Dave Maass
EFF
San Francisco, CA, United States
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Past articles by Dave:
The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance: Tablet Advertising That Can Also Issue Discipline
An officer hands you a digital tablet and assures you that you can use it to communicate to sort out your affairs. It's a glimmer of a lifeline… but then you try to use the device. A pop-up opens on the tablet's screen, and you're forced to watch a commercial for a shady bail bond firm before being allowed to access the video call app. When your family member picks up, you → Read More
Have an Open Records Horror Story? Shine a Light by Nominating an Agency for The Foilies 2022
We are now accepting submissions for The Foilies 2022, the annual project to give tongue-in-cheek awards to the officials and institutions that behave badly (or ridiculously) when served with a request for public records. → Read More
Here Are 458 California Law Enforcement Agencies' Policy Documents All in One Place
EFF in partnership with Stanford Libraries' Systemic Racism Tracker project has released a data set with links to 458 policy manuals from California law enforcement agencies, including most police departments and sheriff offices and some district attorney offices, school district police departments, and university public safety departments. This data set represents our first → Read More
Data Driven 2: California Dragnet—New Data Set Shows Scale of Vehicle Surveillance in the Golden State
EFF has released Data Driven 2: California Dragnet, a new public records collection and data set that shines light on the massive amount of vehicle surveillance conducted by police in California using automated license plate readers (ALPRs)—and how very little of this surveillance is actually relevant to an active public safety interest. → Read More
LAPD Requested Ring Footage of Black Lives Matter Protests
Along with other civil liberties organizations and activists, EFF has long warned that Amazon Ring and other networked home surveillance devices could be used to monitor political activity and protests. Now we have documented proof that our fears were founded. According to emails obtained by EFF,... → Read More
Three Interactive Tools for Understanding Police Surveillance
This post was written by Summer 2020 Intern Jessica Romo, a student at the Reynolds School of Journalism at University of Nevada, Reno. As law enforcement and government surveillance technology continues to become more and more advanced, it has also become harder for everyday people to avoid. Law... → Read More
San Francisco Police Accessed Business District Camera Network to Spy on Protestors
The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) conducted mass surveillance of protesters at the end of May and in early June using a downtown business district's camera network, according to new records obtained by EFF. The records show that SFPD received real-time live access to hundreds of cameras as... → Read More
California Coalition Calls for Moratorium on State Gang Database
EFF has joined a coalition of civil rights, immigration, and criminal justice reform organizations to demand the California Department of Justice (CADOJ) place an immediate moratorium on the use of the state’s gang database, also known as CalGang. For years, EFF has stood beside many of these... → Read More
Digital Security Advice for Journalists Covering the Protests Against Police Violence
This guide is an overview of digital security considerations specific to journalists covering protests. For EFF’s comprehensive guide to digital security, including advice for activists and protesters, visit ssd.eff.org. Legal advice in this post is specific to the United States.As the... → Read More
Victory: San Diego to Suspend Face Recognition Program, Limits ICE Access To Criminal Justice Data
We just stopped one of the largest, longest running, and most controversial face recognition programs operated by local law enforcement in the United States. A face recognition system used by more than 30 agencies in San Diego County, California will be suspended on Jan. 1, 2020, according to... → Read More
EFF Calls on California to End Vendor-Driven ALPR Training
A single surveillance vendor has garnered a monopoly on training law enforcement in California on the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs)—a mass surveillance technology used to track the movements of drivers. After examining the course materials, EFF is now calling on the state body that... → Read More
EFF Asks San Bernardino Court to Review Cell-Site Simulator and Digital Search Warrants That Are Likely Improperly Sealed
Since the California legislature passed a 2015 law requiring cops to get a search warrant before probing our devices, rifling through our online accounts, or tracking our phones, EFF has been on a quest to examine court filings to determine whether law enforcement agencies are following the new... → Read More
The San Francisco District Attorney’s 10 Most Surveilled Neighborhoods
With the spread of advanced spying technology, such as social media monitoring and cell-phone tracking, it’s easy to forget about the most ubiquitous form of surveillance—regular old security cameras. But the San Francisco County District Attorney’s Office sure hasn’t forgotten. Prosecutors maintain a map and dataset of thousands of privately and publicly owned security → Read More
Before and After: What We Learned About the Hemisphere Program After Suing the DEA
As the year draws to a close, so has EFF’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Agency about the mass phone surveillance program infamously known as “Hemisphere.” We won our case and freed up tons of records. (So did the Electronic Privacy Information Center... → Read More
Alameda and Contra Costa County Sheriffs Flew Drones Over Protests
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office had drones at the ready on the scene for many high-profile protests in Berkeley and on the University of California Berkeley campus throughout 2017. Just to the north, the Contra Costa County Sheriff deployed drones over immigrant rights rallies outside the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, California, which houses detainees for ICE. → Read More
Data Driven: Explore How Cops Are Collecting and Sharing Our Travel Patterns Using Automated License Plate Readers
By Dave Maass and Beryl LiptonEFF and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. We focused exclusively on... → Read More
McSweeney’s and EFF Team Up for “The End of Trust”
For 20 years, McSweeney’s has been the first name (or last name, actually) in emerging short fiction. But this November, McSweeney’s will debut the first all-non-fiction issue of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern: “The End of Trust” (Issue 54) is a collection of essays and interviews focusing... → Read More
How to Roll a Strong Password with 20-Sided Dice and Fandom-Inspired Wordlists
Here’s the not-so-secret recipe for strong passphrases: a random element like dice, a long list of words, and math. And as long as you have the first two, the third takes care of itself. All together, this adds up to diceware, a simple but powerful method to create a passphrase that even the most... → Read More
Documents Bare How Federal Researchers Went to Absurd Lengths to Undo Problematic Tattoo Recognition Research
Well, this is a first.In response to an EFF investigation that uncovered deeply troubling research practices by the National Institute for Technology & Standards (NIST), a senior federal scientist stripped off his clothes, had another scientist draw all over his skin with washable markers, and... → Read More
FBI Wish List: An App That Can Recognize the Meaning of Your Tattoos
We’ve long known that the FBI is heavily invested in developing face recognition technology as a key component in its criminal investigations. But new records, obtained by EFF through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, show that’s not the only biometric marker the agency has its eyes on.... → Read More