By Bennett Stein, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:36pm
On May 8, the ACLU released a slew of government documents obtained from the FBI, U.S. Attorneys' offices around the country, and the Justice Department's Criminal Division concerning the government's access to the contents of private electronic communications. The mediahasseizedupon one of those documents, an undated memo titled, "Guidance for the Minimization of Text Messages over Dual-Function Cellular Telephones." This memo may show that the Criminal Division is doing nothing at all to avoid reading our text messages; it may show great procedures in place to safeguard the privacy our text messages; or, likely, it may have nothing to do with either of those predictions. The public does not know because the Justice Department put a large black box over every word following the header of the 15-page memo.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:31pm
Update: The administration has asked Sen. Schumer to reintroduce the Free Flow of Information Act, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) just announced that he will do so in the House, and Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) introduced a similar bill today. The administration should certainly be commended for taking proactive steps to prevent this from happening again. That said, the administration can’t get in the way this time. The demand in 2009 for a broad exception for national security leaks cases delayed the bill, and tempered enthusiasm among Democrats for the bill in the face of strong opposition by certain Republicans. The 2013 bill must protect against what happened here with the AP, and it’s not clear that the 2009 White House compromise would have done so.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency may no longer refuse to acknowledge something that everyone knows to be true: the agency has "an interest" in the use of drones to carry out targeted killings. The CIA is unaccustomed to courts rejecting its secrecy claims, but in asking the courts to pretend that the agency might have no connection whatsoever to the targeted killing program, the agency dramatically overreached. Unsurprisingly, the appeals court was unwilling to give its "imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible."
By Naomi Gilens, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:06pm
As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, a new program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is collecting and analyzing all manner of government data on American citizens, even those not suspected of any crime. This sweeping surveillance program was enacted in secret, with no input from either the people or our representatives in Congress, and records that the ACLU has obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request make it clear that the program was controversial even among those who knew about it.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:22pm
As we have seen in the failed attempts of SOPA/PIPA, and the floundering Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, intellectual property (“IP”) laws are often poorly constructed, hastily proposed and ultimately both ineffective and potentially abusive.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:37pm
The NSA is refusing to tell two U.S. Senators how many Americans the agency has eavesdropped upon. According to a letter obtained by Wired, the NSA claims that “dedicating sufficient additional resources” to gather that information “would likely impede the NSA’s mission.” (For all the billions that the NSA spends, they cannot spare the money to answer a key civil liberties oversight question posed by elected civilian officials? Shameful.)
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 11:32am
Today the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to force the government to release statistics about its use of powerful electronic surveillance tools that law enforcement can use against any American simply by stating to a judge that it’s relevant to an investigation. The Department of Justice is required to disclose these statistics to Congress each year, yet routinely fails to do so. Today’s suit is an effort to compel the DOJ to follow the law (here are our complaint and our FOIA request).
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:32am
(Update below)
Today, the nominees to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board (PCLOB) were voted from the Senate Judiciary Committee for full consideration in the Senate. It looks like the Senate is finally going to act to nominate five people to fill this vital oversight board. While this is an important step, it’s also something of a good government scandal and certainly a cautionary tale about the limits of oversight.
