Archive

This morning's media event was Facebook's announcement of "Graph Search," a new tool to find content and data on Facebook that could wind up making information about you far easier your friends or just about anyone else to find. Graph Search allows you to search Facebook for specific people, places, or content – for example, "friend of friends who live in New York and like sushi" or "restaurants l... Read More

In response to an ACLU of Northern California Public Records Act request, the California Emergency Management Agency, the state entity that administers federal homeland security grant funds, recently confirmed that the Alameda County Sheriff's Office is the only agency in the entire state of California to have applied for or obtained grant funding from Cal-EMA for a drone.While this doesn't mean t... Read More

In a disturbing trend that can have a chilling effect on free speech, law enforcement agencies around the country are seeking wide-ranging information about the social networking activity of political activists. The San Francisco District Attorney recently issued subpoenas to Twitter for tweets by two political protesters, Lauren Smith and Robert Donohoe, who had been charged with rioting and unla... Read More

The next time a cop sees a picture of you, that picture may not have been taken by a person at all. Unmanned flying drones can allow their operators to remotely - and cheaply - monitor and record individuals, groups, or locations. These drones pose significant threats to privacy when police can use them to peer into homes or track an individual's actions from afar. While law enforcement agencies a... Read More

Buried on the Board of Supervisor's 66-item agenda for its December 4, 2012 hearing was a surprising request by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office for approval to "apply for, accept and administer" funds from the California Emergency Management Agency (Cal-EMA) to buy a drone.This was very troubling for a number of reasons.The Sheriff to date has not been forthcoming about his intentions and act... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California will charge the Alameda County Sheriff's Office with secretly proceeding with plans to unleash a surveillance drone on Alameda County during a press conference TOMORROW, Dec. 4., at 10 a.m. outside the Alameda County administration building. Read More

Think Facebook is only interested in your online activity? Think again. The company recently announced a partnership with information broker Datalogix, which operates many of the loyalty card programs we use to get a discount at stores like CVS. The partnership — one of Facebook's three new advertising programs —allows Facebook to gauge the effectiveness of its ads by learning about the offline pu... Read More

This morning, 26 individuals and organizations including the ACLU of California sent an open letter to new Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer asking her to add HTTPS security to Yahoo! Mail. Without secure connections, the email sent and received by Yahoo! users around the world — from dissidents living under repressive regimes to Americans communicating about sensitive topics — is vulnerable to interceptio... Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 - a ballot measure passed by voters that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offenders in California. Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 - a ballot measure passed by California voters Tuesday that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offenders in California. Read More