By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 10:12am
Often when the government wants to keep something secret, it claims that transparency would endanger national security. We’ve been hearing a lot of this lately with regards to Edward Snowden. The leaks have caused “grave harm” to national security and even US foreign policy, Snowden’s critics repeat over and over again.The trouble is, whenever these critics are pressed to explain how Snowden's disclosures have harmed the public interest, they usually do one of two tricky things:
By Katie Haas, Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at 11:58am
Today, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI, the DEA, the Secret Service, and several other agencies asking for information about a surveillance technique known as a “cell tower dump.” If you’re wondering what that…
By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:00am
The City of Sunrise, Florida, tried to take a page from the CIA’s anti-transparency playbook last week when it responded to an ACLU public records request about its use of powerful cell phone location tracking gear by refusing to confirm or deny…
By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:13pm
The endless tide of NSA revelations has made us all too familiar with government agencies’ hunger for personal information, especially in the context of national security. But we’re also seeing surveillance systems being set up by smaller, less…
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 9:44am
A new battleground has opened up in the war over who has access to our electronic data trails: legislation is now being debated in states across the country to require a warrant for law enforcement access to location information in criminal investigations.…
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:44am
Representatives of the online advertising industry headed to the White House last week to speak with the task force on “big data and privacy” that President Obama asked advisor John Podesta to head up. The executives said they would bring the White…
By Linda Lye, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California at 4:37pm
Local law enforcement agencies across the Bay Area have so-called stingray devices, a powerful cellphone surveillance tool, and more are planning to acquire the technology, according to public records recently obtained by Sacramento News10. The devices…
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 10:28am
In a pair of stories this past weekend, the Washington Post and the AP reported on the construction of an ambitious surveillance system by which the government aims to carry out detailed surveillance of its own employees.
By Brian Hauss, Legal Fellow, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:00pm
Yesterday, a federal district court ruled that the Justice Department does not need to disclose two secret memos providing guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators regarding the use of GPS devices and other location tracking technologies.…
By Noa Yachot, Communications Strategist, ACLU at 11:16pm
Most governments don’t have the resources to manufacture the surveillance technology that’s required to hack into the computers of unsuspecting citizens. In recent years, surveillance software firms have stepped in to fill that gap, proliferating…
