Greg Nojeim, Senior Counsel and Director of our Freedom, Security and Technology Project, guest wrote for Lawfare, a site published by the Lawfare Institute in cooperation with the Brookings Institute. It’s solely dedicated to “that nebulous zone in which actions taken or contemplated to protect the nation interact with the nation’s laws and legal institutions.” We’ve published the first few paragraphs here – click below for the full text.
MLAT Reform: Who Decides?
This is the final post in a series analyzing the Daskal-Woods reform proposal for law enforcement demands for communications content across national borders. Daskal and Woods have proposed that countries whose laws and practices meet certain human rights standards, and whose system for cross-border requests includes certain elements, ought to be able to make content disclosure demands directly to U.S. communications service providers rather than having to make the demand through mutual legal assistance processes. In the first post, I examined how the proposal dealt with communications content and in the second, how the proposal should be adjusted to account for cross-border demands for communications metadata.
The Daskal-Woods cross-border law enforcement proposal turns on a determination of which countries’ laws and practices meet human rights standards set forth in the proposal. Under the proposal, only countries whose laws and practices are deemed sufficient will be permitted to obtain content directly from U.S. providers under their own laws, and without intervention by a U.S. court or the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). This post addresses the question of who decides whether a country’s laws and practices meet those standards.
First, it is important to distinguish this question from the determination of whom may be the subject of a demand for disclosure of content. The proposal addresses that question well and clearly: a court or another independent process established by the country making the demand authorizes the demand on a case-by-case basis. The proposal is silent, however, on who decides whether a country’s laws and practices meet the required standards.
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
CDT-led Coalition Calls for Transparency for White House AI Framework
CDT and Americans for Responsible Innovation led a broad, bipartisan coalition of over two dozen civil society groups in calling on the White House to release its Framework for review of frontier AI models.
CDT Amicus Brief Calls on Fourth Circuit to Rein In Geofence Warrants
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v United States that the Fourth Amendment protected all cell phone location information, which CDT lauded as a landmark decision, but sent the case back down to the Fourth Circuit to assess the propriety of the geofence warrant at issue.
CDT and Partners Post Floor Alert Opposing CA SB 1013 Automated License Plate Readers Bill
The best way to ensure that Automated License Plate Readers are not abused is to limit the retention of stored data and to keep loopholes to lawful process closed. CA SB 1013 is a step in the wrong direction, and we urge the California legislature to reject this approach.
