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 Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:28am
Remember the George W. Bush warrantless wiretapping program? The one that was so illegal that Congress had to pass a special law to ensure that no one was prosecuted for it or sued by their customers for facilitating it? And was found by independent reviewers to be pretty pointless anyway? And was then brilliantly codified and written into stone by Congress? And which almost immediately went off the rails, being used to collect all sorts of stuff it wasn’t supposed to? It’s back!
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.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:18pm
Privacy researcher Chris Soghoian gave a very nice talk at TEDx recently on “Why Google Won’t Protect You From Big Brother.” He provides a cogent overview and some useful perspective on the relationship between companies and the government, which is something we at the ACLU have been concerned about since our 2004 report on the Surveillance Industrial Complex, and before.
The Supreme Court has just agreed to consider whether plaintiffs represented by the ACLU have the right to challenge the constitutionality of a controversial law that authorizes the National Security Agency to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
At issue is an appeals court ruling that allowed the ACLU’s challenge to the law – called the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – to move forward. Responding to today’s news, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
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.
By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:36pm
Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). But thanks to internet activism and advocacy by organizations like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 168 Congressmen voted “no,” including 28 Republicans, the House Democratic leadership, and a chunk of members who sit on the Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees.
By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:53pm
A new article in Wired covers the evolution of the gag orders that come with national security letters (NSLs), secret FBI demands for your communication, internet, financial and credit records in terrorism investigations. As we wrote on Wednesday, the FBI is now notifying NSL recipients of their right to judicial review as a result of years of ACLU client litigation.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:51pm
Sen. Al Franken (D- MN) is trying to get some answers to straightforward questions about cell-phone location tracking. Today, using our recent nationwide FOIA as a jumping off point, he sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to provide basic information about a practice that, in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:33pm
A gathering of cyber-crime specialists in Massachusetts last week provided a glimpse into the tactics used by prosecutors and police to access digital data. Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts has done a nice writeup of the conference. As she points out, the event was closed to the press and the public, but the schedule of events was posted online, and included sessions with titles such as:
