In response to the FBI’s public relations blitz against encryption technology and recent proposals in Congress to undermine the security of digital information, the ACLU of Massachusetts today sent a letter to the Massachusetts Congressional delegation calling on them to reject any...
Last night Chief Sam Dotson of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in Missouri tweeted this: Seeing great results from SLMPD Mobile! First official arrest as a result of our app made yesterday after an anonymous tip for panhandling. — Chief Sam...
Yesterday, the Massachusetts legislature did something historic: both chambers unanimously passed significant public records reform legislation. Now the Governor has the opportunity to push the reform effort over the finish line and make it the law of the land. It’s not an...
The House and Senate intelligence oversight committees were established to provide a check against intelligence abuses run amok in the shadows. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was set up for the same reason. But in the decades since these institutions were created, they...
According to publicly available budget records, the Boston Police Department contracts with a social media monitoring company that received start-up funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The company, Geofeedia Inc., sells its software to police departments nationwide, as well as to...
Wired’s Kim Zetter reports on a little known but hugely consequential FBI activity: hacking. RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule...
How do you spell chutzpah? I submit an alternate spelling: O-B-A-M-A D-O-J. How the Obama administration interprets the phrase “government transparency,” in three acts. Act One: Secret Law The Obama administration is trying to keep secret a 2003 Office of Legal Counsel memo...
A new report using state and federal data identifies Massachusetts and North Dakota as the two states with “the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country.” The legal bar the state must meet to seize property and assets is very low in Massachusetts, and does not...
The Sunlight Foundation has ranked Massachusetts among the worst states in the nation on government transparency. Journalist Joshua Eaton’s recent correspondence with the Boston Police Department shows just how absurd that secrecy looks on the ground. In June 2014, fellow Boston-based muckraker Evan...
If you’ve got nothing to hide, why worry about warrantless mass surveillance? One reason among many: The people who have access to your private communications may not have your—or your child’s—best interest at heart. NextGov reports that officials at a recent Intelligence and National...