Archive

The next time you log onto Facebook, you'll be thinking about privacy: how private are your photos, friends, status updates, and personal details, and how public do you actually want them to be?In response to pressure about its privacy practices, including an ACLU petition signed by over 43,000 concerned Internet users, Facebook has released a new privacy policy, modified its profile and publicati... Read More

A Federal Judge ruled on Nov. 30 that a lawsuit brought by two Bay Area community organizations against federal agents over the seizure of their computers can continue.Long Haul Inc. and the East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS), which are represented by the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, were raided on August 27, 2008 by University of California Police, the A... Read More

California policymakers are deciding now whether your sensitive health-care records can be electronically shared. Take action by December 1 to protect your private health records. The state is undertaking a massive effort to create the first electronic health database, called the health information exchange. Patient health records would be stored in this electronic database and shared among heal... Read More

On Wednesday, November 18 the Tiburon, California Town Council approved a license-plate camera surveillance system that will keep track of every vehicle that enters and leaves the city. These cameras are expensive: The system carries an initial price tag of between $137,000 and $196,000, with an additional $15,000 yearly maintenance fee.There is no evidence that they will do anything to make the T... Read More

Your life, your data. Or is it?When we update our status on Facebook, post those photos on Flickr, or shop for holiday gifts on Amazon, a whole lot happens behind the scenes. The more we do online, the more digital footprints we leave behind. Many sites we visit collect detailed information about us–our politics, hobbies, relationships and more.Outdated privacy laws often fail to keep your persona... Read More

On Saturday, we wrote that the amended Google Book Settlement fails to answer the core privacy problems raised by the ACLU, the EFF and the Samuelson Clinic.Last night, at a debate at the Commonwealth Club on the future of books, U.C. Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson asked Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy why the settlement neglected to address privacy. Clancy's response? "We didn't... Read More

The Amended Google Book Search Settlement, filed with the Court on Friday, November 13, does not resolve the privacy concerns.The ACLU, along with EFF and the Samuelson Clinic, have been working to ensure that Google Book Search does not become a one-stop shop for government surveillance into the reading habits of millions of Americans and pushing for robust privacy and free speech safeguards to b... Read More

New Directives Address Inappropriate Searches Like The One Ron Paul Campaign Treasurer Endured Following a lawsuit filed by American Civil Liberties Union, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has revised its policies governing airline passenger screening to make clear that TSA agents are authorized to conduct searches related to safeguarding flight safety, not to engage in general la... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report recommending steps Congress should take to create the vigorous privacy oversight institutions that are desperately needed in the United States to counterbalance the rush of new technologies and expanding government powers, and called for the Obama administration to move quickly to fill the seats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Overs... Read More

The ACLU Facebook Quiz and its developer, Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow Chris Conley, were recently featured on NPR's radio show, All Things Considered. If you missed it, you can listen to it here.So far, more than 115,000 people have taken the ACLU's Facebook Quiz to see what happens behind-the-scenes to their personal information when they - or a friend - take a quiz on Facebook.The ACLU... Read More