Since 2006, the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles has used face surveillance technology to try to weed out fraudulent license applicants. From almost day one, the RMV has allowed law enforcement agencies across Massachusetts and the United States to use its drivers...
In an important new privacy ruling, a federal judge in Massachusetts last week suppressed a “precise video log” of the comings and goings at a private home, which law enforcement generated by training a hidden pole camera on the home’s driveway for...
In two reports published this week, Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology joins the ACLU of Massachusetts in calling for a moratorium on the government’s use of face surveillance technology, citing alarming new findings about law enforcement’s use of...
Brown University student Amara Majeed awoke on a Thursday in late April to find that she had been falsely accused of perpetrating the Easter terror attacks in Sri Lanka. Her photo was disseminated internationally and she received death threats, even though she...
A state judge in Virginia ruled earlier this month that license plate tracking data collected by automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems are personally identifiable information, outlawing their storage when law enforcement has no good reason to collect and retain them. The...
In June 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark digital privacy ruling, holding that police must obtain a warrant before asking our cellphone companies to turn over information showing where we’ve been in the past. In that case, Carpenter v....
A few weeks ago, on Thursday September 13th, 2018, a series of violent explosions and billowing fires tore through Lawrence, Andover and North Andover, Massachusetts. The explosions, which have since been connected to gas line problems, have impacted at least 8,000 people...
The Massachusetts House is set to vote on a criminal justice reform bill today. Advocates of new surveillance powers are pushing hard to pass wiretap amendments on the House side, despite their defeat in the Senate late last month. Please take action...
In a February 20, 2017 letter to DHS Secretary John Kelly, Oregon democrat and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Ron Wyden voiced alarm at media reports of Customs Border Patrol (CBP) agents demanding device and social media passwords of travelers at...
Boston area people! Come hear ACLU of Massachusetts technologist Paola Villarreal speak about her work bringing data science into the court room, and learn about how she’s been building data visualization tools in the service of social justice. Villarreal, whose work at...