By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:22am
In an effort to rein in overreaching law enforcement practices, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) yesterday re-introduced the GPS Act, which would require a warrant for location tracking and create a critical check on the growing use of these invasive searches.
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:00am
While Congress has been considering the idea of regulating domestic drone use for some time, yesterday kicked off the debate in earnest when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on "The Future of Drones in America: Law Enforcement and Privacy." Considering everything the committee has on its plate right now—from immigration reform to gun regulations—the fact that the senators prioritized this hearing underscores how important and timely they believe the issue is, and how much impact drones have had on the American psyche.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 6:07pm
(Update below)
The DEA has withdrawn its request to Utah for permission to install license plate scanners on the Interstate there—but it’s not clear if the agency is abandoning the installation or if it just plans to go ahead without the state’s cooperation (something it has already claimed the power to do).
(I wrote about the DEA plan last month in this post, and also wrote about ALPR in twofollowup posts.)
By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:23pm
Today I testified before the House Judiciary Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee in support of the Geolocational Privacy Surveillance Act, a law that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant based upon probable cause before tracking a person by (for example) attaching a GPS device to their car or getting records from their cell phone provider. (My written testimony is here).
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 9:57am
For the past year, the ACLU has been gathering information on local law enforcement agencies’ use of cell phone location tracking. (We’ve written about what we’ve learned here, here, here, here, and here.) In addition to everything we’ve discovered about location tracking itself, we’ve also learned about a number of other techniques law enforcement and the telcos can use when they work together. Sometimes the information came to light because, as with this telecom data retention chart, the information on the other techniques was mingled with the information on cell phone location tracking. Sometimes it was because law enforcement agencies misunderstood our public records requests and sent us everything they had related to telephones.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:13pm
The conservative Heritage Foundation has issued a report on “Drones in U.S. Airspace: Principles for Governance” with proposals for how domestic drones ought to be regulated. The authors agree with much of what my co-author Catherine Crump and I said in our drones report last year. The Heritage Foundation tends to lean more towards national-security conservatism than libertarian conservatism, so when the ACLU and the Heritage Foundation see more or less eye to eye on an issue like this, it’s a sure sign that a national consensus is emerging.
The IACP is to be applauded for addressing this issue, and for issuing recommendations that are quite strong in some areas. Based on what the chiefs support, it should now be seen as a broad consensus and starting point for further conversation that:
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:55pm
MIT’s Technology Review has an article today on research that is underway to make extremely sensitive and rapid molecular sensors—aka “artificial noses”—that are so thin they could even be integrated into paper or textiles.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:53pm
A quick note to our New York City-area readers: the ACLU's Catherine Crump, author Ken MacLeod, Cato's Julian Sanchez and others will be appearing at Cooper Union this Saturday for a panel on "Life in the Panopticon: Thoughts on Freedom in an Era of Pervasive Surveillance.” The panel is sponsored by the ACLU and Cooper Union as part of the PEN American Center’s Festival of International Literature.
