By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:34pm
The New York Times Sunday Review included a striking op ed suggesting that universities could one day deploy software to analyze students’ internet usage for the purpose of assessing their mental health. The writers, Sriram Chellappan and Raghavendra Kotikalapudi, support their argument by explaining that they conducted a study on university students that demonstrated a correlation between depression and certain patterns of internet usage (for example, “very high e-mail usage”). The study involved screening 216 students at Missouri University of Science and Technology for depression and then having “the university’s information technology department provide us with campus Internet usage data for our participants . . . . This didn’t mean snooping on what the students were looking at or whom they were e-mailing; it merely meant monitoring how they were using the Internet” (so, for example, if they were surfing the web, checking email, using p2p programs, etc.).
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 Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:17pm
How is the Department of Justice using location tracking? If you were looking for an answer to this simple question, this was not the week. Instead, as Congress attempts to oversee this crucial privacy question, it is getting double talk and stonewalling.
Let’s start with the legal standard the Department is using. Earlier this week Senator Al Franken (D-MN) asked Attorney General Holder to clarify the Department’s position on location tracking. Specifically, he asked why, even though experts agree that the recent Supreme Court case US v. Jones stands for the proposition that law enforcement needs a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on a car, DOJ is arguing in another case for a lower, non-probable cause standard. (In an amicus, the ACLU argued that the Fourth Amendment requires that police obtain a warrant to engage in GPS monitoring.) The Attorney General replied that he wasn’t familiar with the case but agreed with Senator Franken that in interpreting Jones they were “likely to be dealing with a situation where we need a warrant.” This frustrating answer seems aimed at reassuring Congress that Americans’ constitutional rights are being protected while DOJ is arguing precisely the opposite in court.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 1:57pm
A commentator on my recent post about the DEA installing license plate scanners on the nation’s interstate highways asks, “If you aren't doing anything illegal why would you care if someone captures your license plate number?”
Another commentator countered: “If I'm not doing anything illegal, why do the police need to record my license plate number?”
By Devon Chaffee, Legislative Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:37am
Yesterday 22 Members of Congress sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice urging him to launch an investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's improper recording and dissemination of information about the First Amendment-protected activities of American Muslims. Several of the members who joined the letter-including Representatives Pete Stark (D-CA-13), Anna Eshoo (D-CA-14), Sam Farr (D- CA-17), Mike Honda (D- CA-15), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-16), and Barbara Lee (D-CA-09) -represent districts in Northern California in which FBI memoranda document the use of community outreach for intelligence purposes.
By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:21am
Yesterday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on the government’s warrantless wiretapping program (watch here). The law authorizing the program, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, expires at the end of this year.
By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:52pm
We filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in New York state court in support of Twitter’s efforts to protect the constitutional rights of one of its users. As we posted earlier this month, Twitter took a great step to defend its users’ rights by filing a motion to quash a subpoena that the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan issued in connection with the prosecution of an Occupy Wall Street protester.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:20am
A few links that have caught our eye this past week:
The Citynewswatch blog in Charlotte, NC has a nice post on that city’s new license plate reader program, among other surveillance systems (pity any city that hosts a major national or international event these days). Among many other good points, Citynewswatch highlights the fact that they are being funded via our deeplytroubling civil asset forfeiture laws. I didn’t mention it in my blog the other day but the ALPR program being pushed in Utah by the DEA is being similarly funded.
