In Case You Missed It

San Francisco Chronicle (Apr 26, 2008):

State widens DNA scanning in cold cases The California Department of Justice will help crime investigators identify new suspects in cold cases by scanning its DNA database for near-matches to crime-scene samples after an attempt to find an exact match fails. ...

Michael Risher, an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, said police might pressure relatives who have never been in trouble with the law to give DNA samples to clear themselves. Civil rights advocates call this approach a "DNA dragnet" that could undermine the constitutional shield against government searches of individuals without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The civil rights advocates say law enforcement agencies would be tempted to keep those samples for future genetic investigations.

The Sacramento Bee (Apr 18, 2008):

Linden school district limits its searches of students' cell phones In schools across the country, cell phones go on and cell phones get confiscated, often on a daily basis.

Students may lose their beloved phone for the rest of the school day. But they don't expect to lose their privacy.

In a small town east of Stockton, that is what happened to a senior named Justin Tomek at Linden High School last October. Several months later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California weighed in. ...

"Schools need to understand that just because a student uses a cell phone when he or she is not supposed to doesn't mean the school has a license to go in and read their private messages," said Ann Brick, an ACLU staff attorney in San Francisco who got involved in the Linden situation after learning of Tomek's experience.

"It's like rummaging through their private letters," she said.

San Francisco Chronicle (Mar 21, 2008):

Crime cameras not capturing many crimes San Francisco's 68 controversial anti-crime cameras haven't deterred criminals from committing assaults, sex offenses or robberies - and they've only moved homicides down the block, according to a new report from UC Berkeley.

They've been controversial from the start. Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union say they're a violation of privacy, and some members of the Board of Supervisors and Police Commission, as well as the city's public defender, say they're ineffective in fighting crime.

San Francisco Chronicle (Mar 1, 2008):

S.F. judge dissolves his Wikileaks injunction A federal judge in San Francisco who had ordered the shutdown of a whistle-blowers' Web site where private bank documents were posted changed his mind Friday, conceding his original ruling might not have been constitutional.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White drew nationwide attention, and widespread criticism from civil liberties groups and news organizations, with his Feb. 15 injunction requiring a Bay Area Internet registrar to disable the Wikileaks.org site and prevent the organization from transferring to another server. ...

Ann Brick, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said White "understood the limits the First Amendment places on what courts can do to deprive the public of the right to know."

Contra Costa Times (Feb 23, 2008):

Smile, you're on camera George Orwell's vision of a society living under the scrutiny of an unblinking government eye was prescient if premature, some say. Today, Big Brother is indeed watching, as communities across the Bay Area increasingly are monitoring public spaces with surveillance cameras. ...

Mark Schlosberg, police practices policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said a handful of successful prosecutions don't outweigh the threat to privacy and freedom of speech. The most extensive studies of video surveillance systems conducted in Great Britain, where cameras are common, have found that they don't reduce violent crime, according to Schlosberg.

He also contends that cameras become more intrusive if combined with facial recognition software or other developing technology that enable the government to track individuals as they move through society.

"Rather than putting money into ineffective cameras that are invasive to our privacy, law enforcement should put money into foot patrols, improved lighting and community policing," said Schlosberg, co-author of the 2007 ACLU report, "Under the Watchful Eye: The Proliferation of Video Surveillance Systems in California."

The report found that few of the 37 cities using video surveillance had policies regulating the use of the cameras and none had measured the cameras' effectiveness. ...