Drug Enforcement Agency

05/15/2013

Federal Judge: Only Powered-Off Cell Phones Deserve Privacy Protections

By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:27am

A federal magistrate judge in New York recently ruled that cell phone location data deserves no protection under the Fourth Amendment and that accordingly, the government can engage in real-time location surveillance without a search warrant. In an opinion straight from the Twilight Zone, magistrate judge Gary Brown ruled two weeks ago that “cell phone users who fail to turn off their cell phones do not exhibit an expectation of privacy.”

The case in question involved a physician who the DEA believed had issued thousands of prescriptions for pain killers in exchange for cash. In March of this year, the DEA had obtained a warrant for his arrest, and,

04/03/2013

Medical Privacy

Court Agrees to Consider ACLU Arguments That Fourth Amendment Requires Warrant For Access to Prescription Database

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 3:48pm

A federal judge has granted the ACLU’s motion to intervene in an Oregon case that raises the question of whether the Fourth Amendment allows Drug Enforcement Administration agents to obtain confidential prescription records without a judge’s prior approval. (We’ve previously written about the case here).

01/25/2013

Medical Privacy

ACLU Challenging DEA’s Access to Confidential Prescription Records Without a Warrant

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 5:36pm

The Drug Enforcement Administration is trying to access private prescription records of patients in Oregon without a warrant, despite a state law forbidding it from doing so. The ACLU and its Oregon affiliate are challenging this practice in a new case that raises the question of whether the Fourth Amendment allows federal law enforcement agents to obtain confidential prescription records without a judge’s prior approval. It should not.

05/22/2012

License Plate Scanners

Data Mining License Plate Records

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:09am

On Friday I posted about an ongoing effort by the DEA to put automatic license plate reading (ALPR) devices on public interstates, where they will sweep up records of Americans’ travel and store it for two years. The agency is now pushing to deploy them in Utah and has already done so in states along the southern U.S. border.

07/19/2011

Nembutal

Uncle Sam's Drug-Seeking Behavior

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 10:52am

This summer, travelers should be on the lookout for some new American drug addicts, slouching around the foreign capitals where Americans abroad seek to score. They are a little older than most of the druggies, and they aren't looking to get high. They're looking to kill. Uncle Sam himself — or some of his states, like Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, California and Nebraska — are desperate for dope. They've run out of sodium thiopental, the drug that's used to lethally inject prisoners during executions, and they're jonesing.

American Civil Liberties Union