Warrantless Spying by the Feds up 600% in Decade

The Justice Department would love nothing more than to have access to all information at all times. But, fortunately, there are some laws preventing that. New information revealed to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, however, shows that it’s arguable these protections are not strict enough, or that they are bypassed too frequently. [Read more…]

Privacy And Twitter: Who Owns Your Tweets?

In the trial of a Occupy Wall Street protestor, Twitter has taken center stage. New York State Supreme Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. has demanded the social networking company hand over the tweets of Malcolm Harris (@destructuremal) or turn over their financial records to have a fine assessed. [Read more…]

Supreme Court to Take Up DNA Collection At Arrest

Can the police collect your DNA and store it in a national database without any due process?  In twenty-five states they can, if you are even a suspect in a felony case.

They even don’t need to wait until you are officially arrested, or until you are found guilty, and they don’t need a warrant to do it. This, many say, isn’t only an “unreasonable search,” but does away with the presumption of innocence—a cornerstone of our criminal justice system. For this, and other reasons, the United States Supreme Court is expected to decide the issue in coming months. [Read more…]

Drone privacy bill aims to protect individuals from surveillance

Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) has proposed a bill that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to establish privacy safeguards for drone operators. The bill also aims to create limits on data collection by law enforcement agencies that use drones in the field.

Markey, who is co-Chair of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, submitted the discussion draft of the Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2012 on August 1.

Markey’s bill highlights the impending integration of drones into domestic airspace by October 2015, as required by the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act signed by President Obama this February, as well as acknowledges that government agencies at all levels have increasingly been using unmanned aircraft, as have “businesses and private individuals.”

While the bill acknowledges that there are undoubtedly beneficial applications of the technology, it also emphasizes the glaring potential “for unmanned aircraft system technology to enable invasive and pervasive surveillance without adequate privacy protections.” This potential for misuse and abuse of the technology for surveillance of private citizens is exacerbated by a complete lack of “explicit privacy protections or public transparency measures with respect to such system technology.” Markey’s bill aims to fill that void when it comes to privacy protections from drone surveillance.

If passed, the drone privacy bill would require a study by the Secretary of Transportation (who oversees the FAA), the Secretary of Commerce, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Homeland Security into “potential threats to privacy protections posed by the integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.”

The bill would also prohibit the FAA from granting drone operation licenses to entities, governmental or private, without a data collection statement from the license applicant. Such a data collection statement would include information regarding: chain-of-command to authorize the use of drones; locations of operation; maximum flight times; whether the drone in question will collect information or data about individuals or groups.

If drones will be used to collect data on individuals or groups, the operator must further indicate: circumstances under which this information will be collected; what kind of information will be collected; how such information will be used, disclosed, sold and stored. The data collection statement must also include an estimation of possible impact the drone in question may have on individual privacy and the steps operators will take to mitigate those impacts.

Markey’s bill would further require law enforcement agencies and their subcontractors to submit a “data minimization” statement along with their application for operation licenses to the FAA. This statement would include a review of policies adopted to minimize the collection of data unrelated to criminal investigation and to require the destruction of data once it is no longer relevant to said investigation. The data minimization statement would also include audit and oversight procedures to ensure the agency or contractor in question complies with these policies.

The draft bill would also require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant to use drones for generalized surveillance without a particular target.

Legislation of this kind is clearly needed: as over 100 agencies across the country have already applied to the FAA for licenses to operate drones, each day that goes by without explicit privacy protections makes the absence of such guidelines even more glaring. Markey’s bill is clearly a starting point for the type of conversation the country needs around drone technology, privacy and law enforcement surveillance capabilities.

Let’s keep this Tweet between you, me… and your boss?

There’s no question that the Internet and ascendance of social media substantially blur the division between public and private. What’s shared online, even when “restricted” to acquaintances or a select few viewers via privacy preferences, is just a few mouse clicks away from being in the public sphere. Just ask Anthony Weiner.

With so much being shared online, it’s unsurprising that employers, hiring managers and admissions officers have begun looking up their employees’ and applicants’ Facebook and Twitter feeds. While many might consider this an overstep in itself, public accounts on social media sites are readily available, and presumably contain only information that the user is comfortable having widely (if not universally) known.

tweetBut some companies, schools and government agencies have taken the exercise a step further, going so far as demanding social media passwords from their employees and applicants. Several media reports this year suggest that the practice is becoming increasingly popular.

One Washington Post editorial aptly reflected,

“People ought to be outraged. Employers have lost their minds — and their sense of what privacy means.”

The same editorial included an analogy from George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor: “It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys.”

In an interview with Business Week, a spokesperson for the Virginia State Police, which requires all applicants to actually sign into their social media accounts as an administrator looks over their shoulder, suggested that requirements of this kind are “virtual character checks.”

Many would argue instead that moves like these are better described as “egregious privacy violations,” to quote Professor Kerr once more.

Employers, organizations and schools have a right to protect their reputations, which includes some oversight on individual behavior (both virtual and otherwise) to the extent that it is public. Poking around the private accounts clearly crosses this boundary, and comes dangerously close to thought policing.

It would seem that many share this sentiment. The National Association of Colleges and Employers issued a categorical statement in April that decried these practices as ethical violations:

Employers should not require or request that job candidates provide password/login information to their personal social network accounts as a condition of employment or as a condition of consideration for employment.

Facebook, its own stance with regard to personal information being rather murky, issued its own statement:

As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job.  And as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job.  [….] We don’t think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don’t think it’s the right thing to do.

While statements like these from professional organizations and social media sites themselves are critical steps toward marshaling public opinion against coercive hiring practices, they provide no recourse for those who have been pressured to reveal their passwords as a condition of employment.

In response, a number of state legislatures have considered legislation in 2012 making it illegal for employers or other administrators to demand access to private social media accounts. Maryland and Illinois have passed laws covering employers, while Delaware enacted a statute barring higher education institutions from requiring social media account information from students. 11 other states have considered similar bills over the past year.

For privacy legislation to be enacted across the country at the state level will take time that could clearly be saved with a national bill. While unease at SOPA/PIPA and the recent Cybersecurity Bill has barely settled, measures like the Social Networking Online Protection Act (SNOPA), submitted in April to the House, would go a long way toward ensuring the privacy of employees, job applicants and those applying to college.

We need solid safeguards to protect against coercive hiring and admissions practices, and to maintain a sane sense of personal space beyond the prying eyes of our bosses and administrators. As social media continues to solidify as routine means of communication and expression, the importance of these protective measures only increases.

Law Enforcement Requesting More and More Phone Data

Last year, law enforcement agencies across the country made 1.3 million requests for cell phone data. This data, including location information and even text message content, is said to be used for tracking drug dealers and kidnappers. But not everyone is convinced that the requests are warranted. [Read more…]

Legal Limitations to Private Investigations

Personal safety, criminal investigations and background checks for potential employees are just some of the reasons why private investigators are called in for their expertise.

Knowledge of one person’s activities and their history can go a long way in making relationship or hiring decisions. This knowledge can even prove guilt or innocence of a crime. [Read more…]

When Cops Use Cameras Too

In recent years we’ve seen many stories of people catching the police on camera. Whether the footage involved brutality or showed evidence that was contrary to police reports, the controversy of people filming police has been very real and a relevant issue in these times that everyone has a camera on them. But, some police departments have joined in, in an effort to show their techie-side and, in some cases, to clear their name. [Read more…]

Cell Phone Tracking “Routine” for Police

It’s something police departments don’t really like to talk about, because they know it will garner serious backlash and could spur tighter restrictions. It’s the use of cell phones to track people and gain intelligence, often without a warrant or court approval. [Read more…]

Should Criminal Histories Be Given an Expiration Date?

An op-ed in the New York Times this week makes an interesting proposal—that criminal histories should only be used against job applicants for a certain period of time. Alfred Blumstein, professor of urban systems and operations research at Carnegie Mellon University, and Kiminori Nakamura, associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, wrote that people are paying for their crimes for much too long and that no one benefits from excluding those with criminal histories from employment and housing when they have remained crime-free for a number of years. [Read more…]