By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:58pm
The DEA wants to capture the license plates of all vehicles traveling along Interstate 15 in Utah, and store that data for two years at their facility in Northern Virginia. And, as a DEA official told Utah legislators at a hearing this week (attended by ACLU of Utah staff and covered in localmedia), these scanners are already in place on “drug trafficking corridors” in California and Texas and are being considered for Arizona as well. The agency is also collecting plate data from unspecified other sources and sharing it with over ten thousand law enforcement agencies around the nation.
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 Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 1:46pm
Back in the fall of 2010, I was perusing the Massachusetts state public safety website when I came upon an interesting notice. The state had received nearly a half a million dollars from the federal Department of Transportation for the purchase and distribution of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) systems for state and local police. And there was one detail there that really surprised me.
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 Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 1:39pm
Yesterday, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) introduced a resolution — the first of its kind — condemning the New York Police Department's unjustified surveillance and unlawful profiling of American Muslim communities. The NYPD's illicit surveillance — documented in an extensive, Pulitzer Prize-winning series of news reports by the Associated Press — targeted law-abiding American Muslims in their places of worship, small businesses, and student- and community-based organizations. The surveillance occurred not only in New York, but as far afield as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Several other members of Congress joined Holt in introducing the resolution, including Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Michael Honda (D-Calif.) and Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.).
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 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.
In recent weeks, we've read about NYPD surveillance of student groups, community-based organizations and even small businesses. Press accounts show that the Police Department has spied on people up and down the eastern seaboard, not because they're engaged in wrongdoing, but because of their religion, national origin and their political associations.
A big worry about U.S. law enforcement’s expanding use of drones is the lack of rules protecting from privacy violations. But drone manufacturers are also considering offering police the option of arming these remote controlled aircraft with non-lethal (for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas. This eye-opening new video from The Daily takes a closer look:
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By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:30pm
If we do not limit the use of automated license plate readers, it will represent a significant step toward the creation of a surveillance society in the United States.
