• How Did Israeli Intelligence Miss Hamas’ Preparations to Attack? A U.S. Counterterrorism Expert Explains How Israeli Intelligence Works

    Hamas is on Israel’s doorstep. One would think Israel could better understand what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as opposed to 1,000 miles away in Iran. How did Israel not see something this advanced right next door? Some Israeli officials have said they believed Hamas was already deterred by recent Israeli counterterrorism operations, and that the group lacked the capability to launch an attack on the scope and scale of what occurred.

  • Apple and Google Are Introducing New Ways to Defeat Cell Site Simulators, But Is it Enough?

    Cell-site simulators (CSS)—also known as IMSI Catchers and Stingrays—are a tool that law enforcement and governments use to track the location of phones, intercept or disrupt communications, spy on foreign governments, or even install malware.

  • There’s a Cop in My Pocket: Policymakers Need to Stop Advocating Surveillance by Default

    All this year, U.S. leaders have attempted to pass a wave of misguided online security bills, designed to break that encryption and place Americans in a panopticon of surveillance by default. Encryption, cybersecurity, and technology policies, like the RESTRICT and EARN-IT Acts, with nonexistent tradeoffs address symptoms, not problems, and they do it badly.  

  • The Scourge of Commercial Spyware—and How to Stop It

    Years of public revelations have spotlighted a shadowy set of spyware companies selling and servicing deeply intrusive surveillance technologies that are used against journalists, activists, lawyers, politicians, diplomats, and others. Democratic nations (thus far) lag behind the United States in executing spyware-related policy commitments.

  • The Impending Privacy Threat of Self-Driving Cars

    With innovations often come unintended consequences—one of which is the massive collection of data required for an autonomous vehicle to function. The sheer amount of visual and other information collected by a fleet of cars traveling down public streets conjures the threat of the possibility for peoples’ movements to be tracked, aggregated, and retained by companies, law enforcement, or bad actors—including vendor employees.

  • Regulate National Security AI Like Covert Action

    Congress is trying to roll up its sleeves and get to work on artificial intelligence (AI) regulation. Ashley Deeks writes that only a few of these proposed provisions, however, implicate national security-related AI, and none create any kind of framework regulation for such tools. She proposes crafting a law similar to the War Powers Act to govern U.S. intelligence and military agencies use of AI tools.

  • How an “AI-tocracy” Emerges

    Many scholars, analysts, and other observers have suggested that resistance to innovation is an Achilles’ heel of authoritarian regimes. But in China, the use of AI-driven facial recognition helps the regime repress dissent while enhancing the technology, researchers report.

  • The Executive Order on Commercial Spyware: Implications and Prospects

    The growing national security threat from misuse of commercial spyware is increasingly being recognized. The US has been taking the lead in addressing the growing menace of unregulated spyware companies and the proliferation of intrusive tools. The Biden administration’s latest Executive Order will ensure that commercial spyware firms will be subjected to unprecedented scrutiny.

  • Tech Mandated by U.K. Online Safety Bill “Could Turn Phones into Surveillance Tools”

    Tech mandated by the U.K. government’s Online Safety Bill could be used to turn millions of phones into facial recognition tools. It would be possible, for example, for governments to use client-side scanning (CSS) to search people’s private messages, for example performing facial recognition, without their knowledge.

  • PEGA Committee Votes on Spyware Recommendations

    In July 2021, the Pegasus Project—a consortium of 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries—broke the story that several governments were using the Israel-made Pegasus spyware against journalists, activists, politicians, academics, and even heads of state. Responding to the public backlash, the European Parliament set up a committee of inquiry (PEGA committee) to investigate the allegations concerning misuse of spyware on the continent.

  • Appeals Court Should Reconsider Letting the FBI Block Twitter’s Surveillance Transparency Report

    Twitter tried to publish a report bringing much-needed transparency to the government’s use of FISA orders and national security letters, including specifying whether it had received any of these types of requests. However, without going to a court, the FBI told Twitter it could not publish the report as written. Twitter sued, and last month the federal Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit upheld the FBI’s gag order.

  • “Smart” Tech Coming to a City Near You

    The data-driven smart tech trend extends far beyond our kitchens and living rooms. Will real-time sensors and data offer new solutions to the challenges cities face, or just exacerbate existing inequalities?

  • Mapping CBP’s Expansion of Its Surveillance Tower Program at the U.S.-Mexico Border

    EFF is releasing a new map and dataset of more than 290 surveillance towers installed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) along the border with Mexico. The tower systems are able to automatically detect and track objects  up to 7.5 miles away and assist agents in classifying objects 3 miles away.

  • Lawmakers: “Clean Reauthorization” of Surveillance Authorities a “Nonstarter”

    Key U.S. lawmakers are warning the country’s top intelligence officials that they could soon find themselves without a much-talked-about surveillance authority unless their agencies are able to prove they can be trusted.

  • Section 702’s Unconstitutional Domestic Spying Program Must End

    On its face, Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance inside the United States so long as the surveillance is directed at foreigners currently located outside the United States. And yet, the NSA routinely (aka “incidentally”) acquires innocent Americans’ communications without a probable cause warrant. Then, rather than “minimize” the sharing and retention of Americans’ data, as Congress required, the NSA routinely shares such data with other government agencies, which retain it for at least five years.