Archive

In September 2007, a U.S. District Court judge in Oregon struck down two provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act as unconstitutional. Brandon Mayfield, a Portland-based attorney, was arrested and detained in connection with the 2004 bombing of a train station in Madrid, but was released after two weeks when a fingerprint at the scene alleged to be his was matched to an Algerian terrorist. The court foun... Read More

Today was a really good day for the First Amendment. And it was also a good day for our court system. The judge made it clear in the Wikileaks case that he took the Constitutional issues seriously, at one point reminding the court that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.From the very beginning of the argument over what should happen in the Wikileaks case, the judge made it clear that ... Read More

The 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 used documents on the Wikileaks.org website in their work and want to c... Read More

Today was a really good day for the First Amendment. And it was also a good day for our court system.From the very beginning of the argument over what should happen in the Wikileaks case, the judge made it clear that he took the Constitutional issues seriously, at one point reminding the lawyers for the Bank that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.In the end the Court not only dissolv... 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

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

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

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

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

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