed the bill summary released late last night by a bipartisan group of key senators – ‘the Gang of 8', and we eagerly await the introduction of complete bill text, expected later today.
For over 90 years the ACLU has defended the rights of all Americans, whether born in this country or somewhere else, because the Constitution protects the civil liberties and civil rights of all people. We will continue to serve in this critical role as the debate over the immigration reform bill begins. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said:
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
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.
