By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 12:31pm
Today the ACLU is launching a nationwide effort to find out more about automatic license plate readers (ALPR). By snapping photographs of each license plate they encounter—up to three thousand per minute—and retaining records of who was where when, license plate readers are fundamentallythreatening our freedom on the open road.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:09am
The TSA has issued a “Market Research Announcement” in which the agency expresses a desire to expand its Pre-Check whitelist program by allowing private companies to carry out risk analysis of Americans that would determine whether they are “trusted” enough to participate in the trusted traveler program. This would be a major step toward turning the agency’s Pre-Check whitelist into the insidious kind of passenger profiling system that was proposed under the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11, and a confirmation of our longstanding warnings that the logic of the risk-assessment approach to security will drive the government toward the use of more and more data on individuals. It would be the most significant of the new initiatives the TSA is looking at this year.
By Jameel Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU at 6:09pm
"Contrary to core principles of American democracy." That's how two U.S. senators describe the Justice Department's refusal to release a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act.
Last year, we filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records about the government's use and interpretation of one of the Patriot Act's most controversial provisions: Section 215. Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had suggested that the provision was being abused. "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act," Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said, "they will be stunned and they will be angry."
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 Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:20pm
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday marked up CISPA, the controversial cybersecurity bill that allows companies to share their customers' sensitive internet information with each other and the government. The bill's sponsors and corporations are not only declaring victory, but aggressively arguing that all privacy and civil liberties problems have been solved.
This couldn't be further from the truth.
We have flagged four general categories of problems in CISPA that have to be fixed before it is passed, and the markup only substantially fixed one of them:
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:16pm
During the Cold War, as I argued last week, the totalitarian governments of the Soviet bloc functioned as a standing warning to Americans of the dangers of unchecked surveillance—lessons that we would do well to remember despite the fall of the Iron Curtain.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:25am
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.
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).
