American Civil Liberties Union

The New York Times has a story today about gunshot location systems, which use microphones installed around a city to detect, and triangulate the location of, gunshots, so that police can be sent to the scene. We have been asked what we think of this technology from time to time since at least 2004.

Today, we filed our brief with the Supreme Court in our lawsuit challenging the FISA Amendments Act, the 2008 law that ratified and expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.  (You can read our brief here.)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – FISA – is a post-Watergate statute that was meant to rein in and regulate domestic surveillance undertaken in the name of national security. In 2008, Congress amended the statute, giving the National Security Agency unprecedented power to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications. The ACLU immediately challenged the law, but the government has tried to keep our case out of court.

The ACLU will be out in force at DEFCON – one of the largest annual hacker conventions in the country – later this week and weekend! 

We will have a table at the vendor area all weekend (with super awesome ACLU t-shirts for anyone who signs up to become a member!). In addition to trying our hardest not to end of up on the Wall of Sheep, here’s a rundown of what we’ll be up to in Las Vegas.