A lot of people are wondering what to do right now. The answers are the same as they were in October: organize and secure your digital papers and effects. Now perhaps more than ever in recent memory, the action is at the state...
Can the FBI keep secret the number of chairs it has in its Boston office? How about the number of investigations its local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) conducted in the year 2014, or how many parking spaces it reserves for its...
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...
People across the country are protesting police violence and white supremacy. Over the past few days, hundreds have been arrested in cities across the nation, from San Francisco to New York City to Baton Rouge. Below are the two most important things protesters...
A new Vice documentary explores the current state of surveillance with whistleblower Edward Snowden. Watch. Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer.
According to publicly available budget records, the Boston Police Department contracts with a social media monitoring company that received start-up funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The company, Geofeedia Inc., sells its software to police departments nationwide, as well as to...
Wired’s Kim Zetter reports on a little known but hugely consequential FBI activity: hacking. RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule...
What do you get when you add up the following? Lack of racial diversity among police intelligence employees. Failure to train police intelligence employees on federal and state law. Ignorance of Black cultural iconography. Fear of (Black) dissent. Inadequate oversight at police...
The New York Times has filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security over access to department assessments of DHS-funded “fusion centers” written between 2009 and 2014. The centers—created by DHS after 9/11 in an attempt to facilitate information sharing about terrorism...
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,...