Articles

Last month, the San Francisco City Council voted to prohibit city agencies from using facial recognition software on municipal cameras. City officials raised reasonable questions about how the technology would be used, as well as the potential effects on civil liberties. San Francisco is the first major city to ban the use of facial ID … ...

No level of government should be allowed to violate the privacy of American citizens through unreasonable searches and seizures of their property in whatever form the property takes, even digital data. Like the First Amendment, our right to privacy applies widely to digital technologies. We believe this, and so does Michigan State Senator Jim Runes ...

With a near steady drumbeat of news stories about data breaches, Russian hackers and government surveillance, it’s not surprising that digital privacy is on the minds of many Americans. This includes lawmakers here in Michigan who have become the latest in a series of legislative bodies to push for stronger digital privacy protections. On Oct ...

Planning to rent out your home to visitors through an online booking service such as Airbnb? If you live in Norfolk, you might just be inviting Big Brother into your living room. That’s the conclusion we can draw from Norfolk’s new ordinance requiring property owners to register with the city and submit to warrantless inspections ̷ ...

American’s Fourth Amendment rights are our best defense against a government-sponsored surveillance state. Recent reports from countries like China and Russia have shown frightening new government programs that spy on Chinese and Russian citizens. Programs like these aren’t surprising coming from Russia and China, but could American off ...

The introduction of 5G data networks promises unbelievable advancements in the tech capabilities of every area of our lives. But 5G will also make it possible for government and law enforcement to use technology to gather data and information about Americans. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled definitively on what qualifies as our constitutionally ...

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the other Founding Fathers are rightly celebrated for their role in freeing America from oppressive British rule and building a government that has stood the test of time. But James Otis, a Boston lawyer in the mid-1700s, was one of the American Revolution’s most important intellectual i ...

Attempting to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections, officials in the town of Salisbury, Massachusetts, recently deprived seasonal homeowners of the right to receive running water in their homes. The reasoning was that if these homeowners couldn’t access the town’s public water utility, they wouldn’t return to Salisbury for th ...

In 2015, an armed shoplifter fleeing the police broke into the Lech family’s home in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The shoplifter, who chose the Lech’s house at random, refused to come out and opened fire on the cops outside. In response, local police used explosives, high-caliber ammunition and a battering ram mounted on a tank-like veh ...