ACLU Warns DOGE’s ‘Unchecked’ Access Could Violate Federal Law

The ACLU says it stands ready to sue for access to government records that detail DOGE’s access to sensitive personnel data...

This industry profits from knowing you have cancer, explains Cody Venzke (Lock and Code S05E22)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … On the internet, you can be shown an online ad because of your age, your address, your purchase history, your politics, your religion, and even your likelihood of having cancer. This is because of the largely unchecked “data broker” industry. Data brokers...

Proposed Massachusetts law to ban sale of your mobile location data

Cellular location phone data may be banned from sale in the state of Massachusetts, under a proposed law set to ruffle some data broker feathers. The selling of location data has long been a point of contention for privacy experts. As with so much bulk user data, claims of anonymity from the...

Snowden Ten Years Later

In 2013 and 2014, I wrote extensively about new revelations regarding NSA surveillance based on the documents provided by Edward Snowden. But I had a more personal involvement as well. I wrote the essay below in September 2013. The New Yorker agreed to publish it, but the Guardian asked me not to...

The DHS Bought a ‘Shocking Amount’ of Phone-Tracking Data

The ACLU released a trove of documents showing how Homeland Security contracted with surveillance companies to scour location information...

Clearview AI banned from selling facial recognition data in the US

Clearview AI, a facial recognition software and surveillance company, is permanently banned from selling its faceprint database within the United States. The company also cannot sell its database to state and law enforcement entities in Illinois for five years. This is a historic win for the...

LAPD Bans Facial Recognition, Citing Privacy Concerns

The Los Angeles Police Department LAPD has banned the use of commercial facial-recognition services – citing “public trust” considerations. The move comes in the wake of a report that showed that more than 25 employees of the department had performed 475 searches so far using the Clearview AI, an...

Nationwide Facial Recognition Ban Proposed By Lawmakers

Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would indefinitely ban the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement nationwide. The new bill comes after months of public concerns surrounding facial recognition’s implications for data privacy, government surveillance and racial bias. The...

Microsoft Joins Ban on Sale of Facial Recognition Tech to Police

Microsoft is joining Amazon and IBM when it comes to halting the sale of facial recognition technology to police departments. In a statement released Thursday by Microsoft President Brad Smith, he said the ban would stick until federal laws regulating the technology’s use were put in place. “We...

ACLU Sues Clearview AI Over Faceprint Collection, Sale

The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU has sued a New York-based startup for amassing a database of biometric face-identification data of billions of people and selling it to third parties without their consent or knowledge The U.S. citizens’-rights watchdog organization has filed suit in the...

How Did Facebook Beat a Federal Wiretap Demand?

This is interesting: Facebook Inc. in 2018 beat back federal prosecutors seeking to wiretap its encrypted Messenger app. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to find out how. The entire proceeding was confidential, with only the result leaking to the press. Lawyers for the ACLU and t...

Internet Voting in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is considered allowing for Internet voting. I have joined a group of security experts in a letter opposing the bill. Cybersecurity experts agree that under current technology, no practically proven method exists to securely, verifiably, or privately return voted materials over the...

ACLU Sues Over U.S. Airport Facial-Recognition Technology

The American Civil Liberties Union ACLU has filed suit the Department of Homeland Security DHS over its use of facial recognition technology in airports, decrying the government’s “extraordinarily dangerous path” to normalize facial surveillance as well as its secrecy in making specific details o...

Computers and Video Surveillance

It used to be that surveillance cameras were passive. Maybe they just recorded, and no one looked at the video unless they needed to. Maybe a bored guard watched a dozen different screens, scanning for something interesting. In either case, the video was only stored for a few days because storage...

Video Surveillance by Computer

The ACLU's Jay Stanley has just published a fantastic report: "The Dawn of Robot Surveillance" blog post here Basically, it lays out a future of ubiquitous video cameras watched by increasingly sophisticated video analytics software, and discusses the potential harms to society. I'm not going to...

Internal Docs Show How ICE Gets Surveillance Help From Local Cops

Documents obtained by the ACLU show how ICE uses unofficial channels to access billions of license plate location data points—including some sanctuary cities...

DNC Accuses Russia, ACLU Sues ICE, and More Security News This Week

Trump dominated security headlines this week, but there's plenty of other news to catch up on...

The DoJ's Secret Legal Arguments to Break Cryptography

Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice made a series of legal arguments as to why Facebook should be forced to help the government wiretap Facebook Messenger. Those arguments are still sealed. The ACLU is suing to make them public...

U.S. Supreme Court Bolsters Mobile-Phone Privacy Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a decision that bolsters digital privacy rights of cellphone users. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain mobile phone tower records that can reveal a user’s location over time. The ruling was made on Friday in a case involving...

Amazon Comes Under Fire for Facial Recognition Platform

Facial-recognition technology has long been touted as a useful tool for law enforcement, but the ability of systems like Amazon’s Rekognition platform to identify large numbers of people at once in a single video or still frame has raised the hackles of privacy advocates. The American Civil...