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...
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...
Tonight the non-profit advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) hosts a national security themed town hall featuring presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, moderated by NBC’s Matt Lauer. Here are some basic facts you probably won’t hear from...
Mea culpa: I’ve been on vacation; that’s why no recent posts. Here is some news I missed while I was partying and relaxing. It is extremely easy for the FBI to spy on journalists, without warrants As Freedom of the Press Foundation’s...
In recent months, the FBI has taken to the press and to congress to complain about how the increasingly widespread adoption of end-to-end encryption in commercial technologies like the iPhone and Whatsapp is resulting in an intelligence blackout, a process the feds...
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,...
A few years back, I presented ACLU testimony before the Boston City Council, urging city officials to reject a proposal to require certain civil license applicants to send their fingerprints to the FBI for criminal background checks as a condition of employment. In...
