Subject matter experts and litigators from NACDL’s Fourth Amendment Center explain and discuss some of the important digital technology issues that defense counsel will very likely encounter in these cases. The faculty focus on reverse searches, facial recognition, and device searches.

NACDL is working with coalition partners in New York to ban reverse search warrants. 

To identify criminal suspects, law enforcement officers are turning increasingly to reverse search warrants, such as geofence warrants and keyword search warrants. This trend presents novel challenges to the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the United States. 

Geofence warrants, a type of reverse search warrant, compel companies, like Google, to turn over substantial information about devices interacting with their technology within a particular geographic region. For this reason, geofence warrants mark an unprecedented increase in the government's ability to locate individuals without investigation. This primer will show you how geofence warrants are constructed and outline strategies to challenge these warrants when they appear in criminal cases. 

Over the past several years, the government has increasingly turned to hacking and malware as an investigative technique. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun deploying software designed to infiltrate and control, disable, or surveil a computer's use and activity. The ACLU created a guide, to which NACDL and EFF contributed, that sets out key legal arguments and strategies for challenging evidence seized by government-installed computer malware. [Released March 2017]

How Data-Driven Policing Technologies Entrench Historic Racism and 'Tech-Wash' Bias in the Criminal Legal System

This NACDL Predicative Policing Task Force Report (1) calls attention to the rapid development and deployment of data-driven policing; (2) situates data-driven policing within the racialized historical context of policing and the criminal legal system; (3) makes actionable recommendations that respond to the reality, enormity, and impact of data-driven policing; and (4) suggests strategies for defense lawyers in places where data-driven policing technology is employed.

Since 2010, law enforcement agencies in the United States have had direct access to an increasing volume of bulk data about people’s wire transfer transactions. The core of this previously secret program is a database containing records of virtually every money transfer of more than $500 sent to, from, or within Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, or Mexico.

This practice advisory aims to: 1) explain what was involved in this bulk money transfer surveillance program; and 2) provide defense counsel with potential challenges to it.

We write to request further congressional oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) operations pursuant to the 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines, which were implemented over congressional objections and threaten the constitutional rights of all Americans. In the wake of The Washington Post series exposing the secrecy and unaccountability of our nation’s intelligence establishment, the Senate Judiciary Committee has a responsibility to seek transparency into FBI operations and restore the Bureau’s accountability.

We, the undersigned companies and organizations, are writing to express our support for Chairman Leahy’s and Sen. Lee’s ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607, which the Committee will consider shortly. The bill would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to provide stronger protection to sensitive personal and proprietary communications stored in “the cloud.” We urge all Members of the Committee to support the bill.

We write to urge you to ensure that any new cybersecurity information sharing bill considered in the Senate in 2013 at least maintains the privacy protections from Title VII, the information sharing title of S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. We agree that the protections in Title VII of S. 3414 last year should be considered the privacy floor, and not the ceiling for any cybersecurity legislation. To that end, we would strongly oppose any effort to bring to the Senate floor the information sharing provisions of last year’s SECURE IT bill, or otherwise weaken privacy safeguards.

NACDL respectfully submits the following comments to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in response to the Interim Study to address the privacy questions raised by the operation of unmanned aircraft systems, also known as drones, in Oklahoma. ... NACDL applauds the House of Representatives for taking the first step in studying the privacy implications raised by the use of domestic surveillance drones, and we look forward to ongoing conversations about the privacy and civil liberties impact of this new technology as you move forward with the study.

We the undersigned support ending the bulk collection of all types of data under all legal authorities, while preserving the requirement of prior court approval for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We recognize the substantial step in this direction the House Judiciary Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence took in unanimously passing the USA FREEDOM Act (H.R. 3361). The bill includes several components critical to meaningful reform... We respectfully urge you to oppose efforts to weaken these or other provisions in this historic bill.

We write today to urge the Department of Justice (DOJ) to quickly complete an updated Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Next Generation Identification System (NGI) as part of a broader effort to examine the goals and impact of NGI. The previous PIA on NGI’s face recognition component dates back to 2008. Since that time the program has undergone a radical transformation—one that raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns.

We represent a wide range of privacy and human rights advocates, technology companies, and trade associations that hold an equally wide range of positions on surveillance reform. Many of us have differing views on exactly what reforms must be included in any bill reauthorizing USA PATRIOT Act Section 215, which currently serves as the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata and is set to expire on June 1, 2015. Our broad, diverse, and bipartisan coalition believes that the status quo is untenable and that it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform.