I’ve been doing a lot of Boston media this week about a story that seems to have touched a raw nerve. It’s reminded me of a frustrating problem I encounter whenever a technology and privacy issue is hot in the news: Some...
Can the FBI keep secret the number of chairs it has in its Boston office? How about the number of investigations its local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) conducted in the year 2014, or how many parking spaces it reserves for its...
The FBI has published a request for information (RFI) for a “Tactical Mesh/mobile ad hoc network (MANET) solution… to improve bandwidth utilization, provide higher quality surveillance data transmissions, and mitigate potential security threats.” The mesh network will serve as an alternative to commercial...
AJ+ made this short, informative video explaining how cell-site simulators (also known as “IMSI catchers” and “stingrays”) work. Share it with your friends and family, and make sure you tell them to download Signal onto their smartphones. The free, easy to use,...
The FBI is seeking bids for a smartphone app to enable agents to covertly record audio, store the data locally, automatically send the data to FBI headquarters, livestream recordings to other FBI agents, and display the GPS location of the agent recording...
In June, the Government Accountability Office released a report criticizing the FBI’s facial recognition programs as privacy invasive, untested, and secretive. The GAO report got a decent amount of coverage, particularly in the independent and tech press. Included in the report was a map...
Last week, Massachusetts State Police officials working in tandem with National Guard drug eradication agents flew a black helicopter above the Cape and Islands and then raided an elderly Martha’s Vineyard farmer’s property to seize his marijuana plants. The man, 81 year-old Paul Jackson,...
In conversations about civil liberties reform, we often come face to face with the inescapable fact that our world and our issues are interconnected. It’s not possible to fully address systemic racism in the criminal system without also addressing economic injustice. Drug...
According to documents disclosed to the ACLU, the Boston Police Department has never obtained a warrant to use controversial and highly invasive stingray cell phone tracking technology. The department claims that each time BPD officers used a stingray, it was in an...
There are two overarching goals in the fight for digital civil liberties: first, to establish privacy-protective legal rulings and statutes; and second, to make sure law enforcement and judges apply those standards throughout the criminal justice system. Oftentimes conversation about law reform...