By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:33pm
Yesterday we asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to consider our argument that law enforcement agents should have to obtain a warrant based on probable cause to attach a GPS tracker to a car and track its movements (you can read our amicus brief here).
In the case, the government suspected that Harry, Mark and Michael Katzin had robbed a number of Rite-Aid pharmacies. To confirm their hunch they attached a GPS tracker—without first going to a judge and getting a warrant—to Harry Katzin’s car. They used the GPS tracker to follow the Katzins when they traveled to another Rite-Aid, and arrested them shortly afterwards.
By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:32pm
The official verdict is finally in, thanks to a congressional report out today: state and local law enforcement intelligence “fusion centers” funded by the Department of Homeland Security are failing to safeguard both our constitutional rights and our security.
Back in 2007, when the ACLU began investigating the growth of these centers, there was little public information available about where these centers were, who was in charge of them, who participated, what information they collected or what they did with it. Our first report highlighted “excessive secrecy” as one of the major problems with fusion centers, recognizing that a lack of public accountability has too often in the past allowed police intelligence operations to turn their focus away from suspected criminals and toward political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrant communities. In a 2008 follow-up report, we chronicled many of the early signs of trouble in these institutions.
By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 12:58pm
Today we sued the federal government to enforce Freedom of Information Act requests we filed over the summer to learn about how it is using a technology that can track Americans’ location with increasing efficacy: automated license plate readers. (See today’s legal complaint, our original FOIA requests, and a blog we posted when we made those requests.)
Today, the House of Representatives passed a reauthorization of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, an unconstitutional domestic spying law that gives vast, unchecked surveillance authority to the government. The law, passed in July of 2008, authorizes the National Security Agency to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:09pm
In a post yesterday I discussed the belief that as long as our behavior and communications are only scrutinized by a computer, our privacy has not been invaded. Many people have that sense because computers are so much dumber than human beings.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 7:44am
Last week Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and the House of Representatives drew an important line in the sand. Holt offered an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill to bar any DHS funding for “the purchase, operation, or maintenance of armed unmanned aerial vehicles.” (The amendment was adopted and the bill has passed the House.) While moves to arm domestic drones are widely seen as beyond the pale and have not really been contemplated (with the exception of one sheriff in Texas who mused about mounting less-lethal weapons like rubber bullets on unmanned aircraft), we believe it’s crucial to get ahead of any possible trend.
By Sarah Roberts, Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:39pm
Today the ACLU filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to force the government to disclose information about the circumstances in which it accesses the contents of Americans’ private electronic communications without obtaining a warrant based upon probable cause. Such communications can include email, text messaging, and private conversations on social networks. While there is reason to believe this practice is widespread, there is much we don’t know about this government eavesdropping: when it happens, how often it’s done, who they’re watching, how long they monitor these communications, and what policies they have established regarding this monitoring. Through the lawsuit filed today, we hope to find out much more.
By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:59pm
Twitter has filed a motion in state court in New York seeking to quash a court order requiring it to turn over information about one of its users and his communications on Twitter. This particular case involves a Twitter user, Malcolm Harris, who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for disorderly conduct in connection with the Occupy Wall Street protest that occurred on the Brooklyn Bridge last year.
By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:10am
The Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last week called, “Countering Online Radicalization in America,” which strongly endorsed First Amendment principles in rejecting censorship as an appropriate tactic for addressing violent extremist content on the Internet. The report evaluated the many methods governments around the world use to censor the Internet – including filtering or blacklisting online content, taking down websites (either through legal means, cyber attacks or appealing to private sector providers), and prosecuting Internet content producers – and rejected them all as both ineffective in stopping the spread of undesirable ideas, and an affront to American values: “For the United States, the cost-benefit analysis would be even clearer: with its long and cherished tradition of free speech, the creation of a nationwide system of censorship is virtually inconceivable.” But the BPC’s positive recommendations are potentially undermined by its continuing embrace of a radicalization theory that draws too close a causal connection between “radical” ideas and violent action.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:36pm
The end of the Cold War created a problem for espionage thriller writers and moviemakers. They faced loss of a built-in backstory needing no explanation, a whole set of strong but realistic motivations for extreme behavior, a pre-fab cast of bad guys, and weighty, global stakes underlying all the action. Perestroika left a generation of writers searching for new conflicts and settings and plot devices.
