Archive

Google and the NSA. It is hard to imagine a more potent–or frightening–combination when it comes to the collection and safety of Americans' private information.But just such an alliance is underway. As reported by the Washington Post, Google–the world's largest search engine company with access to intimate details of our lives–is negotiating an electronic surveillance deal with the National Securi... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Fresno City College today demanding that the school ensure that all its health science classes teach unbiased and medically accurate information. According to students at the college, lectures by Professor Dr. Bradley Lopez, who teaches an introductory health class, often present religiously-based and anti-gay views as "science" or "fact." Read More

Reposted from ACLU National Votes on re-authorizing key parts of the Patriot Act will happen in Congress any day now. And, once again, fear-mongering and scare tactics are being used to block genuine Patriot Act reforms. This time, opponents of reform are seizing on the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing to insist that we don't need to bring the Patriot Act in line with the Constitution. S... Read More

Facebook is once again rolling out changes to its user interface, including new Applications and Games Dashboards that it says will "mak[e] it easier for you to find and interact with applications." And, once again, these changes affect your privacy: now other users can easily find out which applications you use, whether that's a popular game, a dating app, or our Facebook quiz. Just like the chan... Read More

Recently I wrote about the allegedly Chinese cyber attack on Google and how it highlighted a point that the ACLU and security experts have been making for years – that creating government backdoors into our communications network for the purpose of surveillance creates security problems.Security expert Bruce Schneier subsequently wrote about the same issue at greater length in this excellent CNN p... Read More

This case brings to light some of the ACLU Foundation of Northern California's concerns about a state law that makes it unlawful for a registered sex offender to live within 2,000 feet of a school or park. We argue that by applying the law to people who committed their crimes before the law went into effect, the state of California is advancing an overbroad interpretation that violates the state C... Read More

Can the State of California retroactively enforce Prop 83's residency restrictions against sex offenders who committed their offenses before the law went into effect? Read More

We've already blogged generally about the Federal Trade Commission's "Exploring Privacy" roundtable, and asked you to sign onto the ACLU of Northern California's petition demanding more transparency about when and why companies share our information with the government and others. In this blog post we're going to focus on the privacy implications of social networking sites and the ways that third ... Read More

We've already blogged generally about the Federal Trade Commission's "Exploring Privacy" roundtable and asked you to sign onto the ACLU of Northern California's petition demanding more transparency about when and why companies share our information with the government and others. In this blog post we're going to focus on the privacy implications of cloud computing services and why it is so importa... Read More

On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be in California for the second of its "Exploring Privacy" roundtables. The ACLU will be there sounding the alarm about privacy implications of social networking and cloud computing services. (Check back here for blog posts drilling down into each of these services, with specific recommendations for how the FTC can improve privacy in these areas... Read More