Privacy

Supreme Court Hands Down ‘Groundbreaking Victory’ For Privacy

June 25, 2018 By Jessica Corbett, Theantimedia.com Educate! Cell Phones, Fourth Amendment, Privacy, Supreme Court

(CD) — In a decision that digital rights advocates called “a groundbreaking victory for Americans’ privacy rights,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that police generally must obtain a warrant before collecting cellphone records that can be used to track a person’s movements. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represented the petitioner, predicted the “historic” win “will have a ripple effect for privacy,” particularly as it applies to data held by third parties. As the group explained in a series of tweets, “It will help protect all sorts of digital information stored online, from emails to data from smart home appliances.”

It’s Time To Make Student Privacy A Priority

January 30, 2018 Sophia Cope and Nate Cardozo, Eff.org Educate! Privacy, Students

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Education held a workshop in Washington, DC. The topic was “Student Privacy and Ed Tech.” We at EFF have been trying to get the FTC to focus on the privacy risks of educational technology (or “ed tech”) for over two years, so we eagerly filed formal comments. We’ve long been concerned about how technology impacts student privacy. As schools and classrooms become increasingly wired, and as schools put more digital devices and services in the hands of students, we’ve been contacted by a large number of concerned students, parents, teachers, and even administrators. They want to know: What data are ed tech providers collecting about our kids? How are they using it? How well do they disclose (if at all) the scope of their data collection?

A Privacy Case Before Supreme Court Is About Press Freedom, Too

November 25, 2017 Selina MacLaren, aclu.org Educate! Courts, Freedom of Press, Privacy

By Selina MacLaren for ACLU - For today’s journalists, cellphones are mobile newsrooms that go where a reporter goes. They’re used to contact sources, record interviews, write notes and articles, take photos and videos, share work on social media, follow breaking news, and more. So when the government can access — without a warrant — cellphone location records that could be used to reconstruct a person’s movements over time, it not only infringes upon the public’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy, but also threatens reporters’ ability to maintain the confidentiality of their sources and gather the news without being surveilled. That’s why the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 19 other media organizations are urging the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn an appeals court ruling in Carpenter v. United Statesand require the government to obtain a warrant to acquire cellphone location data. On the surface, Carpenter, which the Supreme Court will hear next week, is a Fourth Amendment privacy case about whether law enforcement should be granted warrantless access to records showing where a cellphone has traveled. But when the records sought are those of a journalist, this practice threatens First Amendment freedoms, too. If the court accepts the government’s argument in Carpenter, this would make it easier for the government to obtain cellphone location records and track where reporters have traveled.

Journalists Who Want Online Privacy Need To Read This Guide

November 4, 2017 Chris Paulus, occupy.com Resist! Digital, Internet, Journalism, Privacy

By Chris Paulus for Occupy - We live in a time of journalistic prosecution, as investigative journalists get increasingly targeted for simply doing their job. The Obama Administration prosecuted more individuals under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined; in fact, it used the law to prosecute journalists almost exclusively. It is imperative that journalists protect themselves as they continue to pursue their important work in the face of growing government control. That is why Michael Dagan, a former deputy editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaertz, and Ariel Hochstadt, a former security expert as well as a marketing expert for Google, have created a guide, Online Privacy for Journalists, to help journalists protect both themselves and their sources. “Many journalists whom I have spoken with recently expressed concern for whatever lies ahead for the freedom of the press. All encryption systems can be compromised, if someone has the perseverance to track them,” writes Dagan in an introductory paragraph. “The good news is that it is nevertheless possible to make it difficult for anyone to try and intercept your emails, the text messages you’re sending or your phone calls.” One may be surprised by the extreme measures the guide suggests are necessary as preventive steps to ensure the highest likelihood of a journalist maintaining privacy.

How These Librarians Are Changing How We Think About Digital Privacy

October 20, 2017 Eoin O'Carroll, www.csmonitor.com Create! Digital, Library, Privacy, Surveillance

By Eoin O'Carroll for The Christian Science Monitor - In August, New York University and the Library Freedom Project – an organization that trains librarians on using privacy tools to protect intellectual freedom – received a $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency. Its purpose: to train librarians to implement secure protocols on their own web services, and to teach members of the community to evade the prying eyes of governments, corporations, and criminal hackers. According to the Library Freedom Project’s website, the group aims to create what it calls “a privacy-centric paradigm shift in libraries and the communities they serve.” As society’s sole public space dedicated to collecting and sharing information, public libraries have long been a flashpoint for conflicts over censorship, surveillance, and secrecy. The digital age has accelerated these conflicts, placing librarians squarely between the government’s and corporations’ desire to pursue their interests and the public’s desire to learn how to seek information in private. “Libraries teaching this stuff can really have a big effect on getting them into wider adoption,” says Alison Macrina, the project’s founder and director. “There are a lot of libraries. They reach a lot of people. They are a place where a lot of people already get introduced to new technologies.”

Judge Approves Search Bellingham #NoDAPL Facebook Page

September 3, 2017 Kie Relyea, www.bellinghamherald.com Resist! #NoDAPL, Pipelines, Privacy, Protestors Arrested, Search and Seizure

By Kie Relyea for the Bellingham Herald. Authorities investigating the February demonstration that blocked Interstate 5 and allegedly caused an injury crash can move forward with the search of the Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition Facebook page. Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Charles Snyder on Wednesday denied a request to revoke the latest version of the search warrant, which the judge approved May 11. The American Civil Liberties Union successfully challenged the first warrant for being too broad and unconstitutional, while Facebook told investigators the second warrant was too specific for it to be able to filter for the requested information, according to court documents. The warrant orders Facebook to provide all stored content from the Bellingham #NoDAPL Coalition page from Feb. 5 to Feb. 15. That content includes photos or videos, event information, discussion posts, and all profile information including for administrators or moderators. Information that doesn’t pertain to the investigation into disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment will be returned to the court and sealed, according to the warrant.

DreamHost Fights Search Warrant For Info On #DisruptJ20 Website

August 20, 2017 Anne Meador, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! DOJ, Inauguration Day, Privacy, Trump

By Anne Meador for Dc Media Group. Washington, DC - A DC Superior Court judge will hear arguments next week related to a sweeping government search warrant served on a company which hosted an Inauguration Day protest website. DreamHost, LLC turned over records last January to the U.S. Attorney’s office when it requested information about the owners of disruptj20.org, a website of information about planned protests against Trump’s inauguration. But the Los Angeles company balked when the DOJ served a search warrant in July seeking all stored electronic communications related to the website. In its written response to the U.S. Attorney’s motion to compel, DreamHost says the warrant requires “unreasonable,” “all-encompassing disclosures” in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Police Searches Plummet In States That Legalize Weed, But…

June 25, 2017 Andy Campbell, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Marijuana, Police, Privacy, Racism

By Andy Campbell for the Huffington Post. Marijuana is often used as a tool by police officers to search your car. In many cases, the mere odor of weed serves as probable cause to pull you over and rifle through your belongings. States that have decriminalized it are still grappling with the legality of using marijuana for warrantless searches. In the case of Philando Castile, who was shot to death by a Minnesota police officer during a traffic stop last year, we saw the devastating effects the smell of marijuana can have on an officer’s perception of motorists. Though marijuana is decriminalized to some degree in the state, St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez would later tell investigators that he thought he was in danger because he smelled weed. It may come as no surprise, then, that states that have legalized marijuana are seeing a dramatic decline in warrantless searches.

Police Without Warrants Searched Low Income Housing

June 11, 2017 Llowell Williams, www.care2.com Educate! Civil Rights, Police abuse, Privacy, US Constitution

By Llowell Williams for Care2. Longmont, CO - Though the United States strives to realize justice and equality for all Americans, it is an unfortunate truth that when it comes to people of lower socioeconomic status, the reality is often far short of that. A rather stark example of this was recently exposed in the Colorado town of Longmont, a community located north of Boulder and Denver. In Colorado, landlords have the legal right to conduct inspections and perform maintenance on their rental units provided they issue a notice beforehand. In Longmont, however, management for low income housing took this right too far, resulting in the gross violation of tenants’ constitutionally guaranteed civil rights. In one such notice issued by the Longmont Housing Authority, as provided by a renter to NBC affiliate KUSA, a renter was told their apartment would be undergoing an inspection that would include a police officer and a drug-sniffing dog.

NYPD Sued Over Facial Recognition Program

May 7, 2017 Ava Kofman, www.theintercept.com Resist! Facial Recognition, NYPD, Police abuse, Privacy, Surveillance

By Ava Kofman for the Intercept. Researchers at Georgetown University law school filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the New York City Police Department for the agency’s refusal to disclose documents about its longstanding use of face recognition technology. The NYPD’s face recognition system, which has operated in the department’s Real Time Crime Center since at least 2011, allows officers to identify a suspect by searching against databases of stored facial photos. Records pertaining to the NYPD’s program were requested in January 2016 by researchers at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology as part of The Perpetual Line-Up, a year-long study on law enforcement uses of facial recognition technology. After receiving public records from more than 90 agencies across the country, the study found that one in every two American adults is enrolled in a criminal face recognition network and that “few agencies have instituted meaningful protections to prevent the misuse of the technology.”

First Hundred Days Of Human Rights Violations

April 30, 2017 Amie Stepanovich, www.accessnow.org Educate! Human Rights, Media, Privacy, Surveillance

By Amie Stepanovich for Access Now. In the final years of the Obama Administration, we frequently took issue with the negative impact the administration’s actions were having on our human rights, tackling issues from surveillance to encryption and beyond. However, nothing we saw then could have prepared us for what we have witnessed in the first few months of 2017. Simply put, when President Trump hits the 100th day benchmark on Saturday, April 29, he and his administration will have taken — or prepared to take — a series of actions with massive negative consequences for human rights all around the globe, some of which will darken the U.S. human rights record for generations to come. Below we detail five that are related to our mission of defending and extending the digital rights of users at risk, and describe what we’re doing to fight back.

Cybersecurity For The People

April 23, 2017 Micah Lee and Lauren Feeney, www.theintercept.com Create! Police, Privacy, Surveillance

By Micah Lee and Lauren Feeney for The Intercept. Planning on going to a protest? You might not be aware that just by showing up, you can open yourself up to certain privacy risks — police often spy on protesters, and the smartphones they carry, and no matter how peaceful the demonstration, there’s always a chance that you could get detained or arrested, and your devices could get searched. Watch this video for tips on how to prepare your phone before you go to a protest, how to safely communicate with your friends and document the event, and what to do if you get detained or arrested. This is the first in a new series of videos I’m hosting called Cybersecurity for the People. In future videos we’ll dive into topics such as encrypted messaging apps, password management, and how to become a whistleblower.

Eight Senators Demand Internet Privacy Rules From Internet Providers

April 8, 2017 Dell Cameron, www.dailydot.com Resist! Internet, Net Neutrality, Privacy

By Dell Cameron for The Daily Dot - On Monday, President Donald Trump signed the resolution into law, formally repealing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules that were designed to prevent internet service providers (ISPs), such AT&T and Comcast, from packaging and selling consumer data, including the web browsing behavior of their customers. “The Republican-controlled Congress wants broadband companies to use and sell sensitive information about Americans’ health, finances, and even children without consent,” wrote Markey, a Democrat, in a statement last week. “The big broadband behemoths and their Republican allies have fired their opening salvo in the war on net neutrality, and broadband privacy protections are the first victim.”

Trump Move To Kill Privacy Rules Opposed By 72% Of Republicans

April 6, 2017 Jon Brodkin, www.arstechnica.com Educate! Congress, Privacy, Trump Administration

By Jon Brodkin for ARS Technica - President Donald Trump yesterday signed the repeal of online privacy rules that would have limited the ability of ISPs to share or sell customers' browsing history for advertising purposes, confirming action taken by the Senate and House. This was very much a partisan issue among elected officials. In a 50-48 vote, every Republican senator voted to kill privacy rules and every Democratic senator voted to preserve them. The House vote was 215-205, with 15 Republicans breaking ranks in order to support the privacy rules. But ordinary Americans aren't split on the issue, according to a Huffington Post/YouGov survey that found 72 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of Democrats opposed the rollback.

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