Yesterday, April 5, ACLU of Massachusetts legal director Matthew Segal argued an important mandatory minimums case, Commonwealth v. Laltaprasad, before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The case will decide whether state judges have flexibility to issue less than mandatory minimum sentences when appropriate. In order...
On Tuesday, April 5, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) hears oral argument in Commonwealth v. Laltaprasad, a case that will determine whether or not state judges have the power to use common sense discretion in drug sentencing, as both the plain...
People concerned about digital security can rest easy now that the FBI has backed away from its public fight with Apple over iPhone encryption, right? Not so fast. As many of us have said from the beginning, this case was not about...
The FBI has backed down from its legal battle with Apple. In a court filing yesterday, the government said it obtained the necessary data from Syed Farook’s county government owned iPhone and “no longer requires the assistance from Apple.” According to the Department of...
A Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) “quarterly threat assessment” dated January 2016 and marked “unclassified/not for public release,” but posted publicly online, lists “animal rights and environmental extremists” and “anarchist extremists” as “groups [that] represent a significant domestic terrorist threat.” Animal rights activists, environmentalists,...
Last night, we learned some startling news about the Department of Justice’s battle against Apple: the FBI claims that an outside party recently demonstrated to the FBI a way to break into Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone, and so the DOJ has hit the...
There’s been a lot of misinformation about the FBI’s battle to force Apple to weaken its digital security. Here are the top four myths about the case, followed by the top four reasons we’ve got to support Apple. The top four myths...
In a Boston Globe op-ed published today, two prominent Massachusetts technology leaders warn that “the future of America’s high-tech industry is at stake in the FBI’s effort to force Apple to break open the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.” Paul Sagan, former CEO...
On June 26, 2014, Muckrock contributing editor Evan Anderson filed a public records request with the Boston Police Department seeking emails between BPD officials and employees of the National Security Agency (NSA). More than two months later, the police told Anderson he would...
Ever since the FBI announced its plans to try to use the All Writs Act to force Apple to write new code, cryptographically sign it, and deliver it to the county government-owned phone used by the San Bernardino shooter, we at the...