Government Surveillance

The tremendous explosion in surveillance-enabling technologies, combined with the ongoing weakening in legal restraints that protect our privacy have us drifting toward a surveillance society. The ACLU of Northern California is fighting this trend and working to preserve the American tradition that the government not track individuals or violate privacy unless it has evidence of wrongdoing.

In San Francisco: Civil Rights Groups Oppose Secret Agreement with FBI
Protections for First Amendment activity have been so robust in San Francisco because local officials, advocacy organizations and community members have heeded lessons from intelligence-gathering scandals of days past, and enacted public policies to prevent history from repeating itself. Read about San Francisco's secret agreement with the FBI...
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ACLU Issues Report on the Proliferation of Video Surveillance Systems in California
California cities are moving quickly to install video surveillance cameras on public streets and plazas without regulations, with little or no public debate, and without an evaluation of their effectiveness. "Under the Watchful Eye," a new report issued by the California ACLU affiliates, examines the justifications for and consequences of this dramatic expansion in government video surveillance of public space at the local level.
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Connecting the Dots... Surveillance in Our Society
Since September 11th, surveillance in our society has increased at an alarming rate. It is up to us to “connect the dots” on government surveillance and to see the big picture of parallel developments in the worlds of technology, law, politics, and business, and shed light on the overall danger of far-reaching government surveillance.
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Phone Companies Gave Private Customer Data to Government Without Consent or Court Order
The ACLU has sued telecommunications giants AT&T and Verizon to stop them from continuing to provide the National Security Agency (NSA) with the personal phone records of millions of California customers.
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