Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability

Does the government classification system need reform? explains how the bipartisan S.4648 offered by Senate Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters and senior Senate Committee and Select Committee member John would, for the first time in US history, prohibit executive branch officials from misusing gov’s document classification system to hide various forms of misconduct.

Does the Government Classification System Need Reform? It’s encouraging to see that despite the current national mood of pessimism and political rancor, there are still legislators in Washington trying to tackle big problems in a bipartisan way.

Whistleblower group sues over secret of congressional staff conducting oversight on "Russiagate" investigation.

DOJ sued for stonewalling on ‘secret’ surveillance records of congressional staff during Russiagate A whistleblower group is suing the Department of Justice over its efforts to “secretly surveil” congressional staff conducting oversight on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

is soliciting help from the private sector to make a faulty technology even more invasive, proposing the use of facial recognition against drivers and passengers approaching the southern border while vehicles are still in motion. The agency's Request for Information does not elaborate how such a system would be used to determine whether a vehicle's occupants are a threat to the US.

Homeland Security Still Dreams of Face Recognition at the Border The Department of Homeland Security wants to use face recognition technology on drivers and passengers approaching the border.

Police use has dramatically expanded over the past decade, and backyards (which are part of the constitutionally protected curtilage of a home) are frequently being captured. No one should have to worry about police spying on their sunbathing.

Backyard Privacy in the Age of Drones Police departments and law enforcement agencies are increasingly collecting personal information using drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition to high-resolution photographic and video cameras, police drones may be equipped with myriad spying payloads, such as live-video transmit...

The only thing worse than the having warrantless access to the private data of millions of Americans is the agency making serious slip-ups in how it processes and destroys storage media. But according to audit, that's exactly what's happening.

Watchdog warns FBI is very sloppy on safe data storage National security data up for grabs, Office of the Inspector General finds

Use of telemedicine exploded during , and is likely to continue expanding. This is a boon for those w/mobility issues or living in rural areas, but privacy concerns remain.

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signs acquisition plan for controversial Tangles tool, an -powered web platform that allows geofencing of various mobile devices, all without a warrant.

Texas State Police Gear Up for Massive Expansion of Surveillance Tech DPS plans to spend millions in taxpayer dollars on a controversial software, used first as part of Governor Abbott’s border crackdown, to “disrupt potential domestic terrorism.”

In 2022 was one of several advocacy orgs fighting to keep tech out of digital license plates. While a deal was struck to prohibit location tracking in passenger cars and AB984 became law, a new bill - AB3138 - will directly undo this compromise and explicitly calls for location tracking in passenger vehicles.

Digital License Plates and the Deal That Never Had a Chance Location and surveillance technology permeates the driving experience. Setting aside external technology like license plate readers, there is some form of internet-connected service or surveillance capability built into or on many cars, from GPS tracking to oil-change notices. This is already a...

A wearable device designed to protect against overheating raises new concerns over both workplace safety and biometric privacy.

Sensors can read your sweat and predict overheating. Here's why privacy advocates care Aug. 24, 2024 09:56 AM EST Sensors Can Read Your Sweat And Predict Overheating. Here's Why Privacy Advocates Care By CATHY BUSSEWITZ AP Business Writer Abbie Parr, ASSOCIATED PRESS A SafeSlate armband is worn by Wyatt Fischer, a furnace mason employee at Cardinal Glass Factory, Thursday, Aug. 22, 20...

FAS report answers a fundamental question: "What can civil society do to fight back against the growing trend of widespread digital ?" Technological advances have made it easy to track someone’s whereabouts, communications, & inner thoughts w/o without leaving an office. The impacts on our civil liberties and constitutional rights are chilling, to say the least.

A Roadmap for Organizations Fighting Digital Surveillance Digital privacy is at risk. What can civil society do to fight back against the growing trend of widespread digital surveillance?

expanded the number of businesses potentially subject to Section 702 directives, which will cast a wide net well beyond the intention and purpose of . Secret law is a dangerous precedent that precludes democratic accountability.

The Secret Law Key That Could Unlock a Pandora’s Box of Uncurtailed Government Surveillance To resolve the debate over which entities can be compelled to disclose user information under FISA 702, the Senate version of the Intelligence Authorization Act takes an unprecedented approach: make it a secret.  Co-authored with CDT Intern Divya Vatsa Congress recently expanded the types of entiti...

The Fifth Circuit has determined that geofence warrants are "categorically" unconstitutional, breaking from Fourth Circuit's deeply flawed decision in US v. Chatrie.

Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are “Categorically” Unconstitutional In a major decision on Friday, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” Closely following arguments EFF has made in a number of cases, the court found that geofence warrants constitute the sort of “general,.....

An interview with former Law technologist provides insight on the ethical and policy questions re: companies using customer data for training models.

Rejecting Dogmas Around AI, User Privacy, and Tech Policy – The Markup A conversation with AI scientist Jonathan Frankle

and intel/national security agencies are a "double black box" that makes it difficult to ensure compliance with laws like the Fourth Amendment.

The Double Black Box: AI Inside the National Security Ecosystem The use of AI to advance U.S. national security will complicate the application of constitutional checks and balances.

The severely restricts what local police and prosecutors can reveal about the use of cell-site simulators (stingrays), making proper discovery virtually impossible. The message is simple: even exculpatory evidence must be withheld from the public and defense attorneys or the FBI will want a word with you.

Judges and District Attorneys Must Hide the Use of Stingrays, or Face the Wrath of the FBI ​Cell-site simulators, often known by the trade name “stingrays,” are used by law enforcement to mimic cell towers, spoofing mobile devices into giving up their owners’ location and other...

Real-time crime centers are expanding rapidly nationwide, but the and concerns are exacerbated by the fact that the statistics of their benefits are generally modest.

Real-time crime centers are transforming policing – a criminologist explains how these advanced surveillance systems work As police departments across the US and the world adopt real-time crime centers, there’s a need for better public understanding of how these centers work.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has fined firms $400M for not spying on the personal phones of its employees, earning it the very apt monicker of the "Surveillance and Exchange Commission" from The Wall Street Journal.

We've previously reported how the had taken it upon itself, authorized by no law and under no Congressional or judicial oversight whatsoever, to create a huge database that allows 3,000 government employees to track the identities of Americans who buy and sell stocks and other securities.

State auditors and treasurers in 23 states have protested this program, which allows for warrantless fishing expeditions of the data of millions of Americans who've done nothing wrong or suspicious.

Until now, it was not the business of an employer to force employees to hand over their personal phones for inspection. This outsourcing of turns employers into government spies and neatly circumvents Fourth Amendment protections.

SEC Fines Firms for Not Spying on the Private Phones of Employees ​ The Wall Street Journal editorial page beat us to the punch to be the first to call the Securities and Exchange Commission the “ Surveillance and Exchange Commission .” It is an apt...

Camera networks do more than see. They record and transform faces into data, which when combined w/facial recognition, location histories, and social media posts brings us to within spitting distance of a police state.

What to Do About the Inevitable Danger of Police Camera Surveillance? ​Police have access to more than 71,000 surveillance cameras in New York City, and to more than 40,000 cameras in Los Angeles. This technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous from coast to coast....

The National Public Data breach underscores the dangers of data brokers and the vast troves of sensitive information available for sale with few safeguards - including to government agencies, who routinely gorge on the most intimate details of our lives w/o a warrant in sight.

The Slow-Burn Nightmare of the National Public Data Breach Social Security numbers, physical addresses, and more—all available online. After months of confusion, leaked information from a background-check firm underscores the long-term risks of data breaches.

Vehicle-to-Everything tech, which U.S. Department of Transportation plans to deploy to 50% of highways and 40% of intersections by 2031, promises to add to the growing oceans of data bought and sold by data brokers and misused by individuals, including warrantless searches by federal agencies.

Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Cynthia Lummis, and Rep. Ro Khanna address what the government can do with car data under the proposed Closing the Warrantless Digital Car Search Loophole Act, a bipartisan bill that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching data from any non-commercial vehicle.

This is one more reason why the Senate should follow the example of the House and pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would end the warrantless collection of Americans’ purchased data by the government.

Our cars may not be as private as we think they are, but we can embrace life-saving technologies while at the same time making sure personal info is not retained and allowed to be purchased by snoops, whether government agents or stalkers.

Vehicle-to-Everything Technology Adds Another Rich Source of Personal Information for Warrantless Examination by the Government ​When we’re inside our car, we feel like we’re in our sanctuary. Only the shower is more private. Both are perfectly acceptable places to sing the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive without fear of...

A sociologist provides insights on how the growing digital at the US- border seeps into the lives of those that live in the towns near it, and how such surveillance will move inland more so than it already has.

The ‘Unsettling,’ Nearly Normalized Surveillance Tech Monitoring the U.S.-Mexico Border – The Markup “At any given moment, there is something or someone watching you,” sociologist Francisco Lara-García tells The Markup

A passenger being denied boarding for a flight to Jordan due to his political expression is a major civil liberties concern, and threatens to undermine our First and Fourth Amendment rights simultaneously.

CAIR-LA Files Suit Against FBI for Using Illegal, Racist Watchlist Against Palestinian Americans - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, and its Greater Los Angeles Area office (CAIR-LA) today held press conferences in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., announcing the filing of a lawsuit against the federal government for placing...

The phrase "national security" is as old as George Washington's administration, but it wasn't until the National Security Act of 1947 that the term was codified into law, creating Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and much of what is today known as the intelligence community. But the term was never defined.

So, what is national security? More importantly, what isn’t national security? The term has become a catch-all for politicians to show elevated concerns about the issues du jour.

Ratcheting up new issues without removing old issues makes keeping priorities straight difficult while also having a nasty side effect on Americans' privacy: once something becomes a matter of national security, it becomes justification for warrantless surveillance.

When Americans give intel and law enforcement agents probable cause reason to investigate, a warrant is appropriate. But the ever-expanding national security agenda presents flexible pretext to find reasons to set aside the Constitution and spy on Americans without a warrant.

If everything is national security, then nothing is national security. And when everything is national security, everyone is subject to warrantless .

When Everything Is National Security, Everyone Can Be Spied Upon ​The phrase “national security” harks back to the George Washington administration, but it wasn’t until the National Security Act of 1947 that the term was codified into law. This new law...

Fight for the Future is one of several orgs advocating for an end to facial recognition and the dangerous collection of at sports games. tech continues to creep into all aspects of our lives, and despite claims of "convenience" there is nothing convenient about the risks of collecting people's ’ most sensitive, personal, and unchangeable data.

Letter to Major League Baseball, team owners, venue owners, sports leagues, and all leaders in professional sports We’re calling foul: facial recognition threatens our safety and privacy and has no place in sports stadiums. We are rights defenders and privacy experts and we demand that major sports leagues, including the MLB, as well as team owners and stadium management companies immediately reject the implem...

Ninth Circuit rules 3-0 that must face a revived lawsuit by users alleging the company collected personal data without permission.

US appeals court revives Google privacy class action A U.S. appeals court said Google must face a revived lawsuit by Google Chrome users who said the company collected their personal information without permission, after they chose not to synchronize their browsers with their Google accounts.

plan to upgrade infrastructure with V2X technology hopes to improve road safety. What it will likely do is create a privacy nightmare: it's frighteningly easy to filter or hack even anonymized data, creating a gold mine for advertisers, police, and criminals.

DOT plans to implement V2X technology raise privacy concerns - Marketplace The Department of Transportation wants cars and infrastructure to talk to prevent accidents via vehicle-to-everything, or V2X, technology.

Facial recognition tech is often misused and misapplied to put innocent people in jail, but an appellate ruling may have been a watershed moment that exposes the gaps in regulation & oversight that are growing and put everyone at risk.

A hollow victory in fight to bring transparency to cops' use of facial recognition technology • New Jersey Monitor A 2023 ruling requires prosecutors to share the details of facial recognition technology with defendants. Few comply, defense attorneys say.

Facial recognition is a severe threat to , so why is it employed in sports stadiums? Fight for the Future is one org pushing back on the faulty technology that's slowly creeping further into the lives of millions of Americans.

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Byron Tau details years-long program where the agency bought access to movement of millions of people's cellphone records from commercial brokers. This is another reason why Congress must pass the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act.

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National Public Data's enormous hack - 2.9B records, including numbers - should teach us plenty about the reckless collection of personal data by federal agencies. There are no perfect solutions to this problem, but multifactor identification comes the closest.

But this is only part of the problem: FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and IRS and other agencies routinely purchase our personal data, including communications, social media posts, and daily movements – scraped from our apps and sold by data brokers.

How secure is gov’s vast trove of personal data, which contains the most intimate details of our lives? That's a question for Congress to ask, and the Senate should follow up on the House passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

Protect your data by calling or emailing your senators and telling them to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. Our data will only become more secure if we, as consumers and citizens, demand it.

What NPD’s Enormous Hack Tells Us About the Reckless Collection of Our Data by Federal Agencies ​Was your Social Security number and other personal identifying information among the 2.9 billion records that hackers stole from National Public Data? Hackers can seize our Social Security...