In 2015, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report on student privacy which included this troubling revelation: Many schools in the Commonwealth tell students they have “no expectation of privacy” when it comes to their digital information at school and on school...
Tomorrow is Election Day—finally. There’s a lot at stake in this contest, but no matter who wins, those of us who care about civil rights and civil liberties will continue to have our work cut out for us. Here are three...
On Friday October 21, 2016, the people of the United States learned two scary lessons: 1. It’s relatively easy for rogue actors to turn consumer technologies against their owners and wield them as weapons; and 2. Doing so may shut off access to...
Debates about internet security and the limits of state power just got a lot more interesting. Unless you don’t use the internet, you likely know that on Friday a number of major websites were inaccessible for hours. These sites were victims of a...
In early October 2016, Reuters reported that in 2015, the US government asked Yahoo to scan all incoming email looking for particular signatures or characters, and that Yahoo complied without a fight. Since the matter became public, Yahoo has changed its tune....
Big news dropped yesterday in Reuters: In 2015, the US government asked Yahoo to scan all incoming email looking for certain, unknown characters in emails or attachments; unfortunately, Yahoo agreed to do it—without putting up a fight. The demand came in the form of a...
Public agencies across the country are increasingly adopting open wifi technology to bring internet connectivity to new areas and groups of people. Unfortunately, government agencies don’t often prioritize digital security or privacy when they configure these systems. Too often, like in New York...
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...
The Village Voice has published the results of an investigation into New York City’s ambitious new wifi system, called LinkNYC. Ultimately, there will be as many as 7,500 kiosks throughout New York’s five boroughs, providing passersby and residents with super fast wifi,...
If the FBI were to obtain broad powers enabling its agents to hack into thousands of computers all around the world, you’d expect congress to debate and authorize those new powers, right? You might assume congress would seek input from technical experts, and...