• SURVEILLANCEWorld Cup Propels Surveillance to New Heights

    By Anne Toomey McKenna

    The 2026 FIFA World Cup is most surveilled World Cup ever. The U.S. government funneled more than US$1 billion to World Cup security to protect transit hubs, stadiums and surrounding areas; improve tactical operations such as bomb squads and SWAT teams; and add and upgrade equipment. The real test is what happens after the World Cup ends and visitors go home.

  • FISA SECTION 702FISA Section 702 Lapsed on Friday—What Now?

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    Congress was asked to extend, without a warrant requirement, a surveillance program whose compliance record cannot be independently verified, whose oversight bodies have been deliberately disabled, and whose custodians have shown a personal willingness to turn its tools on the press. The program did not go dark on Friday. The real question is whether the House and Senate leadership will finally tell Trump that embracing the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement is the only way to end this saga.

  • UNDERSEA SENSORSGoing Dark: Why Dismantling America’s Ocean Sensors Is a Security Risk

    By Erin Sikorsky

    Starting this month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began pulling more than 900 deep-sea instruments out of the water, dismantling most of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a network of moorings and seafloor sensors that streams continuous, real-time data on the physical, chemical, and biological state of the Atlantic and Pacific. The network was built to run for 25 years. It will not make it to ten. This is a national security story as much as a science story.

  • SURVEILLANCEFrom Exporting Spyware to Surveilling Activists – How Democracies Became the New Digital Authoritarians

    By Ihsan Yilmaz and Nicholas Morieson

    “Digital authoritarianism” refers to governments using technology for surveillance and censorship to repress dissent. China remains the master practitioner, but democracies, too — in particular, India and Israel — are beginning to repress their citizens with the same tools and export them abroad.

  • FISAThe Fourth Amendment Forecloses a Foreign Intelligence Exception: A Brief Case Against the FISA Section 702 Program

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    The House and Senate versions of the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) lack the only thing that matters: a warrant requirement to search the stored data of Americans collected under the program. In that sense, the 702 program has always been at odds with the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, thanks entirely to the secret court that oversees the semisecret surveillance activity.

  • PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCEThe Open Signal: How Mobile Phone Location Data Can Expose and Endanger American Troops

    By Ben Frankel

    The architecture of the commercial mobile ecosystem favors exposure over concealment. As long as warfighters carry devices designed for convenience inside an economy designed for surveillance, the United States will remain vulnerable to enemies who can turn a phone’s signal into intelligence and intelligence into a strike.

  • SURVEILLANCEDigitally Watched without Consent: Spyware as a Tool of Coercive Control

    By Fitriani

    Spyware, once primarily used by intelligence agencies and nation-states, has become a tool of intimate partner abuse, quietly deployed against people – mostly women – who have no idea they are being watched.

  • SPYWAREThe Indo-Pacific Could Shape Control of the Growing Spyware Market

    By Allison Pytlak and Gatra Priyandita

    The market for commercial cyber intrusion capabilities (CCICs) is moving faster than the frameworks designed to govern it. What began as a niche ecosystem of surveillance vendors has evolved into a sprawling, fragmented industry.

  • SURVEILLANCEU.S. Supreme Court Weighs How Far Police Investigations Can Go in Using Cellphone Location Data

    By Jonathan Shorman

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared likely to allow law enforcement to continue seeking warrants for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes, even as the justices wrestled with how far the government must go to protect Americans’ privacy. 31 states and DC argue that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods.

  • SURVEILLANCEU.S. Government Ramps Up Mass Surveillance with Help of AI Tech, Data Brokers – and Your Apps and Devices

    By Anne Toomey McKenna

    To understand the issues, it is critical to know how these technologies function, who collects what data about you, how that data can be used against you, and why the laws you might think are protecting your data do not apply or are ignored.

  • SURVEILLANCEFISA Reauthorization Fearmongering and Disinformation Kicks Into Overdrive

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    With just 10 days to go before Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expires, surveillance hawks have intensified their propaganda and fearmongering campaign. But FISA’s many problems are reasons for Congress to hit the “pause” button on FISA Section 702 reauthorization, unless and until these problems are eliminated.

  • CHINA WATCHAI Governance Is not Just Top-Down in China, Research Finds

    By Patrick Daly

    Political scientist Xuechen Chen said traditional Chinese values and market driven factors have also driven moves to regulate generative AI platforms.

  • SURVEILLANCEWorried About Surveillance, States Enact Privacy Laws and Restrict License Plate Readers

    By Shalina Chatlani

    As part of its deportation efforts, the Trump administration has made a push for personal data from voter rolls, driver’s license records and programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.

  • DIGITAL IDThe UK Has It Wrong on Digital ID. Here’s Why.

    By Paige Collings

    In late September, the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his government’s plans to introduce a new digital ID scheme in the country to take effect before the end of the Parliament (no later than August 2029). This is the latest example of a government creating a new digital system that is fundamentally incompatible with a privacy-protecting and human rights-defending democracy.

  • SURVEILLANCEThe Spy Who Came in from the Wi-Fi: Beware of Radio Network Surveillance

    New technology is able to infer the identity of persons with no WiFi device on them through signals in radio networks. Researchers warn of risks to privacy and call for protective measures.