Nearly a decade after 9/11, there has been no national discussion about whether we are on the right track in the war against terrorism. There has been little attempt to probe root causes and the proclaimed motives of terrorist plotters have been...
The closing decades of the 20th century brought something new: the potential for mass surveillance, made possible by the evolution of computer technology. When the government responded to the attacks of 9/11 by enlisting that technology in the service of national security,...
Op-Eds written by ACLUm Staff Nancy Murray, Director of Public Education On MBTA searches: “Our Tax Dollars at Work at the MBTA” On surveillance cameras in Cambridge, MA: “Is Big Brother Coming to Cambridge?” On TSA searches: “Airport Searches: Getting our Priorities...
by Nancy Murray | ACLU of Massachusetts Statewide Conference, February 6, 2010 The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts was founded 90 years ago to challenge government violations of civil rights and civil liberties and to defend the Bill of Rights. We...
by Nancy Murray | December 17, 2010 I want to thank the organizers of this event for recognizing the urgency of the moment, and the need to build a powerful solidarity movement against the recent FBI raids that have to date resulted...
by Nancy Murray If you were around last summer, you may know that plans are afoot to install eight new surveillance cameras in Cambridge so police can monitor public areas (Cambridge Chronicle, August 13, 2008). Eight cameras might not seem...
The emerging surveillance state relies on more than the 16 federal agencies that make up the “intelligence community” to feed its databases. It has erased old public-private barriers, federal-state-local jurisdictional boundaries and key distinctions between crime fighting and intelligence-gathering to enlist state...
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What is data mining? What is link analysis? They are processes whereby computer algorithms sort through huge amounts of electronic data. The systems can be programmed to look for and make links among a variety of different characteristics. For example, if investigators...
Atif Harden thinks he has an easier time since he is an African American and was raised here. He says the perception is that if you are an immigrant and have an accent, you are a terrorist. He works with the Muslim...