Washington Markup
02/15/2012
Facebook

Facebook, Twitter and DHS: Which One of These Things is Not Like the Others?

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:58pm

It's tricky monitoring public information online, especially if you're the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Having the government turn a blind eye to information that anyone can read seems strange, yet the practice raises significant questions. Apparently the House Homeland Security Committee feels the same way — that's why it's holding a hearing tomorrow on the Department of Homeland Security's monitoring of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

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04/12/2013
Mandatory Minimum Sentences

The Road Ahead for Newtown Legislation

By Alex Berger, Legislative Assistant, ACLU at 11:57am

At the beginning of the first Senate hearing on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) instructed those in the hearing room to stand if they had been affected by gun violence. As nearly everyone in the packed hearing room, including several Senators, stood in silence, the powerful tone was set for the debate over what to do next.

For several months, I have attended every event and hearing on Capitol Hill regarding the Senate's response to the Newtown shootings. I saw the father of a slain first grader whose uncontrollable sobbing at a Judiciary Committee hearing left everyone in the room quiet and still. I witnessed testimony from a doctor who struggled to retell the story of removing bullets from the heads of five-year-olds. And I saw incredible passion and a sense of purpose from both sides of the aisle.

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07/30/2012
Government Surveillance

The Biggest New Spying Program You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:18pm

Update: Since this piece was posted, the ACLU has filed FOIA requests seeking more information on data-mining by the NCTC. Read more »

What if a government spy agency had power to copy and data mine information about ordinary Americans from any government database? This could include records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records. Literally anything the government collects would be fair game, and the original agency in charge of protecting the privacy of those records would have little say over whether this happened, or what the spy agency did with the information afterward. What if that spy agency could add commercial information, anything it – or any other federal agency – could buy from the huge data aggregators that are monitoring our every move?

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04/16/2012
CISPA

Kicking off "Stop Cyber Spying Week"

By Mandy Simon at 12:00pm

Today we're launching a weeklong campaign called "Stop Cyber Spying Week" to draw attention to the massive civil liberties problems in H.R. 3523, better known as CISPA.

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02/10/2013
CISPA

CISPA Claws Back to Life

By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:54pm

It's baa-aaack.

The House cybersecurity bill that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) and the military to collect your private internet records is scheduled for an encore appearance on Wednesday. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) will reintroduce the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which news reports say will be the same bill that passed the House of Representatives last year.

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03/21/2013
Domestic Drones

Even Amidst a Host of Congressional Priorities, Drones Makes the Cut

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.

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03/15/2013
Cybersecurity

Intel Officials Admit "Cyber Pearl Harbor" Unlikely Soon, Agree Cyber Should be Kept in Civilian Hands

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:27pm

Privacy protection, and the debate about whether to house information-sharing programs in a civilian or military agency, dominated three congressional hearings on cybersecurity this week.

In separate hearings Tuesday in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, leaders of the intelligence community called cyberattacks the greatest threat to the U.S. at this time—but admitted that the kinds of catastrophic attacks imagined by reporters and cyber experts were only a "remote" possibility in the near future.

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10/25/2012
Domestic Drones

ACLU Testifies as Congress Takes on Domestic Drones

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:44pm

The ACLU testified before a House field forum examining drone technology and the Fourth Amendment at Rice University called by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.). Drones have gotten a lot of attention lately – U.S. law enforcement agencies are eager to get their hands on them while civil libertarians are concerned about the potential threat to privacy.

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03/29/2012
TSA

TSA on the Defensive Again: Effective Security or Security Theater?

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:18am

Monday's House hearing on TSA security measures examined whether airport security measures have been truly effective at preventing terrorism, or just create an illusion of safety.

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03/28/2013
CISPA

CISPA's Problem Isn't Bad PR, It’s Bad Privacy

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:28am

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) made the argument last week that the privacy community’s significant concerns with CISPA, the privacy-busting cybersecurity bill, don’t stem from actual problems with the bill language, but rather from a misunderstanding of the bill itself. Speaking on behalf of himself and his co-sponsor, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), he told The Hill, “We feel that the bill clearly deals with privacy, that the checks and balances are there, but [we] know there's still a perception and we're still trying to deal with that.”   

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