• SURVEILLANCETexas Freezes Installation of Flock Cameras Along State Roads

    By Ayden Runnels

    Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state Department of Transportation to stop issuing permits for automated license plate readers.

  • SURVEILLANCEHow the American Revolt Against Flock Cameras Mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773

    By G. Patrick O'Brien

    Today, there are more than 130,000 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) on U.S. streets. And more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use cameras produced by a single manufacturer, Flock Safety. A grassroots revolt against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has gained momentum across the United States. On the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the increasingly bipartisan revolution against ALPRs suggests Americans have not entirely lost their rebellious spirit.

  • SURVEILLANCEFinancial Surveillance in the Shadow of 9/11

    By Nicholas Anthony

    One of the least known consequences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is the financial surveillance that was expanded in the wake of the attack. The damage to civil liberties caused by that surveillance is far-reaching. The 25th anniversary of the attacks is a good time to ask whether the decision Congress made in 2001 makes sense in 2026.

  • SURVEILLANCEHow 9/11 Changed the Way America Surveils Its Citizens

    By Amanda Watford

    Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance infrastructure built and expanded in its aftermath has become part of a far larger digital ecosystem — producing tools that can collect and analyze information on a scale unimaginable in 2001.

  • SURVEILLANCEThe Digital Panopticon: Why Automated Surveillance Threatens a Free Society

    By Mike Fox

    Flock Safety, a manufacturers of cameras used in automatic surveillance, is merely one piece of a vastly expanding surveillance state. The company’s potential downfall should not be blamed on legislation targeting ALPRs specifically but through the firm enforcement of the Fourth Amendment itself. In a free society, companies that thrive on infringing upon constitutional rights should not be economically viable.

  • 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.