Divided Court Rules Baltimore’s Continuous Aerial Surveillance is Constitutional

17 11 2020
EPIC
Nov. 10, 2020
A divided federal appeals court has ruled that Baltimore’s use of spy planes to continuously surveil the city does not violate the Fourth Amendment. The technology, known as wide-area aerial surveillance, allows police to capture high-definition video and track the movements of pedestrians and vehicles over a 32-square mile area. Although the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals acknowledged “that there are aerial surveillance programs that would transgress basic Fourth Amendment protections,” the court concluded that Baltimore’s program “does not violate the Constitution” and “burdens privacy substantially less than a well-established staple of existing surveillance: security cameras.” Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory dissented, concluding that the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States requiring a warrant for cell phone location data also requires police to obtain a warrant for persistent aerial surveillance. Gregory explained that “Long-term, recorded surveillance of public movements uncovers more than temporary trailing by a suspecting officer; it reveals a person’s most intimate associations and activities.” EPIC filed an amicus brief in Carpenter v. United States and has long fought to limit drone surveillance and other forms of aerial spying.

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Appeals Court: NSA Call Metadata Program Was Illegal, Likely Unconstitutional

10 09 2020
EPIC
September 2, 2020

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone call metadata violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was likely unconstitutional. EPIC and a coalition of groups filed an amicus brief in the case, United States v. Moalin, arguing that call metadata is protected under the Fourth Amendment. “We hold that the telephony metadata collection program exceeded the scope of Congress’s [FISA] authorization,” the Ninth Circuit wrote. The court rejected the argument that individuals lack a Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy in call metadata simply because the data is held by phone companies. The public is “likely to perceive as private several years’ worth of telephony metadata collected on an ongoing, daily basis—as demonstrated by the public outcry following the revelation of the metadata collection program,” the court explained. The court cited to the coalition amicus brief and to the work of EPIC advisory board member Laura K. Donohue. However, the court declined in this particular case to exclude the unlawfully collected metadata as evidence. In In re EPIC, EPIC petitioned the Supreme Court to end the NSA’s bulk phone record collection program, which occurred with the 2015 passage of the USA Freedom Act.

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Indiana Supreme Court Says No to Compelled Decryption of Cell Phones

19 08 2020
Epic
June 23, 2020
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled today that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination prevents law enforcement from compelling an individual to unlock their smartphone. The court declared that an exception to the Fifth Amendment did not apply because the type and amount of information cell phones contain make compelled production of their contents different than compelled production of physical documents, citing the Supreme Court’s decisions in Riley v. California and Carpenter v. United States. The court wrote that “the Supreme Court has hesitated to apply even entrenched doctrines to novel dilemmas, wholly unforeseen when those doctrines were created.” EPIC urged the New Jersey Supreme Court to adopt the same reasoning in State v. Andrews, arguing that, under Riley and Carpenter, individuals cannot be compelled to decrypt their cell phones. The New Jersey court has not yet issued a ruling in the case.

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D.C. Circuit to Hear Arguments in Case on Right to Informational Privacy

14 01 2019

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Friday in a case about the 2015 data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel and Management, which affected 22 million federal employees, their friends, and their family members. EPIC filed an amicus brief in the case, joined by forty-four technical experts and legal scholars (members of the EPIC Advisory Board). In the brief, EPIC said that “when personal data is collected by a government agency, that agency has a constitutional obligation to protect the personal data it has obtained.” In the 2011 case NASA v. Nelson, EPIC urged the Supreme Court to limit data collection by federal agencies, citing the growing risk of data breach in the federal government.

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New Hampshire Voters Establish Constitutional Right to Informational Privacy

14 01 2019

New Hampshire voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that guarantees a constitutional right to information privacy in the state. The measure, which received 80% of the vote, amends Article 2 in the New Hampshire Bill of Rights providing that “an individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.” New Hampshire joins a growing number of states with constitutional privacy protections. EPIC Advisory Board member David Flaherty has written about the development of constitutional privacy protections. EPIC regularly files amicus briefs supporting state privacy rights. In a recent amicus brief concerning the OPM data breach, EPIC argued that the right to information privacy exists in the federal Constitution.

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Federal Court: NYC Data Disclosure Law Violates Fourth Amendment

13 01 2019

A federal court has blocked a New York City law requiring home-sharing platforms to disclose detailed personal information about users, ruling that the ordinance violates the Fourth Amendment. The law would have required companies such as Airbnb to disclose the names, contact information, financial data, and rental histories of hosts, even when no unlawful conduct was suspected. . . .l The court followed a Supreme Court case Los Angeles v. Patel, which prohibited the warrantless searches of hotel records. EPIC filed an amicus brief in Patel. The federal court also cited Carpenter v. United States, Byrd v. United States, Riley v. California, and United States v. Jones, Supreme Court cases in which EPIC also filed amicus briefs. The decision in Airbnb v. New York also has implications for the data collection practices of so-called Smart Cities.

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Court Rules Secret Scoring of Teachers Unconstitutional

29 01 2018

A federal district court has held that firing public school teachers based on the results of a secret algorithm is unconstitutional. The case, Houston Federation of Teachers vs. Houston Independent School District, concerned a commercial software company’s proprietary appraisal system that was used to score teachers. Teachers could not correct their scores, independently reproduce their scores, or learn more than basic information about how the algorithm worked. “When a public agency adopts a policy of making high stakes employment decisions based on secret algorithms incompatible with minimum due process, the proper remedy is to overturn the policy,” the court wrote. EPIC recently filed a complaint asking the FTC to stop the secret scoring of young tennis players. EPIC has pursued several cases on “Algorithmic Transparency,” including one for rating travelers and another for assessing guilt or innocence.

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What happens if a cop forces you to unlock your iPhone X with your face?

22 01 2018

The introduction of Face ID instantly led to questions among civil liberties experts, who say the technology raises the risk of abuse.

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EPIC FOIA: EPIC Seeks Information about Airport Eye Scans of U.S. Travelers

6 03 2017

EPIC has filed an urgent FOIA request with U.S. Customs and Border Protection for details of eye scans conducted on U.S. citizens traveling internationally. The CBP has long been testing biometric identification of travelers, including U.S. citizens, and a recent report indicates U.S. citizens were subject to eye scans before traveling abroad. EPIC seeks public disclosure of the details of CBP policies for scanning U.S. citizen irises and retinas upon entry or exit to the U.S. EPIC makes frequent use of the Freedom of Information Act. As the result of a FOIA lawsuit, EPIC recently obtained several memorandum of understanding regarding the transfer of biometric identifiers between the FBI and DOD. Last month, EPIC also prevailed in EPIC v. FBI, a FOIA lawsuit public release of the FBI’s privacy assessments.

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Amazon refusing to hand over data on whether Alexa overheard a murder

28 02 2017

 –  2/23/2017,

ars technica

Amazon is balking at a search warrant seeking cloud-stored data from its Alexa Voice Service. Arkansas authorities want to examine the recorded voice and transcription data as part of a murder investigation. Among other things, the Seattle company claims that the recorded data from an Amazon Echo near a murder scene is protected by the First Amendment, as are the responses from the voice assistant itself.

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