In a letter signed by two dozen technology experts and business leaders, the ACLU and the Alliance for Business Leadership call on Governor Charlie Baker to continue to use his bully pulpit to protest against discriminatory federal immigration policies, and to support...
In a February 20, 2017 letter to DHS Secretary John Kelly, Oregon democrat and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Ron Wyden voiced alarm at media reports of Customs Border Patrol (CBP) agents demanding device and social media passwords of travelers at...
The vast majority, or about 86%, of the over two million people locked up behind bars in the United States are under state or local control. They were arrested by state or local police, prosecuted by state or local prosecutors, sentenced by...
Earlier this week, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told Congress the Trump administration may soon require that visitors to the United States provide their social media passwords and internet activity history to DHS agents before entering the country. In response to a...
Last night I participated in a panel discussion on the WGBH television program Greater Boston. Watch the clip below. Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer.
The national security blog Just Security has a fantastic writeup of where we stand vis a vis the five federal court orders issued over the weekend in response to lawsuits over Trump’s Muslim ban. The Boston order, issued in response to a...
If you’re like me, you’re feeling pretty frustrated and maybe even overwhelmed. There’s a lot of bad news these days, and it seems like it just won’t stop coming. Just this morning, the New York Times reported that Trump looks likely to...
The people of Boston just scored a major victory for privacy, civil liberties, and people power. After thousands of Bostonians took action to demand the City drop a dangerous proposal to spend as much as $1.4 million on Orwellian social media surveillance software,...
As of January 5, the Boston Police Department still hadn’t signed a contract to spend as much as $1.4 million on social media surveillance software. We know this because I’ve been filing weekly public records requests seeking the winning bid for the enormous...
Police departments across the nation use a variety of policing strategies: broken windows, hot spot, and something new called “intelligence-led” or “predictive” policing. Whether or not these policing methodologies result in lower crime rates and safer communities is a subject of debate....