As I blogged this morning, FBI director Jim Comey wants us to believe that his agency’s war against Apple is only about one phone, not about setting precedent that will impact all phones and all electronic devices. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. As the...
For years, the FBI has begged congress to address what it says is a “going dark” problem. In July 2015, FBI director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee law enforcement needs broader powers to force companies to build “backdoors” into their encrypted systems....
The advocacy organization Color of Change is mobilizing its members to ask FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to require transparency and policy commitments before authorizing local police departments to use controversial cell site simulator technology known as stingrays. The group’s message to the...
An alarming story out of Houston, where US Marshals have arrested a man over unpaid student loans dating back to the 1980s: Paul Aker says he was arrested at his home last week for a $1500 federal student loan he received in...
Two big ACLU lawsuits are in the news this week. First, stingrays. My colleagues at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) successfully sued the NYPD to force the release of documents pertaining to the department’s use of controversial cell site simulators,...
Granting the ACLU and the public access to staffing, budgetary, and statistical information about the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and FBI would mean “the public would know where the FBI was putting its resources,” warned an Assistant US Attorney in...
The National Institute for Justice is seeking applications in 2016 for a grant program focused on “research and technology development leading to the introduction into practice of new, innovative means for: collecting digital evidence from mobile devices or large-scale computer networks, or for detecting...
The ACLU of Massachusetts this week filed a public records request with the Boston Police Department (BPD) seeking information about its cell phone tracking technology. For too long, the department’s use of controversial cell site simulators has been shrouded in an FBI-mandated cloud of...
