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SURVEILLANCEFinancial Surveillance Is Expanding—but So Is the Resistance
The last few months were hectic, but not all bad. Amidst the government surveilling cash, prosecuting people in bad faith, and creating new surveillance mechanisms, there were significant wins: Courts pushed back on overreach and Congress began to offer reforms to correct past mistakes.
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DRONESUnmanned Systems Are Not Revolutionary (but Could Be)
Rather than revolutionizing warfare, unmanned systems have emerged as evolutions within the larger information revolution; advancements to be sure, but failing to render conventional militaries obsolete or dramatically reshaping force structures.
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SURVEILLANCEFrom Help to Harm: How the Government Is Quietly Repurposing Everyone’s Data for Surveillance
The data that people provide to U.S. government agencies for public services such as tax filing, health care enrollment, unemployment assistance and education support is increasingly being redirected toward surveillance and law enforcement.
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ARGUMENT: REINING IN DHS I&A How DHS Laid the Groundwork for More Intelligence Abuse
I&A, the lead intelligence unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) —long plagued by politicized targeting, permissive rules, and a toxic culture —has undergone a transformation over the last two years. Spencer Reynolds writes that this effort falls short. “Ultimately, Congress must rein in I&A,” he adds.
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SURVEILANCESpyware Is Spreading Far Beyond Its National-Security Role
Spyware is increasingly exploited by criminals or used to suppress civil liberties, and this proliferation is in part due to weak regulation.
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SURVEILANCEThe U.K. Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All
The United Kingdom is demanding that Apple create an encryption backdoor to give the government access to end-to-end encrypted data in iCloud. Encryption is one of the best ways we have to reclaim our privacy and security in a digital world filled with cyberattacks and security breaches, and there’s no way to weaken it in order to only provide access to the “good guys.”
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SPCAE SECURITYMonitoring Space Traffic
AeroAstro Ph.D. student Sydney Dolan uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop collision-avoidance algorithms for satellites.
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DRONESBackgrounder: Drone Operations in the U.S.
More than 1.7 million drones are registered for commercial and recreational use in the United States, and it is safe to assume that there are many additional unregistered drones out there.
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PRIVACYEFF Tells the Second Circuit a Second Time That Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant
The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducted 41,767 device searches.
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INTELLIGENCE FAILURESThe October 7 Attack: An Assessment of the Intelligence Failings
Hours after the Hamas attack of October 7 began, they were widely attributed to an apparent Israeli intelligence failure, with pundits pointing to several possible sources, including a misunderstanding of Hamas’ intentions, cognitive biases, and an overreliance on the country’s technological superiority. Building on previous literature on surprise attacks and intelligence failures to examine both Israel’s political level and intelligence level prior to October 7, 2023, the findings suggest that the attack was likely not the result of a single glaring failure but rather the accumulation of several problems at both levels.
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SURVEILLANCEWeak "Guardrails" on Police Face Recognition Use Make Things Worse
Police use of face recognition technology (FRT) poses a particularly massive risk to our civil liberties, particularly for Black men and women and other marginalized communities.
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HOME SURVEILLANCEStudy: AI Could Lead to Inconsistent Outcomes in Home Surveillance
Researchers find large language models make inconsistent decisions about whether to call the police when analyzing surveillance videos.
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SURVEILLANCE'Significant' Risks as Facial Recognition in Russia's Subways Goes Regional
In a move that human rights advocates warn carries potential risks for civil rights, Russia has begun expanding its facial-recognition payment system for subways to six cities outside of Moscow.
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CHINA WATCHChina May Be Putting the Great Firewall into Orbit
The first satellites for China’s ambitious G60 mega-constellation are in orbit in preparation for offering global satellite internet services—and we should worry about how this will help Beijing export its model of digital authoritarianism around the world.
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SURVEILLANCEHow Smart Toys May e Spying on Kids: What Parents Need to Know
Toniebox, Tiptoi, and Tamagotchi are smart toys, offering interactive play through software and internet access. However, many of these toys raise privacy concerns, and some even collect extensive behavioral data about children.
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The long view
ARGUMENT: REINING IN DHS I&A How DHS Laid the Groundwork for More Intelligence Abuse
I&A, the lead intelligence unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) —long plagued by politicized targeting, permissive rules, and a toxic culture —has undergone a transformation over the last two years. Spencer Reynolds writes that this effort falls short. “Ultimately, Congress must rein in I&A,” he adds.