Our mobile phones and apps systematically collect and store comprehensive historical lists of our locations and our travels. Advertising and marketing companies extract and interpret these lists for use in their information-gathering networks, effectively turning our phones into 24/7 location tracking devices. Because this information is readily available to the government, law enforcement agencies now have unparalleled access to knowledge of where you are, where you've been, and through inference, who you are.
In this panel, tech experts Christopher Soghoian and Ashkan Soltani, alongside Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, will present a briefing on the current technological and legal landscape of location data tracking. The panelists will explore how consumer location tracking efforts weave a story about the systemic privacy vulnerabilities of smart phones and the legal ways in which law enforcement has been able to hitch a ride. The panel will be moderated by the Director of the ACLU's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, Ben Wizner.
Christopher Soghoian is a Washington, D.C. based Open Society Fellow, a Graduate Fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, and a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University. Soghoian's research is focused on the topic of tech privacy, including both consumer issues and government surveillance. He has used the Freedom of Information Act and other investigative techniques to shed light on the scale of and methods by which the U.S. government spies on mobile cell phones and this work has been cited by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and featured on the Colbert Report. Twitter: @csoghoian http://www.dubfire.net/, http://paranoia.dubfire.net/
Ben Wizner is the Director of ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, which is dedicated to protecting and expanding the First Amendment freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry; expanding the right to privacy and increasing the control that individuals have over their personal information; and ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology. He has litigated numerous cases involving civil liberties abuses, including challenges to government watchlists and Internet censorship. He has appeared regularly in the media, testified before Congress, and traveled several times to Guantanamo Bay to monitor military commission proceedings. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.
Catherine Crump is a Staff Attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. She specializes in free speech and privacy litigation, particularly regarding the impact of new technologies on First and Fourth Amendment rights. Crump recently organized a nationwide public records investigation that found local police departments regularly tracking citizens through their cell phones without warrants. The project was featured in myriad news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC. She is also litigating a series of cases challenging the government's claim that it can legally track the location of people's cell phones without a warrant. Crump has been counsel of record for several ACLU amicus briefs in important cases involving technological surveillance, including United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court case heard last term ruling that the GPS tracking of vehicles constitutes a search. Crump is a non-residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, a 2004 graduate of Stanford Law School, and a 2000 graduate of Stanford University. Twitter: @catherinencrump
Ashkan Soltani is an independent researcher and consultant focused on privacy, security, and behavioral economics. He has more than 15 years of experience as a technology consultant and has published three major reports on the extent and means of data tracking: "KnowPrivacy: The Current State of Web Privacy, Data Collection, and Information Sharing," "Flash Cookies and Privacy," and "Flash Cookies and Privacy II." His work highlights the prevalence and practice of tracking online, including the use of specific technologies designed to circumvent consumer privacy choices online. He has served as a staff technologist in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the Federal Trade Commission and also worked as the primary technical consultant on the Wall Street Journal's What They Know series, investigating Internet privacy and online tracking. Twitter: @ashk4n