Earlier this month, the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability (PPSA) wrote: The Texas Observer reports that the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) signed a 5-year, nearly $5.3 million contract for the Tangles surveillance tool, originally designed by former Israeli military officers to catch terrorists in the Middle East. In its acquisition plan, DPS references the…
Category: U.S.
Upcoming Consumer Privacy Laws: What Organizations Must Know for 2024 and 2025
From the law firm of Epstein Becker & Green: Over the past several years, the number of states with comprehensive consumer data privacy laws has increased exponentially from just a handful—California, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, and Utah—to up to twenty by some counts. Many of these state laws will go into effect starting Q4 of 2024…
Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over DOJ, DHS and HUD use of facial recognition technology
Suzanne Smalley reports: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (UCCR) on Thursday released a report which asserts that three federal agencies’ use of facial recognition technology (FRT) is deeply concerning, not sufficiently standardized and not transparent enough. The commission studied how the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Housing…
As more criminals hide behind encryption, the FBI teams up with a university it once targeted
Mike Levine reported: Two weeks ago, as college students returned to campus at the University of California, Berkeley, some of the most senior officials in the FBI were huddling inside a nondescript conference room beneath the stands of the school’s football stadium. “Here’s where the rubber meets the road,” one of the FBI officials told…