News & Commentary

You've probably heard politicians or pundits say that “metadata doesn't matter.” They argue that police and intelligence agencies shouldn't need probable cause warrants to collect information about our communications. Metadata isn’t all that revealing, they say, it’s just numbers.

Ars Technica reported yesterday that AT&T has confirmed it will allow web sites to pay money so that data downloaded from those sites will not be counted against customers’ monthly data caps. I don’t know whether this is a business model that will take hold—but if it does, it is dangerous to the openness of the Internet.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday announced six states, chosen from 25 applicants, that will be test sites for integrating drones into domestic airspace: Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas, and Virginia (the Alaska test site plans to also test drones in Hawaii and Oregon, and Virginia will also be testing drones in New Jersey). The chosen test sites belie one of the biggest arguments some governors, state legislators, and industry lobbyists have been using against enacting privacy protections for domestic drone use: that passing privacy legislation would undermine a state’s chances of being selected as a test site and hurt its economy.

The President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies just issued a report that unequivocally rejected the notion that privacy and civil liberties must be sacrificed in order to achieve a balance with national security. Liberty and Security in a Changing World includes 46 recommendations for how to reform Intelligence Community programs and practices, several of which would go a long way toward protecting Americans' rights. Here are the nine most important things you need to know about those recommendations.

The phone records program doesn't work, invades Americans' privacy, and threatens our freedoms.
The Review Group was unable to

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.

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.

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:

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.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent a letter yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to release the two Department of Justice legal memos providing guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators about the proper use of GPS devices and other location-tracking technologies. Emphasizing that "there is no room in American democracy for secret interpretation of public law," Sen. Wyden and Rep. Chaffetz told Holder that it is "critical" for both members of Congress and the American public to "understand DOJ's precise views on the current state of the law and existing legal requirements and protections." They requested that the he provide them with unredacted copies of the Justice Department memos by the end of January. (You can read the letter for yourself here.)