Archive

Get a warrant -- that’s what I would say if the police showed up at my door asking to look around. Why? Because it’s my right. It’s one of the core principles that this country was founded on: the government, including local police, can’t come into my home unless they prove to a judge that they have a real reason to invade my privacy.If police want to search your house, they need to get a warrant.... Read More

A coalition of advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent a letter this week to the San Jose City Council demanding that it have the necessary public debate of whether a drone should ever be used in San Jose well before it starts to consider how it could be used. Read More

It’s Time for a Public Debate and a New Vote Over San Jose Police Purchase of DroneThe San Jose Police Department (SJPD) is clearly getting ahead of itself. Despite there not having been any sort of public debate about whether or not to use a drone at all, the department today issued a statement saying it will develop policies and procedures for its deployment. With the history of police abus... Read More

The San Jose City Council has approved a police request to acquire a drone – without public debate and with no policy overseeing its use. Read More

When the government demands that your cell phone carrier reveal information about where you’ve been, or where you’re going to go, they should get a warrant. Location information is exactly the kind of sensitive information that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect. Read More

Linda Lye and Nicole Ozer are legal stalwarts at the ACLU of Northern California, and for many years have advocated fiercely on behalf of privacy and free speech in our digital era. They are hard at work reining in the government’s use of technology for surveillance. Read More

Net neutrality is a civil rights issue. The open internet that we now enjoy allows minority groups and dissenting voices to engage in the political process and tell their stories like never before, bypassing traditional big-media gatekeepers. Read More

The San Francisco Police Department has agreed to stop warrantless searches of cellphones of people who are arrested. This is the result of a settlement announced today in the ACLU-NC's lawsuit against SFPD over this practice. Read More

The United States Supreme Court unanimously acknowledged what common sense tells us and everyone who owns a cell phone (yes, that would be just about everyone) already knows: Our cell phones have a whole lot of private information about us. The Court therefore held that cops need a warrant to search a cell phone.In one of the best references to extraterrestrial life to appear in a recent (or perha... Read More

Federal and state law enforcement entities across the country are using a powerful cell phone surveillance tool commonly referred to as a “StingRay.”  These devices are capable of locating a cell phone with extraordinary precision, but to do so they operate in dragnet fashion, scooping up information from a target device, as well as otherwireless devices in the vicinity.  In addition, th... Read More