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This Is Mass Justice: SJC Requires Warrants For Cellphone Tower Data

On February 18, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that here in Massachusetts, state cops actually do have to get a warrant if they want to access your cellphone location data.

This is what an independent judiciary looks like. The Justices of our Supreme Judicial Court have withstood over half a century of New England winters. They have endured the long decades of the Curse of the Bambino. Their knotted muscles are carved from whalers’ scrimshaw. They are not to be messed with. The obsequious servants of the surveillance state on the FISA Court could learn a thing or two from them.

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News Uncategorized

Google’s “Zeitgeist” List of Top 100 Search Terms of 2013 Includes Snowden; WP Writes Whole Article About How It Didn’t

Brian Fung, on the Washington Post’s “The Switch” blog, “reported” recently on Google’s “Zeitgeist” list of the top 100 search terms for 2013. His main interest in it, it appears, was to make the point that “Edward Snowden” wasn’t one of them, and therefore that the public really doesn’t care that much about the surveillance abuses uncovered by his whistleblowing.

A picture of Snowden courtesy of a Kerala, India newspaper - because the world don't care, right?
A picture of Snowden courtesy of a newspaper in south India – because the world doesn’t care, right?

You know what’s funny? Snowden is on the list. True, he’s at #97. But you’d think that if you were going to write a whole article about how unimportant this silly little man is, and if you were going to use presence on Google’s list as the sole determinant of what people care about, then you’d actually bother to find out whether he was on it first.

Not, clearly, if you’re Brian Fung of the Washington Post. Facts are for the little people. So if you actually want to know what’s on the list – you won’t find the full list anywhere else on the Internet – keep reading.

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News

The Day We Fought Back: Here’s what comes next

Photo credit: theintercept.org
Photo credit: theintercept.org

Yesterday, the Internet lit up in protest against mass surveillance. In the US, Congress got over 85,000 phone calls from people frustrated by mass surveillance, and urging their legislators to support the USA FREEDOM Act. Here in Massachusetts, we worked with the ACLU of Massachusetts to target the specific legislators who had not cosponsored. Our heartfelt thanks go out to Rep. Joseph Kennedy (MA-04) and Rep. Katherine Clark (MA-05), who cosponsored over the last week. Our puzzled and insistent glare turns to Rep. Niki Tsongas (MA-03), who has not cosponsored yet and is still considering the matter. The USA FREEDOM Act is currently listed at 134 cosponsors (though that doesn’t yet officially include Rep. Clark, and there may be, after yesterday, other “undeclared cosponsors”).

What’s next? Well, There is a real-deal NSA reform bill, that would repeal the infamous PATRIOT Act altogether, along with the FISA Amendments Act, forbid mandatory software backdoors, and give whistleblower protections to government contractors as well as employees. It’s called the Surveillance State Repeal Act. One of its nine cosponsors is none other than Rep. Richard Neal (MA-01), who has not yet cosponsored the USA FREEDOM Act either, it seems because it is not strong enough. We applaud his commitment, but would argue that it’s not an either-or – we’d love to see him cosponsor both. It’s great to see that two other Massachusetts legislators – Rep. James McGovern (MA-02) and Rep. John Tierney (MA-06) – are also among the nine cosponsors, putting Massachusetts at the forefront of efforts to restore freedom and the Fourth Amendment.

So let’s keep moving, and let’s encourage our legislators to cosponsor both of these good bills. And meanwhile, check out our awesome calendar (right) of surveillance-related events coming up in Massachusetts!

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Mission News

Turns out, MBTA has plenty of dollars – for surveillance.

Kade Crockford reports that DHS has awarded the MBTA $7 million to refit its buses with fancy new surveillance cameras. Why? Oh, no reason in particular. But the MBTA is at pains to point out that they spent none of their own money on the project. What’s wrong with free money?

Let me tell you what’s wrong with free money. Whether it’s coming from MBTA, DHS, the NSA or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it all comes from you and me in the end, and I care just the same about whether it’s being spent wisely.

I understand the politics. MBTA, being a local agency, tends to come under fire if it, say, has a massive budget crisis and hikes fares by 23% to help make up the shortfall. DHS, on the other hand, won’t be protested, and this one grant is a drop in the bucket. Nobody’s going to lose their job at DHS if the money does no good.

Crockford rightly comments:

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Mission News

One Ring To Rule Them All: Surveillance and the Massachusetts Governor’s Race

While most Massachusetts voters are digging out from a ferocious winter storm, state politics goes on. In particular, ten brave souls are running for this November’s election for Massachusetts governor – five Democrats, two Republicans and three Independents. It seems recently that candidates campaigning against the surveillance state have been getting some traction, probably because most people think there aren’t enough constraints on invasive government surveillance and like candidates better who promise to do something about it.

So, it’s worthwhile for us to do again what we did in the MA-05 race, and question the candidates closely on the kinds of surveillance topics the governor can affect. Notably, we’ll be covering the wiretapping expansion, state monitoring of social media, state retention of an array of data on people not suspected of any crime, the militarization of law enforcement, and warrant requirements.

We’ll report back here on the responses we receive, covering Republicans, Independents and Democrats separately. When all candidates of one affiliation have responded, we will post a comparison of their views.

Meanwhile, here are all of the candidates’ websites, for you to assess their positions on other issues. Enjoy!

Republicans: Baker, Fisher.
Independents: Falchuk, Faraone, McCormick
Democrats: Avellone, Berwick, Coakley, Grossman, Kayyem

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News

Alex Marthews Appointed Interim National Coordinator of Restore The Fourth

I have been appointed as interim national coordinator of Restore The Fourth, a civil liberties advocacy group created in 2013 in response to Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance. Our state-level activities will continue at the same pace, but as ever, we welcome volunteers!

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Mission News

DA Whitewashes Killing of Lynn Resident By Armed Intruders

After months of pressure, Essex County District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett has completed his investigation into the Sept. 5, 2013 killing of Army Specialist Denis Reynoso at his home in Lynn. Yesterday, he released his finding that police were justified in killing him. His findings could be summed up as, “Sure, he hadn’t committed any crime, and sure, the police came into his home without a warrant, but he was acting all cray-cray, so we’re good.”

DA Blodgett’s elaborate work of speculative fiction provides several specific reasons making it justifiable for armed intruders to have killed Spc. Reynoso in his home.

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News

Boston PD Suspends ALPR Program After Massive Privacy Violation

Just before Christmas, Muckrock and the ACLU of Massachusetts brought out excellent articles based on a full year of Muckrock’s investigative reporting into Boston PD’s use of automated license plate recognition technology.

ALPR systems automatically photograph and store in a police database the license plates of any car an ALPR-equipped police vehicle passes. The car may be parked or driving. It could be on the Pike, in a driveway, or anywhere a camera can reach. The question was, what does the Boston PD do with the mountain of data once it has it?

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Mission News

New Judiciary Senate Chair Will Brownsberger

brownsberger_2

The Joint Committee on the Judiciary handles most of the bills relating to privacy and surveillance in Massachusetts. Its most senior member is the Senate Chair. In a press release today, Senate President Therese Murray announced that Sen. Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont) would become the new Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, replacing Sen. Katherine Clark, who was elected to Congress in Massachusetts’ Fifth District. She writes:

Senator Brownsberger is a deliberative and thoughtful leader in the Senate and has a strong work ethic. I am confident that he will continue to do great work in this new position.

Having seen Sen. Brownsberger’s work as my own senator, he is indeed thoughtful, deliberative and hard-working. He is genuinely concerned about transparency, and is very willing to communicate and discuss with constituents on a wide array of topics. Sen. Brownsberger ran for Congress as well in the Fifth District, and during the race his openness and willingness to see and consider both sides of many sensitive questions made it harder for him to appeal to a highly partisan Democratic primary electorate. In the Senate Chair position, his reflective disposition may be a significant advantage. The Senate Chair is often called upon to weigh carefully the competing claims of law enforcement and civil liberties advocates, and every indication is that he will weigh them with care.

We have documented already on this blog Sen. Brownsberger’s views on national surveillance issues like the Amash Amendment, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the Surveillance State Repeal Act. At the state level, he has been supportive of warrant protections for email and digital data. On the wiretapping bill, he believes that the organized crime requirement is outdated and should be dropped, but also believes that the list of designated offenses suggested by the Attorney-General is too broad. On fusion centers, his skepticism of law enforcement claims is very welcome.

We don’t expect that Sen. Brownsberger will always and unambiguously vote the way we would like on the bills before the Judiciary Committee. However, we appreciate the Senator’s intellect and sense of professionalism. We hope that as Senate Chair, very often he will side with the Constitution, and opt to protect the residents of the Commonwealth from the growing pressure to subject them at every turn to unnecessary and intrusive surveillance.

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Mission News

The Wall Begins To Crack: Fourth Amendment Challenge to Bulk Metadata Spying Program “Likely to Succeed on the Merits”

Ever since the 2005 revelations of Mark Klein (yes, that long ago) that the NSA was intercepting phone traffic on a mass basis, successive presidential administrations have employed every possible species of legal trickery to prevent a constitutional challenge to the program on the merits.

The key question is, Why? Surely, if either Bush or Obama believed their rhetoric that what they’re doing is Constitutional, they would welcome the courts’ review, which would surely result in a thumping endorsement of bulk metadata spying, probably based on the 1979 Supreme Court case Smith v. Maryland, which ruled the collection of much more limited metadata to be constitutional.

The actions of both administrations suggest otherwise. Their problem was always that the plain text of the Fourth Amendment didn’t seem to support their position. Shall we take a look at it again? I never get tired of it.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrant shall issue, except upon probable cause, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In order to be “reasonable”, a “search” must have a warrant, which is supported by “probable cause”, and which “particularly describes” the “place” to be searched.

So let’s say, then, just hypothetically, that you set up a massive phone data interception program without bothering with a warrant at all, and got Congress to retroactively immunize anyone participating in it from prosecution (hey there, W!), or that your response to the existence of this program when you got into office was to get a secret court to issue a secret ruling approving a warrant allowing the “seizure” of all phone metadata for all calls in the United States (howdy, BarackO!). How would a reasonable court interpret the requirements for probable cause, or for particularly describing the “persons or things” to be seized, for a program like that?

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