Archive

In a new YouTube video released Feb. 28, 2008, Aundre Herron talks about why California’s death penalty has to go.  As both a former prosecutor and murder victim survivor, Herron has a unique and incisive perspective on the death penalty, which she shared with the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.Watch her testimonyHerron commented that she empathizes with the ... Read More

Order To Shut Down Wikileaks.org Violates First Amendment, Groups SayThe American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last night filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the domain name Wikileaks.org shut down. The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and us... Read More

We are deeply saddened by the apparent murder of 26-year-old Arthur Carmona on Feb. 17, 2008.Arthur was just 16-years-old when he was wrongfully convicted of a robbery as a result of mistaken eyewitness identification in 1998. Arthur spent two years in prison before his innocence was proven, largely as a result of the tireless efforts of his mother, Ronnie Carmona, and his pro-bono legal team... Read More

A recent policy conference on Internet issues held in Washington, D.C. included the panel, "Social Networking and Privacy: An Oxymoron?" It shouldn't be, but some of the major platforms for social networking seem to be treating the two concepts as if they were mutually exclusive.We have blogged about the controversy over Facebook's Beacon feature, a program launched during the holiday shopping sea... Read More

Download the Winter 2008 ACLU-NC Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

SAN JOSE, CA - A federal court yesterday bowed to pressure from the Bush administration and dismissed a case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. for the company's role in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, charged that Jeppesen knowingly aided the program by providing flight planning and logistical support services... Read More

The ACLU of Northern California has been a leader in generating public and legislative attention to the privacy, personal safety, and financial security risks associated with the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in government-issued identification documents, such as drivers' licenses and student ID cards.The Stanford Technology Law Review has recently published Rights "Chipp... Read More

SB 31 overwhelmingly passed the California State Senate last week with a vote of 36-3. To read the bill language of SB 31, visit here.SB 31 makes it illegal for a person to intentionally read or attempt to read an RFID tag in an individual's identification document without their knowledge and prior consent.Right now, private information on California drivers' licenses is stored on a magnetic strip... Read More

The Transportation Security Agency has come under significant and ongoing criticism. One major source of concern and irritation are the No-Fly lists, which contain tens of thousands of names and has generated a lot of negative press when U.S. senators, famous musicians and others have been kept off of flights. There are even those who say that TSA is largely engaged in "security theater," meant pr... Read More

The ACLU has released a systematic analysis of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) final regulations for the Real ID Act. It reveals that the regulations still address only 9 percent of the problems with the act that have been identified.The final regulations do not lift the burdens that Real ID imposes on the states and the population, a close look at the regulations reveals that the Real... Read More