Blog

In a test the ACLU recently conducted of Amazon's facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime. The false matches were disproportionately of people of color. Read More

Scooter companies Spin, Bird, and Lime are racing to gather your personal data, and have failed to take the time and steps necessary to properly address rider privacy. Read More

On Monday afternoon, civil rights, religious, and community organizations are taking their demand that Amazon stop providing face surveillance technology to governments, including police departments, to the company’s headquarters in Seattle. The groups will deliver over 150,000 petition signatures, a coalition letter signed by nearly 70 organizations representing comm... Read More

The Trump administration is ramping up surveillance of what people say on social media — and it’s doing so largely in secret. Social media surveillance by the government raises serious concerns about free speech, racial and religious profiling, and privacy. The ACLU today filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out how agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are... Read More

Read More

In neighborhoods across California, law enforcement agencies are deploying secret and invasive surveillance technologies to collect sensitive location and biometric data, target local activists, and feed ICE’s deportation machine. Read More

As the Trump Administration exploits local surveillance systems to target immigrants, California residents are fighting for legislation and reforms that protect all residents from invasive surveillance. Read More

We learned last weekend that a trove of personal information from 50 million people — one in three U.S. Facebook users — was harvested for an influence and propaganda operation led by Cambridge Analytica, a company later used by the Trump campaign. Was Facebook hacked? Nope. All of this personal information was accessed through the Facebook “app gap,” a major privacy hole in Facebook’s app platfor... Read More

Companies developing facial-recognition software need to consider how their products enable dragnet surveillance, discriminatory enforcement, and abuse. Read More

Last night, the Bay Area city of Alameda unanimously rejected a proposed $500,000 contract to purchase license plate reader technology from Vigilant, a company that recently sold ICE access to its nationwide database. This is a win for the rights of all residents. Read More

Is law enforcement in your area demanding personal info from social media companies? Here's how to find out.

Read More

These days, it seems like almost every city is launching “smart initiatives” that promise to turn data about the city into improved public services, a vibrant business community, or a new approach to challenges like public health. But it's not smart to assume that any given “smart city” technology will actually benefit the public. These technologies can cause real harm to people. They ha... Read More