Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer. Watch a Privacy International activist and a Vice News journalist hunt stingray cell site simulators outside the Ecuadorian embassy (where Julian Assange is...
The ACLU of Massachusetts this week filed a public records request with the Boston Police Department (BPD) seeking information about its cell phone tracking technology. For too long, the department’s use of controversial cell site simulators has been shrouded in an FBI-mandated cloud of...
New Washington Post reporting describes disturbing pre-crime technology in place at the Fresno, California police department’s “real-time crime center.” The NCIC-like cop-cave plays host to license plate tracking databases, feeds from innumerable surveillance cameras, and government and corporate databases, which contain information about...
A few years back, I presented ACLU testimony before the Boston City Council, urging city officials to reject a proposal to require certain civil license applicants to send their fingerprints to the FBI for criminal background checks as a condition of employment. In...
It’s budget time again, and everyone is looking for ways to cut corners. When it comes to public transportation, cutting corners isn’t easy or advisable—especially in Boston, where the system already requires significant infrastructural investment. A number of years ago, the state...
In late December 2015, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its “Privacy, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Unmanned Aircraft Systems Working Group” best practices recommendations for government drone use. The 11 page document does not contain the word “warrant,” nor any...
Everyone is talking about how to end mass incarceration: the right, the left, presidential candidates, Black Lives Matter activists. But what comes after a prison-centric society? Some, including business interests that would profit from such a shift, think GPS bracelets are a sound...
Please note that by playing this clip, YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer. Happy New Year!
You might think that just a few short years after the Snowden revelations, Congress would hesitate to give the executive branch brand new, dragnet surveillance powers. If you thought that, you would be wrong.
Live from slate.com: ISIS is so scary that we should think really hard about gutting the First Amendment.