White House faces deeply skeptical Congress as it advocates for controversial surveillance tool

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires in December, is in perhaps its most precarious position yet.

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Illinois’ biometric privacy law provides blueprint as states seek to curb data collection

An estimated 17 pieces of privacy legislation backed by both Democrats and Republicans are pending across the country.

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Wikimedia wants Supreme Court to hear case over NSA surveillance

The case over the National Security Agency’s digital monitoring activities could have major implications for the future of government spying.

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Clearview AI agrees to not sell its facial recognition database to private companies

The landmark ruling comes thanks to a 2008 Illinois biometric privacy law.

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Documents shed light on ID.me’s marketing to states about powerful facial recognition tech

Identity verification technology company ID.me quietly deployed a powerful form of facial recognition on unemployment benefits applicants while encouraging state partners to dispel the idea that the company used the technology, according to Oregon state records the American Civil Liberties Union shared with CyberScoop.  The documents show that in the months following the introduction of facial recognition software that matched a photo across a wider database — known as “1:many” — into its fraud detection service, ID.me disseminated talking points to the Oregon Employment Department (OED) and other state partners to combat media reports that it used the more powerful form of facial recognition. Privacy advocates who are pushing states to drop the technology say the documents raise concerns that states working with ID.me may have been unaware of the risks involved with the use of facial recognition technology, the accuracy of which has been challenged by government and academic researchers. […]

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Rights groups ask Supreme Court to review warrantless searches at border

Civil liberties groups on Friday asked the Supreme Court to hear a case challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. ports of entry and airports. The petition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union asks the Supreme Court to overturn a U.S. appeals court’s decision in February that authorizes border agents to search devices without a warrant. The EFF and ACLU sued DHS in 2017 on behalf of 11 U.S. citizens who contended border officers violated their rights when they searched their devices as they re-entered the U.S.   The issue has long been a concern for privacy-minded groups and press advocates. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which does advocacy around the world, warned in 2018 that journalists traveling to the U.S. “should be aware that current practice risks exposing contacts, sourcing and reporting material contained on laptops, phones and […]

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Warrantless searches of devices at border allowed, appeals court finds

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled earlier this week that Customs and Border Protection agents may conduct warrantless searches of cellphones and electronic devices at the U.S. border, in a ruling that is already raising privacy questions among digital rights advocates. The decision, issued by a panel of judges and authored by Judge Sandra Lynch, states that the government’s interest in searching persons at the border is “at its zenith,” therefore trumping privacy concerns. “Electronic device searches do not fit neatly into other categories of property searches, but the bottom line is that basic border searches of electronic devices do not involve an intrusive search of a person,” Lynch writes. The decision is at odds with an earlier district court finding that these kinds of searches violate the Fourth Amendment because there’s no assurance there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the devices in question contained digital […]

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ACLU sues FBI for information about its encryption-cracking skills

The FBI must be more transparent about its ability to break into people’s mobile devices, the American Civil Liberties Union says, and the group is suing for information about what the feds have in their toolkit. The ACLU says the bureau should come clean about what its Electronic Device Analysis Unit (EDAU) is using “to unlock and decrypt information that is otherwise securely stored on cell phones.” The group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Monday in a San Francisco federal court. “We’re demanding the government release records concerning any policies applicable to the EDAU, its technological capabilities to unlock or access electronic devices, and its requests for, purchases of, or uses of software that could enable it to bypass encryption,” the ACLU says in a news release. The suit is the latest offensive in what some call the Crypto Wars — an ongoing legal and policy struggle over […]

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