​PPSA has long warned that allowing federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies to purchase Americans’ personal digital data from data brokers would build a surveillance state. Now the federal government has put in place the most effective tools to activate that surveillance state in America.
 
This is the natural consequence of two technologies purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Whether you believe ICE’s approach to mass deportations is necessary, or an exercise in cruelty, there is no question that what ICE is doing with technology is guaranteed to transform the whole balance between the federal government and its citizenry. It is deploying two forms of surveillance without a warrant that can track people to meetings with friends, their place of work, and homes, their houses of worship, while also drawing on data gleaned from social media to compile dossiers on Americans’ beliefs and personal associations. In using these technologies, ICE often doesn’t know if the target is an American citizen or someone who is not lawfully in this country.
 
Joseph Cox of 404 Media, in his most recent blockbuster revelation, details the consequences of two technologies purchased from a company called Penlink.
 
One such technology is Webloc, which allows ICE to draw a rectangle, circle, or polygon around a portion of a city and pick out smartphones of interest. Cox writes that “they can get more details about that particular phone, and, by extension, its owner by seeing where else it has traveled both locally and across the country. Users can click a route feature which shows the path the device took.”
 
Webloc’s surveillance relies on exploiting code in ordinary apps on our phones, like games and weather apps, that track our location. The rest comes from data brokers that sell our private information through real-time bidding. In the digital age, we are all standing on the digital auction block.
 
Another Penlink technology, called Tangles, is a social media monitoring product that can take an image of a person’s face on the street, identify that person, locate that person’s social media feeds, and produce a “sentiment analysis” from that target’s posts. At a glance, the government will have a file on your beliefs.
 
These new government capabilities should worry conservatives, libertarians, and MAGA supporters, as well as liberals and progressives. The effectiveness of such technologies makes it inevitable that it will spread beyond ICE to the FBI, IRS, and other agencies, as the government works to break down the traditional data silos between agencies. They are sure to be used against Americans by administrations of both parties.
 
Webloc and Tangles cost only a few million dollars – a rounding error for the federal government. As these capabilities expand and become daily practice, the constitutional balance of government by the consent of the governed – based on the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for a probable cause warrant – will inevitably give way to authoritarian control.
 
Only Congress can stop this. As the surveillance debate heats up ahead of the reauthorization of FISA Section 702 in April, Congress must urgently use that debate to pass a bill or an amendment that will restrict the currently unrestricted purchasing of Americans’ data by the government.
 
As an old Kenny Loggins rock song put it, “make no mistake where you are, your back’s to the corner … stand up and fight.” Let Congress know it is not acceptable for federal agencies to buy our private and sensitive data without a warrant.

The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis is proving to be a national ideological Rorschach Test. Some who watch the video of the event see an officer reacting in fear for his life; others, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, see a “murder.”

As ambiguous as the video may be, imagine if there were no video at all. Would we be better off? At least there is a record that can be examined and debated. Without this video, we would be left with hearsay and fallible memories – weak tools for judging the use of deadly force.

Yet according to the Trump administration, the person who recorded this encounter had no right to do so – and may have even committed a crime.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (hat tip to G.J. Ciaramella, Reason) equated filming officers with “violence” and “doxing,” adding “it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles.” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said that “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online” is a crime, and that “we will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

No one disputes that harassing and threatening officers is a crime. But recording them is not. The right to document public officials performing public duties is well established in federal courts. Seven federal circuits have recognized Americans’ “right to record” – the right to hold up a smartphone and make a video of law enforcement in action.

The Fourth Circuit made that explicit in a case involving a passenger who livestreamed a traffic stop. The court held that “livestreaming a police traffic stop is speech protected by the First Amendment,” explaining that “recording police encounters creates information that contributes to discussion about governmental affairs.”

We have to agree with Reason’s Ciaramella:

“Recording government agents is one of the few tools citizens have to hold state power accountable. Any attempt to define observation as ‘violence’ is not only unconstitutional – it’s authoritarian gaslighting. When a government fears cameras more than crimes, it isn’t protecting the rule of law. It’s protecting itself.”

Too many in the Trump administration have slipped into a lazy – and dangerous – syllogism. “Videotaping” law enforcement = “doxing” = “violence” = “terrorism.” We do not discount by any means the need to protect officers. But the logic now coming from Washington is as simple as it is dangerous.
​
You have the right to record the police. There should be no erase button on this principle.

​Here’s some good news – when it comes to privacy, California is catching up to privacy leaders like Utah and Montana. Three new data-privacy bills in Sacramento would give California consumers powerful new tools to manage their personal information.

The three legislative initiatives would:

• Put guardrails on the use and sale of personal information (PI)

 

• Ban the sale of geolocation data

 

• Expand the definition of PI as a category (a definition that hasn’t been revisited since California passed its Information Practices Act in 1977).

These bills would build on a solid base of existing reforms. California has launched a data-broker enforcement strike force. In the 2023 Delete Act, it created a centralized website for consumers to opt out of sales of their data and delete the data already collected by brokers. Another new law also requires web browsers to let consumers set one universal privacy control. California, home to the nation’s tech industry, is suddenly a national leader on privacy.

As our readers know, the gathering, buying, and selling of personal data is big business. Worse, it takes shockingly few data points to identify us as individuals. In today's information economy, that knowledge is gold – to government agencies, police, marketers, and hackers alike.

The Delete Act now shines a spotlight on data brokers and their shadowy privacy practices. And the new enforcement strike force adds muscle, promising real accountability for brokers – and the businesses that rely on them – to adhere to their privacy policies.

CalPrivacy executive director Tom Kemp said:

“Data brokers pose unique risks to Californians through the industrial-scale collection and sale of our personal information. The widespread availability of digital dossiers makes it easier for our personal information to be weaponized against us, and even well-meaning data brokers can be victims of data breaches that leave all of us vulnerable.”

Under the law, brokers must register with the state and pay an annual fee. That annual registration fee is funding the new Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform (DROP). Starting in August, California residents who use this free service can have their data profiles wiped – and kept that way, with mandatory deletions every 45 days.

Next up – the California Opt Me Out Act, which goes into effect in 2027. It will require major browsers to offer users one simple switch – one click to say “no” to data sharing across thousands of websites. Technically, it’s known as an OOPS, an Opt-Out Preference Signal.

It certainly doesn’t sound like a mistake. Here’s hoping – California dreamin’ – that these initiatives take root. Perhaps they will be so well received that our representatives in Washington will be inspired to follow suit by curbing the limitless appetite of federal agencies for Americans’ personal data.
​
The last hope may still be a dream. But if the nation’s most populous state can take such steps, it’s a dream worth having.

​Privacy is a bedrock of American democracy. The fight to preserve it never ends, and the struggle ever been more fierce.

PPSA stood in the gap throughout 2025 alongside our coalition allies. On this news blog we published more than 200 articles calling attention to surveillance threats to Americans’ privacy. But we did more than raise awareness and offer our perspective. We took action. Here’s a list of the concrete ways we engaged in the privacy fight throughout 2025:

On the public record:

• PPSA’s senior policy advisor and former House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte supported congressional efforts to repeal the Corporate Transparency Act, whose database provisions and disclosure requirements represent an unprecedented threat to Americans’ financial privacy. Two months later, Treasury announced it would no longer enforce the CTA’s penalties. Secretary Scott Bessent called it a “victory for common sense.”
  
• Bob Goodlatte also dispatched a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi warning of the UK’s abuse of technical capabilities notices (TCNs) under the CLOUD Act agreement. “I am deeply troubled by how the United Kingdom has taken advantage of our goodwill,” he wrote, urging the Department of Justice to suspend the Agreement unless and until the UK withdraws its use of TCNs. These secret orders, issued under the UK Investigatory Powers Act, can compel U.S. technology companies to weaken, delay, or suspend the deployment of essential security features.
  
• Gene Schaerr, PPSA general counsel, praised a district court ruling in United States v. Hasbajrami. This ruling found that warrantless searches of U.S. citizens’ communications are an abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and violate the Fourth Amendment. “We can have aggressive protection of the American people while standing up for the Constitution,” Schaerr said. “This court recognized that those two principles can go hand in hand.”
  
• PPSA President Erik Jaffe called on the U.S. government to push back against the British government’s “internet imperialism” when it demanded that Apple provide Whitehall with access to all encrypted communications. He said: “Efforts to give the government back-door access to encryption is no different than the government pressuring every locksmith and lock maker to give it an extra key to every home and apartment.”

In the legal and legislative arenas:

• In two separate appearances, Schaerr testified before Congress that Section 702 is symptomatic of the larger anti-privacy, pro-surveillance arc the U.S. government has increasingly embraced. “Elements of an emerging American surveillance state are being knitted together before our eyes,” he warned. In April 2026, Congress will have the opportunity to reform FISA Section 702. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Schaerr anticipated that moment by outlining four critical reforms advanced by PPSA and our allies.

In court:

• In Case v. Montana, PPSA filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to preserve the privacy standard previously established in Caniglia v. Strom. The Caniglia ruling greatly restricted the use of warrantless home entry under the “community caretaking” exception. Our message? Ignoring that standard is a slippery slope. “Lowering the burden for warrantless home invasion would lower the burdens for warrantless invasion of all other repositories of private information.” PPSA’s amicus brief was the only one filed in the case, and the Supreme Court granted the petitioner’s request a few months later.
  
• Lowering privacy standards is inextricably linked to diminishing expectations of a right to privacy. Preventing this destructive codependence was at the heart of the brief we filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of James Harper. In Harper's case, the First Circuit’s interpretation of the third-party doctrine would have limited the notion of privacy to something belonging to the bygone era of paper and ink. Our data deserves the same privacy the Founders granted its physical analogs in the 19th century, especially as “third-party storage becomes ubiquitous” in the digital age.
  
• Such sweeping interpretations of the third-party doctrine bedeviled privacy rights at every turn in 2025. In a Wisconsin case, we reminded the state’s high court that searches of personal data were subject to the Fourth Amendment regardless of how that data is stored: “The ransacking of our cloud-based data is much like the ‘general warrants’ of the colonial era, when agents of the Crown could rifle through anyone’s documents at will.”

PPSA also filed briefs in 2025 before the Supreme Court on the nature of geofence warrants, before a federal appellate court on the expansive practice of border searches of phones, and before a state court on sweeping searches of data in a phone unrelated to a probable cause warrant.

Near the end of the year, we applauded the Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan – and unanimous – decision to put the Non-Disclosure Order (NDO) Fairness Act before the full House for a vote. Earlier in the year, PPSA congratulated House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) for his tireless work to pass the Anti-CBDC bill, forbidding the Federal Reserve from establishing a government-issued digital currency. As we noted at the time, a central bank digital currency “would enable mass surveillance of American consumers, and the debanking of any targeted group.”

Finally, we were encouraged when the Department of Justice showed a more responsive spirit in reply to one of our FOIA requests. In the past, when we asked about internal policies regarding the use of cell-site simulators (“stingrays”), we were met with non-reply responses, often redacted to the point of absurdity. This time, however, the department suggested it intends to comply with its 2015 memo requiring probable cause warrants before stingrays could be used.
​
We are glad to see a change of heart, but we won’t stop issuing FOIAs. Trust, but verify.

​Michael Moore is a retired public-school teacher living in San Francisco. Nearly every day, as he drives to the store, to his sons’ schools, or to meet friends and family, his movements are watched and recorded at every turn. But he is not being tailed by a private detective or by the police.

Moore, like every other driver in San Francisco, is being tracked because he must navigate through the city’s network of almost 500 automated license plate readers (ALPRs).

These devices, operated by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), constitute a major link in the national surveillance network that the vendor Flock Safety is providing to state and local law enforcement. Moore has had enough. At the end of December, he filed a class action lawsuit in a federal courtroom on his behalf and on behalf of his fellow San Franciscans against the city and its police department over this continuous violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.

In his suit, Moore states that Flock ALPRs “make it functionally impossible to drive anywhere in the City without having one’s movement tracked, photographed, and stored in an AI-assisted database that enables the warrantless surveillance of one’s movements.”

Here are some of the topline revelations from Moore’s lawsuit:

Suspiciousness surveillance: Of the over 1 billion license plate scans collected by 82 agencies nationwide in 2019, “99.9 percent of this surveillance data was not actively related to any criminal investigation when it was collected.”

Creates “vehicle fingerprints”: “When Flock Cameras capture an image of a car, Flock’s software uses machine learning to create what Flock calls a ‘Vehicle Fingerprint.’ The ‘fingerprint’ includes the color and make and model of the car and any distinctive features, like an anti-Trump bumper sticker or roof rack. Flock’s software converts each of those details into text and stores them into an organized database.”

Tracks social networks: “Flock provides advanced search and artificial intelligence functions that SFPD officers can use to output a list of locations a car has been captured, create lists of cars that have visited specific locations, and even track cars that are seen together.”

Data stored indefinitely: “The data that Flock Cameras collect belong to the SFPD but Flock retains data on a rolling 30-day basis. Nothing, however, prevents the SFPD or its officers from downloading and saving the data for longer than SFPD’s 365-day retention period.”

Flock doesn’t just see and record – it thinks and analyzes:

“ALPR technology is a powerful surveillance tool that is used to invade the privacy of individuals and violate the rights of entire communities. ALPR systems collect and store location about drivers whose vehicles pass through ALPR cameras’ fields of view, which, along with the date and time of capture, can be organized by a database that develops a driver profile revealing sensitive details about where individuals work, live, associate, worship, protest and travel.”

Moore’s lawsuit poses a profound constitutional question: Can a city turn every resident into a perpetual suspect simply for driving on public roads?
​
The Fourth Amendment was written to forbid dragnet surveillance untethered to suspicion, warrants, or individualized cause. Yet San Francisco has quietly constructed a system that records nearly every movement of its citizens, not because they are suspected of wrongdoing, but because technology makes it easy. If this practice is allowed to stand, the right to move freely without government monitoring may become a relic – honored in theory, but surrendered in practice to cameras, algorithms, and convenience.

​If you got a Roomba for Christmas, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that your product will likely continue to be supported despite the company’s recent bankruptcy filing. The bad news: this Massachusetts-based brand may soon be just another piece of Chinese-owned spy tech.

Amazon tried to buy iRobot, the maker of Roomba, in 2021, but that deal was ultimately nixed by the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust grounds. Now, if a judge approves the pending sale of iRobot to Shenzhen Picea Robotics, Roomba will join numerous brands under the ever-expanding surveillance umbrella that many Chinese products represent.

Not that China is the sole problem when it comes to protecting the privacy of American consumer data. The United States has no robust privacy laws apart from a few state initiatives, and the data practices of companies like Amazon are a mixed bag. But the Chinese Communist Party doesn't even pretend to care about privacy, instead marketing highly functional (and affordable) electronics capable of gathering all manner of personal information. This ill-fated combination has created a veritable Wild West when it comes to the consumer electronics market.

iRobot says Roomba will remain an American brand, a claim that means little when no one is minding the privacy store in the first place. So you can either trust that your data will be treated with care (good luck) or you can try to protect yourself just a bit. According to experts, disconnecting from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will likely disable any advanced features but will not prevent Roomba models from actually cleaning.

“Advanced features” in this context mostly mean updates to the app, which Roombas can operate without. And it certainly refers to a data pipeline that goes straight to who-knows-where, replete with maps of your home’s layout and eye-level images of your pets and you playing on the floor. Remember, any connected devices, including vacuum cleaners, can be (and have been) hacked.
​
Apps are black holes for data and privacy anyway. So just press “Clean” and forget it.

​In the 1980s, singer Rockwell went to the top of the charts with “Somebody’s Watching Me,” a synth-pop, R&B celebration of unrestrained paranoia. In one verse, he asks: “Can the people on TV see me, or am I just paranoid?”

On that point, you can relax. The (truly) odious Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses and the passive-aggressive aliens on Pluribus cannot see you. But if you have a smart TV equipped with a camera for recognizing gesture control, or for making video calls, your TV itself might be watching you – although manufacturers are dropping this feature after being hit with a tsunami of consumer outrage. After all, who is at their best sitting on the couch at 9 o’clock at night?

The real danger is Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology, which can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitoring your viewing in real time, and transmitting that information back to the company without your knowledge or consent. Your personal information then becomes a commodity on the consumer data market.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that this technology can put private and sensitive information – from passwords to bank information – at risk. Consumer activist and privacy expert Louis Rossmann explains that if your TV is connecting to home security cameras, if you use your TV as a computer screen for searching the web, or if you send videos and photos through your TV, ACR captures all that information.  

“The television is, unfortunately, a form of spyware,” says Rossmann.

Paxton is now suing Sony, Samsung, and LG, as well as Chinese-based Hisense and TCL Technology Corporation for secretly recording and harvesting consumer data.

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Attorney General Paxton said. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

Watch Rossmann for detailed descriptions of these companies’ labyrinthine concept of informed consent and the technical ways you can try to sidestep surveillance. As Paxton’s lawsuit matures, we will see if courts will find actual law-breaking here, or just another abuse of consumer trust.
​
Stay tuned.

​There are few spaces meant to be more private than the bedroom. But that, writes Wired’s Chloe Valentine, may be about to change. In a trend that gives a twisted new meaning to the concept of the “Internet of Things,” sex toys are joining the ranks of app-connected devices. As they do, the adult toy industry has found a way to breach one of privacy’s few remaining sanctums.

Who knew there was an app for that?

But here’s the thing about apps: users see them as a way to interact with devices. Companies, however, view them as something much more valuable – collectors of data that can be monetized. And what better place to collect personal information than the boudoir?

As if data privacy wasn’t already teetering on the brink, along comes a new – and deeply invasive – set of variables to track and mine for insights. Think of it this way: If it’s a setting on the device, it’s measurable. And if it’s measurable, it has value to the company that markets it.

Behavioral data is especially valuable but was long notoriously difficult to obtain until about a decade ago, when the consumer IoT market began to proliferate. Thanks to the rise of connected devices, companies can now acquire behavioral data about their consumers in the most accurate and intimate way possible – by observing them in the act.

For those who are comfortable with sex toy companies gathering their behavioral data, that’s their prerogative. But sexual behavior data potentially includes many things: location information, usage frequency, which toy a consumer is using, even which functions and intensity settings they choose. When combined with purchase records and demographic data, this amounts to an expansive – and intensely personal – profile.

Moreover, there is no way to truly guarantee anonymity, despite what organizations may claim. Meanwhile, the potential actions of hackers or other bad actors remain an ever-present threat. And in the end consumer data is just as likely as not to end up in the hands of brokers who won’t hesitate to sell it to any interested parties (whether obtained legally or not, the rotten practice of data brokering remains perfectly legal).

If you add cameras and Wi-Fi to the mix, then you’ve got another layer of “What could possibly go wrong?” Here one need only recall the sordid tale of the Savkom Siime Eye, an early entrant in the field of IoT adult toys.

If you get one of the new generation of adult toys, start by checking permission settings in the product’s app – and on your smart phone more generally. Most smartphones eagerly assist apps in sharing information, so you might be shocked to learn just how much your data gets around.

As a reminder, check the app settings for your other connected devices, including:

Appliances, smart glasses, security cameras, vehicles, doorbells, wearables, children’s toys, small electrics, TVs, thermostats, plugs and switches, lightbulbs, speakers, navigation systems, locks, motion detectors, smoke alarms, air purifiers, humidifiers, blinds, garage door openers, irrigation systems, solar panels, rechargeable batteries, carbon monoxide detectors, projectors, soundbars, gaming consoles, rings, hearing aids, scales, bikes, scooters, conference systems, printers, lighting panels, pet feeders, litter boxes, aquariums, and birdhouses.

Plus your toothbrush. And don’t forget your mattress.
​
Feeling safe now?

​Fresh on the heels of the Bill of Rights’ 234th birthday comes a salient reminder of just how difficult it is for those in power to resist abusing their authority, and why the Fourth Amendment in particular is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1791.

Wilmer Chavarria is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for an incident in Houston in July. According to his lawsuit, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents detained him, demanded his passwords, then searched the contents of his devices as he tried to enter the country at George Bush Intercontinental.

Actually, make that returning home rather than trying to enter – Wilmer Chavarria is as American as tarta de manzana. He’s a school superintendent in Vermont, where apples are the state fruit and apple pie is literally the state pie (either à la mode or with cheddar). Born in Nicaragua, Chavarria became a citizen of the United States in 2018 after coming here a full decade earlier to do that most American of things – get an education. That day in July, this American citizen was returning home after visiting his mother and family in Nicaragua.

CBP separated him from his husband, then interrogated Chavarria for several hours before releasing him without explanation. Along the way, he was informed that he had no Fourth Amendment right to resist. The primary problem with that argument is, of course, that the Fourth Amendment applies to all American citizens. It clearly states that no one living under the authority of the Constitution must endure unreasonable search and seizure, and that a warrant, based on probable cause, must be obtained by authorities whenever one’s personal effects are to be searched.

To be clear, these protections do not apply to noncitizens seeking to enter the country. Chavarria was utterly and completely covered the moment he finished swearing “so help me God,” on the day of his naturalization. 

Another potential problem with the DHS/CBP argument is a landmark 2014 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that digital devices like cellphones are covered by the amendment’s original language of “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” But the ruling left the notorious “border exception” intact, which may explain CBP’s inclination to take a constitutional mile with the mere inch the parchment actually gives them. With any luck, Chavarria’s case may breathe renewed life into the space that United States v. Smith clawed back from the border exception in 2023.

Despite such rulings, border agents seem not only unfazed but also emboldened. According to research by the Pacific Legal Foundation, warrantless searches of electronic devices have quadrupled in the decade since the high court’s original 2014 ruling.

When asked about cases like Chavarria’s, CBP demurs. These tactics are “rare” and “highly regulated” according to the agency’s assistant commissioner Hilton Beckham. She also insisted to the Houston Chronicle that such searches are only used to combat serious crimes. “Lawful travelers,” she says, need not fear.

By such logic, Chavarria must have somehow represented a danger to national security. Perhaps New England schoolchildren, gay marriage, and naturalized Nicaraguans are a greater existential threat to the future of the republic than anyone previously realized.

Or it could be good old fashioned political targeting. In April, mere months before his trip, Chavarria refused to sign his state’s request to certify to the U.S. Department of Education that Vermont was not using “illegal DEI practices.” And he did so on the record, noting that his district is the most diverse in the state. The federal request was one that some 19 states, eventually including Vermont, simply refused to comply with. Agree or disagree with that position, it should be a matter of serious concern for people of all political stripes if the government applied a political standard to its warrantless intrusion into an American’s digital devices.

It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that before he even boarded his domestic flight back to Vermont that day, Chavarria received an email. In it, CBP announced that his longtime TSA Global Entry status had been revoked because he suddenly “did not meet program eligibility requirements.”
​
So it’s come to this: If you’re traveling abroad, consider using burner phones and leaving your personal and work devices at home.

​If you’ve read Rick Atkinson’s prize-winning books on the American Revolution or watched Ken Burns’ documentaries on that founding event, you know how deeply Americans have always valued privacy. The Revolution itself was sparked, in part, by outrage over the British Crown’s use of “general warrants” – sweeping authorities that allowed the King’s agents to ransack homes, warehouses, offices, and ships at dock in search of anything they deemed suspicious.

Now, nearly 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, London is at it again.

This time, the British government is executing a plan to override the security and encryption protections built into U.S. technology products – exposing the private data of Americans, and potentially users around the world, beginning with Apple devices.

The CLOUD Act — and a Deal Gone Wrong

PPSA Senior Policy Advisor Bob Goodlatte knows this territory well. A former congressman from Virginia and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Goodlatte helped lead passage in 2018 of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, better known as the CLOUD Act.

The CLOUD Act allows the United States and trusted foreign partners to enter into data-sharing agreements, enabling law enforcement to seek data through warrants or subpoenas regardless of where that data is stored. But Congress paired this authority with firm guardrails to protect privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

One of those agreements – the U.S.–UK Data Access Agreement (DAA) – has now veered sharply off course.

“I am deeply troubled by how the United Kingdom has taken advantage of our goodwill,” Goodlatte wrote in a letter sent late last week to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Britain’s Abuse of Surveillance Powers

At issue is the UK’s use of so-called Technical Capabilities Notices, or TCNs, issued under the UK Investigatory Powers Act. These secret orders can compel U.S. technology companies to weaken, delay, or suspend the deployment of essential security features, including end-to-end encryption.

“The threat to Americans’ privacy from these measures is real,” Goodlatte warned, whether the UK’s actions affect U.S. companies’ global products or are limited to services offered in Britain. Even in the latter case, he explained, the consequences are profound: increased risk of global surveillance, compromised digital infrastructure, and a direct assault on the protections Congress demanded when it approved the agreement.

Approval Rights and Gag Orders on U.S. Companies

Goodlatte also pointed to a particularly alarming requirement: U.S. companies must notify the British government before rolling out security upgrades – precisely the kind of foreign leverage Congress explicitly sought to prevent.

The CLOUD Act’s promise of streamlined cross-border cooperation, he wrote, “was never intended by Congress to be leveraged by a foreign partner to compel any form of ‘backdoor’ access or other types of decryption assistance.”

Even worse, UK policy reportedly imposes gag orders that prevent U.S. companies, starting with Apple, from disclosing this interference even to the U.S. government itself.

The Only Remedy: Suspend the Agreement

The CLOUD Act anticipated this scenario. Under the DAA, the United States may suspend or terminate the agreement when a partner government’s laws or practices materially undermine its privacy and civil liberties commitments.

“Accordingly,” Goodlatte wrote, “I urge the Department of Justice to invoke Article 12.3 and suspend the Agreement unless and until the UK withdraws its use of TCNs.”

During passage of the CLOUD Act, Goodlatte insisted on strong congressional oversight of the law’s implementation. Now, he is calling on the Justice Department to enforce the deal’s terms – and protect Americans from a digital revival of the general warrants our founders fought to abolish.
​
Expect sitting Members of Congress to take up that call as well.

​Almost every day, we learn of new capabilities in China’s ever-expanding surveillance and intimidation operations. Xi Jinping’s regime is perfecting its ability to track enemies, even as far from Beijing as West Texas.

Consider the story of Li Chuanliang, a retired Communist Party official who fled China and was granted asylum in the United States. Now in Midland, Texas, Li told the Associated Press:

“They track you 24 hours a day. All your electronics, your phone – they’ll use every method to find you, your relatives, your friends, where you live: No matter where you are, you’re under their control.”

What’s even more disturbing may be the source of China’s capabilities. Technology first deployed to track and persecute China’s Muslim Uyghur minority now helps power the country’s worldwide surveillance network,  supported by technology developed in the United States.

When the AP asked U.S. companies about their role in such potentially deadly technology transfer, most deflected: “IBM said in a statement that it sold its division making the i2 program in 2022, and has ‘robust processes’ to ensure its technology is used responsibly. Oracle declined comment, and Microsoft did not respond.”

But for China, it’s all been a golden opportunity – literally. The regime named the U.S.-derived lynchpins of its surveillance network “Golden Tax,” “Golden Finance,” and “Golden Audit.” (See also China’s notorious Golden Shield program, which American cyber-giant Cisco helped to build.)

The Chinese Communist Party hunts for its perceived enemies in-person as well as online. It involves attempts to recruit American citizens to the cause, according to court filings against two Chinese organizations. The schemes included the use of fake social media accounts to intimidate Chinese dissidents residing abroad.

And, it seems, they occasionally have help from U.S. citizens such as an ex-New York cop convicted of hunting dissidents for the PRC. It’s a sordid tale and, sadly, far from an isolated incident. Nor is the tale of such transnational aggression limited to state actors like China alone.

In addition to matters of statecraft, the human toll exacted by such global Big Brother programs is immeasurable, as seen in the mental health effects of state surveillance on Chinese students who are merely studying in the United States. Some have cut all ties to family and friends back home to protect their loved ones from the suspicion that comes from simply being in America.

We should remember these souls during this season of light. If you know a Chinese student or resident who doesn’t seem to have many friends here, it might not be by choice. Consider reaching out to them in person and offering your support. Just be careful about using your cellphone (or theirs) to make plans. Consider getting your church involved too, like congregants in Midland did for Li and others.
​
Speaking of which, check out the AP’s poignant photo essay chronicling Li’s attempts to build a new life in Midland, together with other Chinese expatriates.

​The Bill of Rights was ratified on this day in 1791 — guaranteeing that in addition to free speech, freedom of religious exercise, the right to due process, and other natural rights — that the government must obtain a probable cause warrant from a judge before it can search our persons, houses, papers, and effects. It established what the Founders hoped would be a bright line against unreasonable searches and seizures.
 
Unfortunately, with the rise of surveillance technology, the Fourth Amendment is often observed today in the breach. But it is still a shield against police entry into Americans' home and unreasonable physical searches. Let this birthday remind us of the need to jealously guard our freedoms — and extend them to the digital world, as well as the physical. 

VICE recently interviewed privacy expert Jason Bassler about the many ways that surveillance has crept into our daily lives and become more or less normalized. Jason is the co-founder of the Free Thought Project, whose site you might not want to visit if you’re already paranoid about being watched.

Among the observations that Jason offered VICE were the following. Think of them as a “State of Our Privacy” report:

Smartphones are the well-connected spies in our hand:

“Today’s mobile tech goes far beyond anything we saw even five years ago. Our phones constantly ping GPS satellites, Wi-Fi networks, and cell towers to triangulate our location, whether or not you’re using a map app. Apps quietly harvest this data and sell it to data brokers, who in turn sell it to agencies like ICE, the FBI, and even the U.S. military.”

If it’s a border, it’s biometric:

“TSA is expanding biometric surveillance across nearly all U.S. airports as part of a $5.5 billion modernization push. Airports nationwide will be utilizing facial recognition software, and over 250 airports will be accepting digital ID verification. It’s a similar situation with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Biometric data collected at borders is often retained indefinitely, and it’s increasingly shared with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, raising concerns about lack of oversight. Border control isn’t just about fences anymore. It’s about fingerprints, facial scans, and AI predictions.”

License plate readers are nearly ubiquitous:

“They’re designed to capture, analyze, and store vehicle data in real time. Think of them as a cop on the corner of your street, taking notes about every car that passes – its color, its make, its year, where it’s going, how often it goes there, how long it stays, and much more. Now, imagine an army of cops on every corner of your city doing that. This is what Flock [Safety brand] cameras are, except they are mounted on poles and traffic lights.”

Bassler also recommends the following ways to fight back against what he calls the growing “ecosystem” of surveillance and its normalizing influence:

• “Obscure your biometrics, especially if you’re at a protest or political event.

​

• Opt for strong passwords and turn off biometric unlocking features on your phone and devices.

 

• Disable GPS or Bluetooth when not in use, and avoid apps that demand location access.

 

• Use privacy-first tools and tech. Encrypted messaging apps like Signal help; VPNs and privacy browsers like Brave all help move in a better direction.

 

• Minimize your data trail – don’t overshare on social media, avoid posting real-time location or personal identifiers. Also, always opt out when possible. Decline facial scans at airports, stores, and events.”

Finally, Bassler reminds us to push back politically and let our voices be heard. One way to do that is to remind Congress to finish passing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act and send it to the president’s desk.
​
For Vice’s interview with Bassler go here.

​Now more than ever, be careful about choosing collaboration partners. That’s the lesson Strategy Risks and the Human Rights Foundation are drawing in a new report. Their findings are a jaw-dropping wake-up call about China manipulating Western institutions into giving up cutting-edge AI knowledge to serve its dictatorship.

Here’s the play-by-play:
​

1. Beginning in 2000, the U.S. and UK governments, along with other Western sources, funded numerous research projects at various academic institutions, including at MIT, Stanford, and Oxford.  
   
   
2. Using that money, the researchers partnered with two state-backed Chinese AI labs (this is where you should say, “Uh-oh!”) and co-authored roughly 3,000 papers.
   
   
3. This was applied research, a branch of academia that over the past 20 years has come to dominate high-dollar research grants, especially in the areas of security and technology. These papers were tasked with finding answers to real-world questions.
   
   
4. And while such pragmatic endeavors are not problematic in principle, these particular real-world questions weren’t about polar ice cap tenacity or the migration patterns of Central American bees. Instead, they’re straight out of Voldemort’s dark-arts agenda: How to track multiple “objects” (e.g., people) simultaneously. How to recognize the gait patterns of individuals (it turns out such patterns can be as unique as fingerprints), and how to see in the dark (because who doesn’t want to be able to do that?).
   
   
5. Why on earth would the Chinese be interested in obtaining the answers to such curious questions? The Chinese Communist Party’s technocratic authoritarian superstate requires certain capabilities: Mass surveillance, gathering intel on Western corporations, and exploring the intersections of AI, mathematics, and physics.

It gets worse. U.S. Department of Defense agencies were also involved in the funding process, and their specialized involvement helped drive research into national security questions: Optical-phase-shifting tech and biometric monitoring, to cite two examples. The Chinese military is keen on tracking people using drones and facial recognition algorithms. Or more to the point: it is keen on surveilling, detaining, and persecuting more than one million Uyghur Muslims. 

The report found that ethics watchdogs on the Western side lost their bark. Only two bothered to call out the troubling connection between Western institutions and their Chinese collaborators in the five years since 2020. “A staggering lack of interest,” is how the Human Rights Foundation characterized it to Fox News Digital. Still, in defense of what may have simply been an appalling level of naiveté on the part of Western researchers, the report concludes:

“Chinese laboratories are rarely listed as direct grant recipients, allowing them to bypass due-diligence checks while benefiting directly through co-authorship and knowledge transfer. Taxpayer resources generate knowledge that flows into institutions embedded in China’s apparatus of repression.”

The report then calls for the following guardrails: Mandatory due diligence on human rights, full disclosure of international partnerships, and expanded ethics mandates for AI institutes. It’s a lesson the FBI itself still needs to learn. We would add that this revelation cries out for congressional oversight and hearings – and if the facts warrant it – threats to cut off federal funding.

Of course, those guardrails will have no effect on China’s institutions, where security and technology firms are required to share their findings with the Chinese Communist Party.
​
But at least such reforms will give us a fighting chance to stymie these covert spycraft efforts, as well as to disabuse ourselves of the Faustian illusion that such collaborations were ever, or will ever be, business as usual.

​PPSA General Counsel Gene Schaerr told the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday morning that Congress faces four critical opportunities to restore Americans’ privacy as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes up for reauthorization in April.

Schaerr praised the committee for holding a timely oversight hearing as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. “But with every passing year,” he said, “it is harder to square our emerging surveillance state with the ‘consent of the governed’ articulated in the Declaration.”

One driver of the surveillance state is FISA Section 702, originally enacted to target foreign threats on foreign soil, but which has instead become a tool the federal government uses to warrantlessly spy on Americans at home, he told the committee.

Schaerr then outlined four reforms Congress can enact in the coming months:

1. Add a probable-cause warrant requirement for “queries” – or searches – of Americans' communications caught up in Section 702 surveillance.

Under current rules, government personnel can conduct “backdoor searches” of Americans’ emails, messages, and other communications collected under Section 702 without court approval. A warrant requirement would close this loophole.

2. Require warrants when federal agencies, from the FBI to the IRS, purchase Americans’ sensitive digital information from data brokers.

This commercially available data includes Americans’ browsing histories, transaction and purchase records, online searches, and other revealing information about their private beliefs and associations. It is far more intimate than anything gleaned from diaries or public records.

3. Narrow the 2024 “make everyone a spy” provision.

Added in the final hours of the last surveillance debate, this law obligates providers of free Wi-Fi to comply with secret NSA demands for private communications. It allows the government to conscript office-space providers – including those who rent space to media organizations, law firms, and political campaigns – into enabling warrantless surveillance of people using their buildings’ internet networks. Even churches and other houses of worship could be targeted.

4. Strengthen the role of cleared civil-liberties experts (amici) in the FISA Courts.

Schaerr urged Congress to require courts to rely on amici for politically sensitive FISA cases by finally enacting the “Lee-Leahy Amendment” that passed the Senate in 2020 with 77 votes.
“Nearly a decade after the Trump campaign and transition were illegally surveilled, this key reform – which would have prevented many of the abuses that occurred in 2016 – is still not in place,” Schaerr said. He also urged the loosening of restrictions that prevent existing amici from accessing key materials and proceedings, needed for meaningful oversight inside the secret courts.

Schaerr concluded by praising the committee for taking the lead on congressional surveillance reform.

“With the bipartisan focus that has come to define this Committee’s work in this important area, I am confident that you can right this ship,” Schaerr said.

Gene Schaerr’s full written testimony can be read here.

​On Thursday, December 11 at 9 a.m. (ET), Gene Schaerr, PPSA’s General Counsel, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee – examining the growth of the surveillance state and how Congress can rein it in.

​You will hear:
 

• How the government continues to use Section 702 – a legal authority designed by Congress to surveil foreign threats on foreign soil – to conduct “backdoor searches” of Americans on American soil.

 

• How federal agencies routinely purchase Americans’ sensitive personal digital information, giving the government warrantless access to electronic records, web-browsing activities, transaction and purchase records, online searches, and other data that can be more personal and intimate than a diary.

 

• How a new authority obligates providers of office space for media outlets, law firms, and political campaigns to facilitate warrantless surveillance of their tenants. Even houses of worship are vulnerable to being asked to spy on their congregants.

 

• How the secret surveillance court continues to grant some requests to monitor Americans without meaningful review by experts in civil liberties.

 
Other witnesses will include:
 

• Brett Tolman, Former U.S. Attorney, District of Utah; Executive Director, Right on Crime

 

• James Czerniawski, Head of Emerging Technology Policy, Consumer Choice Center

 

• Liza Goitein, Senior Director, Liberty & National Security, Brennan Center for Justice

 
Again, watch it live at 9 a.m. (ET) on Thursday, Dec. 11, or catch the replay at your convenience.

Axios contributors Christine Clarridge and Russell Contreras recently assessed the increasingly ominous role artificial intelligence is playing in cybercrime. Deepfakes, ransomware, identity hijacks, and infrastructure hacks are all newly elevated threats – widely varied acts that previously required specialized expertise and massive organizations.
But not anymore. Now, they write:

“Off-the-shelf AI lowers the skill level and cost of carrying out attacks, enabling small crews to execute schemes that previously required nation-state resources.”

Here's what else their snapshot revealed:

• Financial systems seem especially vulnerable, but the threat isn’t limited to banks. It potentially affects any entity with customer accounts, from hospitals to water plants to retailers.

• “Crimes can now hit millions at once with voice clones and account takeovers, while local agencies are trained and funded to chase one case at a time.”

• AI can commit crimes humans aren’t capable of: “AI can create automations to ‘lock pick’ into a system millions of times per second, something humans can't do.”

• Almost anything can be disabled in such attacks: a Port of Seattle attack “disabled airport kiosks, baggage systems and Wi-Fi, while exposing data for roughly 90,000 people.” Speaking of Seattle, the Seattle Public Library “suffered a ransomware attack that wiped out its catalog, computers, Wi-Fi and e-books.” It cost Seattle a million dollars and three months to fully recover.

• The Chinese government is all-in: “State-backed hackers used AI tools from Anthropic to automate breaches of major companies and foreign governments during a September cyber campaign.” That attack marks a particularly dark turn, since the level of human involvement required was minimal thanks to AI’s assistance.

• More crimes are happening: “Generative AI has increased the speed and scale of synthetic-identity fraud,” especially where real-time payment systems are involved.

​

• And they are happening faster: “A deepfake attack occurred every five minutes globally in 2024, while digital-document forgeries jumped 244% year-over-year.”

When it comes to cybercrime, these stats suggest that it pays to be more than a little paranoid.

​Security consulting firm Koi recently published an exposé about a new online privacy threat, one with the unforgettable name of “ShadyPanda.” The scheme allowed browser extensions to infect 4.3 million Chrome and Edge users. In this case, “infect” means sit there quietly, take control whenever it wants, then pretty much do whatever it pleases, including:
​

• Stealing anything stored in browsers (search history, passwords, credit card numbers)

 

• Intercepting what’s being typed and captured in screenshots

 

• Hijacking web traffic, redirecting you to fake logins

 

• Injecting malicious software/scripts (to add even more capabilities to spy on you and rip you off)

 

• Impersonating users (stolen cookies and passwords for theft)

ShadyPanda’s extensions often worked legitimately for years before being activated and turned into full-blown spyware – making it an especially effective tool for keeping tabs on businesses.

Some of the extensions were simple wallpaper galleries or productivity tools, and many had been marked as “trusted” or “verified” by the marketplaces that hosted them.

One of the key vulnerabilities this research exposed was the whole “trust and verify” approach. Once approved by various marketplaces, extensions were never re-verified. And because most users opt for “auto-updating,” the extensions could continue to build up a large user base and then be activated as spy tools when needed. Koi reports:

“Chrome and Edge's trusted update pipeline silently delivered malware to users. No phishing. No social engineering. Just trusted extensions with quiet version bumps that turned productivity tools into surveillance platforms.”

And where is all that collected data going? To surveillance-obsessed China, of course.

Worried that you might be infected? Check out The Hacker News’ partial list of the culprits. Infosecurity Magazine recommends you also check your browser extensions and remove anything you don’t recognize or no longer use.

And turn off auto-updating while you’re at it.
​
It is a dispiriting truth of modern life that we are – and likely always will be – in a footrace against hackers and thieves, whose tools will grow even more dangerous as AI evolves. But we don’t have to be helpless. At least we can take satisfaction in knowing that by embracing best practices, we can at least be a step ahead and leave the ShadyPandas of the world empty-handed.

​Several years ago, Michael Horowitz, Inspector General of the Department of Justice, issued a scathing report detailing the errors of omission and commission in the FBI’s secret surveillance of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Since then, the FBI has been caught collecting the metadata of U.S. Senators’ phones, as well as warrantlessly extracting data on political donors, Members of Congress, and a state judge – targets in both parties.

The FBI’s political surveillance was so out of control that by 2023 the chair of the House Progressive Caucus and the former chair of the House Freedom Caucus teamed up to publicly warn of the chilling effect of FBI spying on the political process.

On Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) secured the inclusion of a provision reining in the FBI in the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It is a measure, in her words, that would require “Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office.”
​
Given the lack of trust that now exists between the parties, Stefanik’s provision should attract support from both sides of the aisle in the Senate and when the NDAA goes to a conference committee. Even the FBI should welcome it, ensuring that any investigations of candidates are above board and discreetly disclosed to congressional overseers.

​If you’re making a holiday shopping list for the kids, be grateful that Kumma “talking toy bears” will no longer be on store shelves. It is creepy enough that AI-enabled toys allow companies to track what your children (and any family members in the vicinity) say. How long such data is kept – and how it might be used when children become adults – is anyone’s guess.

Worse, an advocacy group found that FoloToy’s Kumma bear had no problem recommending kinky sex as a way to spice up relationships. (It offered, among other things, tips on how to tie knots). Completely unrelated and of no concern at all is the news that OpenAI announced a partnership with Mattel in June of this year.

Now back to the bear: Not only did Kumma discuss very adult sexual topics, but it also introduced new ideas the evaluators hadn’t even mentioned – “most of which are not fit to print.” They also found AI-powered children’s toys (including Kumma) that variously:

• Offered advice on where to find matches, knives, and pills

 

• Provided tips on how to be a good kisser

 

• Asked follow up questions about sexual preferences

 

• Seemed dismayed when users said they had to leave

 

• Found ways to actively discourage users from leaving

 

• Listened continuously and joined a nearby conversation

And as that last bullet suggests, don’t even think about privacy:

“These toys can record a child’s voice and collect other sensitive data, by methods such as facial recognition scans,” warn the researchers. It’s unclear what the (mostly Chinese) companies pushing these products will do with all the data they mine from these toys, but deleting it seems highly unlikely. To date, such AI systems remain eminently hackable.

Earlier talking toys like Hello Barbie relied on machine learning and could only follow predetermined scripts. But the rise of generative AI has introduced true conversationality into the mix – and with it, massive unpredictability (randomness, after all, is baked into generative AI models). The responses are often completely novel – and may be entirely inappropriate for younger audiences (or, as adults have discovered, just plain wacko).

Parents need to understand that children might be having detailed, potentially formative conversations on all kinds of important topics – without their knowledge or involvement. And many of the toys in question use gamification techniques and other strategies (as in the list above) to keep children engaged and continuously coming back for more.

Of course, it’s now a given that every AI toy tested framed itself as one’s buddy or even best friend. The stakes could hardly be higher: For the youngest children, the presence of AI-based toys introduces a massive unknown into a critical window for development.

For now at least, Kumma the bear is off the market in the wake of the revelations about its kinky side and tell-all personality.
​
Being a parent or caregiver was already hard enough. Now thanks to generative AI and the mad rush to reinvigorate a market (children’s toys) that had long been stagnant, gift-giving is turning out to be almost as fraught as parenting itself.

​Sometimes the best defense against privacy violations is as simple as choosing a good password.

Such was the case in South Korea, where officials recently arrested multiple suspects accused of hacking into private surveillance cameras and capturing footage as pornography for voyeurs. The 120,000 cameras were inherently hackable because they are, after all, internet devices. But users made it all the easier by choosing exceptionally weak passwords.

It's uncertain just how explicit the footage was (sourced from homes, Pilates studios, and even a women’s health clinic). Some of it was sold on overseas platforms that appear to cater to sexually exploitative content.

Pro tip: “11111” and “12345” are terrible passwords, as are any other repeating or sequential numbers. And this maxim is especially relevant when dealing with devices that are internet-connected. Yet from Zoomers to octogenarians, the password problem remains, as The Register’s Connor Jones reports, as “prevalent and dangerous as ever.”

Case in point: the recent news that the password for the ransacked Louvre’s CCTV system was “Louvre.”

So clearly the vulnerability of camera systems is a problem that goes beyond South Korea and this particular (ab)use case. In June, security researchers found that they could access tens of thousands of internet-connected cameras worldwide (35 percent of which were in the United States). Vulnerable systems were everywhere in addition to homes: retail sites, construction zones, hotels – you name it. By studying the feeds, researchers noted, bad actors can find a treasure trove of useful information – from poorly lit spots to unguarded doors to times when no one’s around.

Somewhere out there is a black market for anything a “security” camera might capture. So think twice about even having Internet-connected cameras (CCTVs that record directly to local devices are a better alternative). If you must be connected, however, then at least up your password game.
​
Finally, if you’ve installed connected cameras, try not to forget where they are five years hence on some enchanted evening.

​San Jose, California, has 474 cameras tracking license plates – more than enough to create a network whose primary use seems to be mass invasions of privacy rather than criminal investigations. A new lawsuit against the city reveals that from June 2024 to June 2025, the police department conducted more than 250,000 warrantless searches of its license plate database.

City officials say the plate readers help solve serious crimes, including homicides, a claim the lawsuit does not dispute. But there aren't anywhere near 250,000 felonies in San Jose each year – which means those warrantless searches are being used for something else. The plaintiffs see two possibilities:

1) dragnet surveillance or

2) an outright tracking system.

If it is a tracking system that San Jose wants, it has the makings of one that is truly Orwellian. The city’s cameras apparently capture data points that include “vehicle, bumper stickers with political or other messages, make, model, color, and other details, depending on the camera's position, as well as GPS coordinates and date and time information.”

Even in camera-crazy, data-obsessed California, that’s pushing the envelope. What’s more, San Jose retains the data for a year, while the typical retention period in the state is 30 days. Few other jurisdictions use as many cameras, either per capita or in total.

Beyond the sheer scale, it’s the level of intimacy this data represents that rankles privacy advocates. Did you go to the gym last Tuesday morning before work? Did you go out on a date Friday night – and with whom? Did you go to a worship service or political rally? Or something else?
​
Who knows what peccadilloes lurk in the hearts of citizens? San Jose knows.

​When your identity is confirmed by a string of numbers in a computer, are you still yourself if the algorithm determines you (the person) are not you (the digital ID)?

One state, Utah, is leading the nation in answering this question with policies that safeguard humans, while Washington, D.C. is heading down the path of reducing humans to algorithms.
Consider ACLU’s Jay Stanley, who praised Utah for its “State-Endorsed Digital Identity” (SEDI), the state’s new framework for digital ID systems. In an approach that should be the norm rather than the notable exception, the Beehive State puts privacy first.

Utah begins with the conviction that identity “is not something bestowed by the state, but that inherently belongs to the individual; the state merely ‘endorses’ a person’s ID.” In other words, our identities belong to us. We are born with them. We own them. With that realization comes new-found respect for privacy and other forms of personal freedom. 

This view of identity stands in sharp contrast to the definition Stanley found in the data-driven world of federal law enforcement. With the feds, identity is becoming something only the state can grant, defaulting to incomplete or faulty digital verification of citizenship.

To be clear, both Utah’s SEDI platform and the federal approach utilize digital ID systems, but one is a case study in digital due diligence while the other illustrates the dangers of slapdash digital recklessness. The federal system is based on incomplete databases, poorly designed architecture, evolving (meaning, far from perfect) technology, and an utter disregard for the constitutional rights of individuals.

Utah’s approach differs from the federal approach in very important ways:
​

1. Being “user-centric” to ensure that government identification systems are used to empower individuals, not control them.
2. Being free from surveillance, visibility, tracking, or monitoring by any entity – including private companies and unauthorized government agencies and staff – other than the party that is solely authorized to check the ID.  
3. Making factors like security, completeness, and accuracy a top priority, in contrast to the unreliability of the facial recognition technology that underlies many of today’s digital verification systems.
4. Enforcing a user’s “right to paper” (or plastic), including continued and unfettered access to essential government services, even when using only non-digital, physical ID methods.  
5. Adhering strictly to constitutional rights, particularly Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless searches and dragnet-style fishing expeditions conducted without probable cause.

Stanley goes on to quote the Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security Committee, who reports that an app (called Mobile Fortify) used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now constitutes “definitive” determination of a person’s status “and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship – including a birth certificate.”

That’s bad enough on its own of course, but along the way, the government now sweeps up Americans’ biometric identifiers en masse. The databases Mobile Fortify accesses contain not only our photographs but enough records to constitute a permanent digital dossier.

Congress did not get to review, much less approve, any of this. The American people never voted on it. In fact, the whole thing leaves us wondering what happened to the Privacy Act, signed into law by President Ford in 1974. It has been described as “the American Bill of Rights on data.”  

By declaring that identity is solely digital, determined by stealthy algorithms and policies, and deniable to those whose data is non-existent, incomplete or inaccurate, the federal standard – in sharp contrast to Utah’s – subverts 250 years of traditional, constitutional practice. Remember: Our founders built the world’s most vibrant democracy on pieces of parchment copied by hand.

In any truly free society, identities are personal possessions (to help secure individual rights and facilitate their voluntary participation in society). Identities bestowed by the state ultimately serve only the state.

That we even need to ponder the nature of identity reveals the absurdity of these abuses our personhood and privacy. Nevertheless, here we are. Without transparent conversations and healthy debate, we face a future in which we are whomever the state says we are, made of malleable 0s and 1s, with nothing grounded in the physical world.
​
It's a discussion that, as of now, Utah alone seems committed to having.

​Those who live by surveillance cry by surveillance.
 
We wonder how many times politicians on both sides of the aisle will have to get slammed by the very government spying practices they’ve supported before this lesson sinks in.
 
Case in point: Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Last week, he filed a lawsuit against Bill Pulte, President Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for accessing and leaking private mortgage records in retaliation for political speech.
 
Pulte has issued criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ) against Swalwell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on the basis of alleged mortgage fraud. A federal judge dismissed the charges against James, while President Trump used the allegation against Cook to fire her from the Federal Reserve Board (she remains in her job while the Supreme Court reviews the case).
 
Rep. Swalwell’s lawsuit makes an important point:
 
“Pulte’s brazen practice of obtaining confidential mortgage records from Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac and then using them as a basis for referring individual homeowners to DOJ for prosecution is unprecedented and unlawful.”
 
We cannot think of any prior use of private mortgage applications to harass political opponents (at least one of them, James, is arguably guilty of using lawfare herself to harass Donald Trump).
 
Pulte’s actions appear to be a flagrant violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, which governs how the government can and cannot handle Americans’ private information. The law, as Swalwell notes, “explicitly forbids federal agencies from disclosing – or even transmitting to other agencies – sensitive information about any individual for any purpose not explicitly authorized by law.”
 
Congress passed the Privacy Act to prevent the creation of a federal database that would create comprehensive dossiers on every American, something we’ve warned is now being attempted. The law specifically forbids agencies from freely sharing Americans’ confidential data gathered for one purpose (such as IRS tax collection), for another purpose (an FBI investigation). Agencies must issue written request justifying any such information sharing.
 
Pulte is anything but transparent.
 
“I’m not going to explain our sources and methods, where we get tips from, who are whistleblowers,” Pulte told the media. This mindset is in keeping with the corrupting spread of the best practices of the intelligence-surveillance state playbook. Today, it is the federal housing agency. We shouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow such “sources and methods” thinking trickles down to federal poultry inspections.
 
Meanwhile, we remain dry-eyed over Rep. Swalwell’s plight.
 
As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Swalwell argued against – and voted against – the Protect Liberty and End Warrantless Surveillance Act. This bill would have reformed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by requiring a warrant before the government could access U.S. citizens’ data collected through programs enacted to surveil foreign threats on foreign soil.
 
The Protect Liberty Act would have ended the government practice of using a foreign database to conduct “backdoor searches” on Americans… not unlike, say, a regulatory agency pulling a political opponent’s private mortgage application. The principle of mutually assured payback is something to keep in mind when lawmakers again debate the provisions of Section 702 in April.

Imagine being targeted for surveillance because of your race – not with facial recognition or government inspection of your personal digital data, but through your electric meter. If you lived in parts of Sacramento, this is exactly what happened, as a decade-long scheme quietly bled Americans’ privacy one kilowatt hour at a time.

Sacramento’s Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and local police zeroed in on Asian-American customers, flagging those deemed to be using “too much” electricity. Many were assumed to be growing marijuana illegally – and police eagerly requested bulk data on entire ZIP codes to feed their suspicions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation in July joined the Asian American Liberation Network to ask the Sacramento County Superior Court to end the local utility district’s illegal dragnet surveillance program. Last week, the court agreed, finding that routine, ZIP-code-wide data dumps had nothing to do with “an ongoing investigation.”

The court wrote:

“The process of making regular requests for all customer information in numerous city ZIP codes, in the hopes of identifying evidence that could possibly be evidence of illegal activity, without any report or other evidence to suggest that such a crime may have occurred, is not an ongoing investigation.”

The response from EFF was even sharper:

“Investigations happen when police try to solve particular crimes and identify particular suspects. The dragnet that turned all 650,000 SMUD customers into suspects was not an investigation.”

The court recognized the obvious danger – dragnets turn vast numbers of innocent citizens and entire communities into suspects.

Still, it wasn’t a clean sweep. The court stopped short of ruling that SMUD’s practice violated the “seizure and search” clause in California’s Constitution.
​
But even a qualified victory is still a victory. We are reminded that privacy wins do happen – one dragged-into-the-sunlight surveillance program at a time. This win is something to be thankful for as we count our blessings this week.