News & Commentary

Yesterday, the world marked International Migrants Day, providing an opportunity to reflect on global efforts to respect and protect migrants' human rights. It is particularly appropriate for us to call attention to U.S. government failure to protect the human and civil rights of communities and migrants along the U.S.'s border with Mexico.

Earlier this week in “The Flawed Logic of Secret Mass Surveillance” I presented some thinking about the dynamics of mass surveillance and what that suggests about how things are likely to play out in the future with regards to the NSA’s spying. It seems to me that there’s an essential structure to privacy that is reminiscent of game theory. And this could provide additional hints about how things are likely to play out over the long term—especially with regards to spying among nations. As I wrote in the earlier piece, spying confers power over others, and it is in my interest to secretly observe you, and for you not to secretly observe me.

I entered my first relationship during the beginning of my freshman year of college at Carnegie Mellon University. Everything was going just as I had hoped. I loved my classes and my new friends and I was dating another woman in my program. However, my relationship quickly became violent. My girlfriend became verbally and sexually abusive. During the six months that we dated, I was raped repeatedly and I began to live in fear.

The D.C. District Court decision this week in Klayman v. Obama, holding that the NSA's bulk telephone metadata program likely violates the Fourth Amendment, dealt a major blow to those seeking to codify the program into law. (The ACLU's challenge to the law is pending in New York, and a decision is expected any day.) Judge Richard Leon's ruling demolishes the already shaky legal foundation for the NSA's mass surveillance program, and makes it clear that reform means ending the unconstitutional suspicionless surveillance programs.

A diplomatic furor has erupted between New Delhi and Washington over the recent arrest of an Indian consular official by U.S. authorities for alleged visa fraud and underpayment of a housekeeper who she had brought from India.

A diplomatic furor has erupted between New Delhi and Washington over the recent arrest of an Indian consular official by U.S. authorities for alleged visa fraud and underpayment of a housekeeper who she had brought from India.

Today, the powerful Senate Commerce Committee issued a damning report on the invasive practices of the online data broker industry. The Committee’s report is the result of a year-long investigation targeting nine of the biggest data aggregators, including Acxiom, Experian, and Datalogix. It discusses some of the information companies are collecting, questions their business practices, and reveals the real harms such practices can cause.

Last Friday, a committee of the New York City Council attempted to answer a simple question: Why is it that in the year 2013, only 37 of 10,500 firefighters in New York City are women? Why is it that only a fraction of one percent of New York City's firefighters are women, when in other urban fire departments in places like Miami, San Francisco, and Minneapolis, women account for 13 to 17 percent of firefighters?

My colleague Christopher Soghoian testified today before the European Parliament at a hearing on the “Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU Citizens,” which is a response to widespread concern in Europe about the revelations of NSA spying. His brief testimony is worth reading in its entirety, but he told the lawmakers, in essence, that Europe faces a choice: