News & Commentary

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:

Twenty-three years ago today, the United Nations adopted the landmark International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Subsequently, the General Assembly named December 18 "International Migrants Day," an occasion to affirm and acknowledge the human rights of migrants all over the world.

Edward Snowden is a patriot.

Earlier this week the ACLU of Massachusetts called for a statewide moratorium on the use of license plate readers. We did so because a MuckRock/Boston Globe investigation revealed serious abuses by the Boston Police Department in its use of the controversial surveillance technology. Even the BPD itself announced that it was putting its license plate reader program on hold, until it could come up with policies and procedures to address the serious issues the Globe uncovered.

I joined a drug ring when I was 17 years old and, for just over a year, sold crack and powder cocaine in Rockford, Ill. I was arrested when I was 19 years old.

There were certainly moments when the weather on the East Coast was NAGL this past week(end), but then again, it's December, so what do you expect?

True or false: T-Mobile and AT&T received nearly 600,000 requests from law enforcement for customer information in 2012.