You did it! In the two months since Reps. Rogers (R-Mich.) and Ruppersberger (D-Md.) reintroduced their privacy-busting bill CISPA, 49,513 (and counting) ACLU supporters signed one of our biggest petitions of all time, urging President Obama to protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties and veto CISPA!
To make sure members of Congress hear your passionate plea as well, we've printed a full-page ACLU Action ad opposing CISPA in today's Politico – the go-to newspaper for the who's who of Capitol Hill! Hopefully, the president and your legislators caught a glimpse of the compelling graphic while they drank their morning coffee.
By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 8:23am
The ACLU released documents last week indicating that the criminal investigative arm of the IRS doesn’t think it always needs a warrant to read people’s email when investigating them for tax crimes. The revelation garnered widespread media attention (see examples here, here, and here). We called on the IRS to clarify its policy but, unfortunately, the agency issued only a brief, confusing statement that failed to explain its actual policy and practices. As we said last week, because our emails, text messages, and other electronic communications contain some of our most sensitive and private information, it is crucial that federal law enforcement agencies obtain a warrant from a neutral judge before accessing them.
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 Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:11am
Reports of significant data breaches make headlines ever more frequently, but lost in the cloak and dagger stories of cyberespionage is the impact proposed cybersecurity programs can have on privacy. The same Internet that terrorists, spies and criminals exploit for nefarious purposes is the same Internet we all use daily for intensely private but totally innocuous purposes.
Unfortunately, in their pursuit to protect America's critical infrastructure and trade secrets, some lawmakers are pushing a dangerous bill that would threaten Americans' privacy while immunizing companies from any liability should that cyberinformation-sharing cause harm.
Technology has changed dramatically since 1986. With free, unlimited email storage and high-speed broadband service widely available, we no longer have to download email onto our hard drives. Instead, we indefinitely store our email and other personal effects — private reflections, financial records, photographs and love letters — in the "cloud," where the power and flexibility of massive servers are available for free or at very low cost.
By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:48pm
The Propellerheads may have been talking about fashion trends when they sang that "to me it seems quite clear that it's all just a little bit of history repeating." But that sentiment rings loud and true today when talking about the privacy-busting cybersecurity bill CISPA.
Leaders of the House Intel Committee reintroduced CISPA with the same privacy flaws as last year. While they suggested at its unveiling that they worked with the privacy community and addressed our concerns, they didn't. This is the same bill, with the same problems.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:55pm
It's a big week for reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), a little-known law which safeguards internet communications but hasn't been touched in nearly 30 years.
Yesterday the ACLU joined Americans for Tax Reform to push for an update to the law, and today Sen. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bipartisan bill that would do just that. The bill would require police to get a warrant before accessing email and all other online communications, like Facebook posts or photos we store in the cloud with Google, Yahoo, or any other provider. In addition, the House Judiciary Committee began a series of hearings today on updating ECPA. (ACLU statement for the record is here).
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:00am
Last June I wrote about a police officer whose driver's license record was repeatedly accessed by a state-run database without proper authorization. She is an attractive woman and her fellow officers were treating her record like a Facebook page. She was stalked, harassed and eventually forced to leave town.
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 3:22pm
Last year was jam-packed with stories of companies making costly mistakes on user privacy and free speech. To help companies get a fresh start in 2013, the ACLU of California has just released the new edition of Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business.
This primer (and companion website) is a practical, how-to guide illustrating how businesses can build privacy and free speech protections into their products and services – and what can happen if they don't.
The Hill broke a fascinating story last week: many major email providers are already requiring a warrant for the content of the communications they hold. What you say, this doesn't sound fascinating at all? It really is—just bear with me.
