Last week, DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen celebrated US independence by publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post calling on Congress to pass an Orwellian surveillance law. The measure, Senator Ron Johnson’s “S.2836 – Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018,” would enable the...
BIG TECH EMPLOYEES ARE MAKING NOISE// From Wired: Why Tech Worker Dissent is Going Viral Tech workers are fed up, and they are fighting back. In response to the administration’s deplorable actions at the border and throughout the country, workers at big...
Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Carpenter is one of the most important privacy rulings in the Court’s history. In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court sided with Mr. Carpenter and his ACLU lawyers, holding that the government...
In a hearing last week at the Boston City Council, police leaders signaled that they would support a measure to require community control over police surveillance, and community advocates highlighted extreme racial disparities in policing in Boston as a primary driver of...
On the heels of similar demands from the ACLU and 70+ civil rights, community, religious, and racial justice groups, Amazon workers have called on CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling Rekognition face surveillance technology to police departments. The workers also demand that...
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether law enforcement must get a warrant to obtain historical cell site location records, which show where mobile phones (and their users) have been over a period of months or years. But even if SCOTUS mandates...
In response to internal and external protest and expressions of revulsion, Google yesterday announced it would stop contracting with the Department of Defense to provide artificial intelligence technology to the US military. Google’s move is a rare instance in which one of...
SENATE VOTES TO REINSTATE NEUTRALITY // From The Hill: Senate votes to save net neutrality rules Thanks to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey’s leadership, last week the US Senate voted 52-47 to overturn the FCC’s decision to end net neutrality. The bill now moves...
Next week, the Massachusetts state senate is set to consider vast new surveillance powers for law enforcement. We cannot allow this dangerous legislation to become law. We beat back similar privacy-invasive plans last fall, and now we must do it again. Back...
Today, the ACLU of Massachusetts and two technology experts affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security to learn about the federal government’s use of facial recognition...