Our Work
Founded in 2014, the Center on Privacy & Technology is a leader at the intersection of privacy, surveillance, and civil rights.
Latest Work
New Privacy Center Report Finds Department of Homeland Security’s DNA Collection Skyrocketed 5000% in Under 4 Years
The Privacy Center published "Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing." Authored by Director of Research & Advocacy Stevie Glaberson, Associate Emerald Tse, and Executive Director Emily Tucker, the report describes and analyzes the expansion of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security program to collect DNA from nearly every person its agents detains. Read the full press release.
Telemundo Covers “Raiding the Genome”
Telemundo covered our latest report findings from "Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing" in a video piece and featured an interview (in Spanish) with report co-author and Director of Research & Advocacy Stevie Glaberson.
LA Times Covers “Raiding the Genome”
The LA Times covered our latest report findings from "Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing." In a front page article. Director of Research & Advocacy Stevie Glaberson was quoted "Even when people know what’s happening, they’re terrified to ask questions, they’re terrified to object, they’re terrified to refuse."
Tech Policy Press: Does ICE Data Surveillance Violate Human Rights Law? The Answer is Yes, and It’s Not Even Close
The Center’s Executive Director Emily Tucker and Clinical Fellow at the International Justice Clinic at UC Irvine Law co-authored a piece published in Tech Policy Press that highlights the United Nations Human Rights Committee's Concluding Observations that calls out how ICE’s surveillance practices conflict with human rights law and the right to privacy. Those observations echo our report co-written with the International Justice Clinic we submitted as part of their periodic review process.
Statement: Support of the Facial Recognition Act of 2023
Congress proposed a bill to regulate police use of face recognition. Executive Director Emily Tucker made a statement in support of the bill. "The Facial Recognition Act of 2023 takes a powerful stand against the spread of surveillance policing in the United States. As the movement to ban facial recognition builds across the country, Congressman Lieu's bill would set a solid federal floor to limit the harms of this corrupt technology in our communities. With a clear non-preemption statement, a private right of action, strong limits against integrating facial recognition with other surveillance databases and a prohibition on using facial recognition on protestors or for immigration enforcement, this legislation would make it more possible for people harmed by facial recognition to organize against it.
Submission to the United Nations Human Rights Committee
The Center on Privacy & Technology and the International Justice Clinic at UC Irvine Law co-authored a report submitted to United Nations Human Rights Committee arguing that ICE’s dragnet surveillance practices amount to an egregious violation of human rights law, and of US obligations under the ICCPR, specifically under Article 17 which guarantees the right to privacy as a fundamental human right and requires that any state interference with privacy be proscribed by a specific, accessible law, necessary to pursue a legitimate purpose, and proportionate to that purpose. Our report prompted a Human Rights Committee member (Prof. Soh) to show his concern about ICE's dragnet surveillance and asked US delegates, essentially, how the US ensures ICE's practice complies with ICCPR and when the US will legislate federal data privacy law. The Committee’s Concluding Observations on the fifth periodic report of the United States of America explicitly calls out ICE for surveillance practices that conflict with human rights law. This adds international pressure on ICE to stop dragnet surveillance.
“Digital Payment Apps are Convenient and Accessible — But They’re Not Protecting Our Privacy” blog
In January 2023, a class of plaintiffs represented by immigrant and racial justice organization Just Futures Law sued the Department of Homeland Security and several of the world’s largest money transfer businesses, including Western Union, for engaging in widespread financial surveillance aimed primarily at immigrants in the Southwest. Justice Fellow Meg Foster details the case and the privacy violations of digital payment apps on our blog. Read the whole bloghere.
Testimony in Support of S.27: An Act to Protect Private Electronic Communication, Browsing and Other Activity
Justice Fellow Meg Foster and Director of Research & Advocacy Stevie Glaberson submitted written testimony to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity in support of S.27, An Act to protect private electronic communication, browsing, and other activity. The bill establishes warrant and reporting requirements for electronic communication and subscriber records, as well as the use of cell site simulators. It also prohibits law enforcement from requesting, and judges from granting, reverse-location and reverse-keyword requests. The testimony focused on the disparate impact that the dragnet surveillance tools and techniques regulated in S.27 have on marginalized communities, including on their First Amendment rights.
The Intercept: LexisNexis Is Selling Personal Data to ICE
Executive Director Emily Tucker was quoted in an article in The Intercept about ICE and LexisNexis contracts: “This is really concerning,” Emily Tucker, the executive director of Georgetown Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology, told The Intercept. Tucker compared the contract to controversial and frequently biased predictive policing software, causing heightened alarm thanks to ICE’s use of license plate databases. “Imagine if whenever a cop used PredPol to generate a ‘hot list’ the software also generated a map of the most recent movements of any vehicle associated with each person on the hot list.”
Wired: ICE Records Reveal How Agents Abuse Access to Secret Data
Executive Director Emily Tucker and Associate Nina Wang were quoted in a Wired article revealing how ICE agents have regularly abused their access to surveillance databases, conducting unauthorized searches of exes and coworkers and on behalf of family and neighbors. The article also quotes the Center's report, American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century, which showed that these databases enable ICE "to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time." “All of that access to bulk data leaves the door wide open for misconduct,”said Wang.