A Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) complaint against data broker Kochava unsealed and published in early November reveals shocking new information about the company’s handling of extremely sensitive personal information pertaining to hundreds of millions of people in the United States. Among the explosive...
Earlier this month, the Mozilla Foundation released a comprehensive report with an eye-opening overview of current data tracking practices within the automotive industry. Mozilla found that auto manufacturers are sucking up huge quantities of extremely sensitive data about motorists and their passengers,...
Last year, Joshua Wessel, a man in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was arrested for the June 2017 murder of Ronald French. Using data stored in Mr. French’s car, investigators identified Mr. Wessel as the person who gave voice instructions to the car’s infotainment system—a...
Earlier this month, Portland, Oregon joined over a dozen other municipalities nationwide that have banned government use of face surveillance technology. And with a new study confirming that face recognition algorithms can influence human perceptions of faces, it’s become even clearer: police...
Last week, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg—Europe’s top court— ruled that the agreement that allowed data transfers between the European Union and the United States is invalid under European law. In a crucial pro-privacy ruling, the Court decided that the...
On Tuesday afternoon, in a four-hour-long hearing at the Boston City Council’s Committee on Government Operations, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Muslim Justice League, Student Immigrant Movement, Unafraid Educators, Algorithmic Justice League, and Boston Teachers Union joined forces with MIT researchers, the National...
Face surveillance systems are currently being used by the government in Massachusetts, despite the absence of privacy protections or even legislative authorization. Communities across the state are rallying and organizing to push back, to protect privacy, racial justice, and civil rights in...
In an important new privacy ruling, a federal judge in Massachusetts last week suppressed a “precise video log” of the comings and goings at a private home, which law enforcement generated by training a hidden pole camera on the home’s driveway for...
A state judge in Virginia ruled earlier this month that license plate tracking data collected by automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems are personally identifiable information, outlawing their storage when law enforcement has no good reason to collect and retain them. The...
In September, Lawrence became the first city in Massachusetts to pass an ordinance requiring community control of police surveillance. The ordinance requires, among other things, that city agencies like the police get permission from the City Council before deploying new surveillance technologies....