Archive

SACRAMENTO – Just days after being sworn in as California’s 40th governor, Gavin Newsom unveiled his proposed budget today for the 2019-20 Fiscal Year, including a $124.9 million investment to expand preschool education to all low-income four-year-olds over the next three years. In response, Sylvia Torres-Guillén, the ACLU of California's Director of Education Equity, issued the following state... Read More

SB1421 gives the public the right to see records related to police misconduct. Find out how you can make requests. Read More

On Tuesday night, President Trump will address the nation in a primetime speech in which he’ll make his case for a 1,000-mile border wall, followed by a trip to South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley on Thursday. But Trump’s characterization of the situation on the southwest border is driven not by facts but by his own nativist agenda and political obsession with building a wall. In advance of the spee... Read More

Download the Fall 2019 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

BANGKOK — Google today made it clear that it has not, and will not, sell a facial recognition surveillance product until the technology’s dangers are addressed, citing its susceptibility to abuse. Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties director for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, issued the following comment in response: “This is a strong first step. Google today demon... Read More

Recently, a patent application from Amazon became public that seeks to pair face surveillance — like Rekognition, the product that the company is aggressively marketing to police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with Ring, a doorbell camera company that Amazon bought earlier this year. While the details are sketchy, the application describes a system that the police can use to match th... Read More

Lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court challenging the state of California for its retention of genetic samples and profiles from people arrested but never convicted of a felony. Read More

In yet another step toward the normalization of facial recognition as a blanket security measure, last week the Department of Homeland Security published details of a U.S. Secret Service plan to test the use of facial recognition in and around the White House. According to the document, the Secret Service will test whether its system can identify certain volunteer staff members by scanning vide... Read More

On October 24, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of Black students in the Visalia Unified School District who have faced ongoing racial hostility. The complaint, filed with the Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education, charges the district with violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by creating a racially hostile ... Read More

WASHINGTON — Reports released today indicate that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents are using tear gas against migrants attempting to seek asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry at the Mexico/California border. Lorella Praeli, deputy political director at the ACLU, had the following response: “Under no circumstances should CBP be using tear gas on children. This show of violence is ... Read More