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The ACLU of California has obtained records showing that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provided user data access to Geofeedia, a developer of a social media monitoring product that we have seen marketed to law enforcement as a tool to monitor activists and protesters.We are pleased that after we reported our findings to the companies, Instagram cut off Geofeedia’s access to public user posts, a... Read More

It goes without saying that speaking out against police violence or government overreach shouldn’t land you in a surveillance database. But it can, and it does.The ACLU of California has received thousands of pages of public records revealing that law enforcement agencies across the state are secretly acquiring social media spying software that can sweep activists int... Read More

When you are having meetings about transparency and building trust with law enforcement, the last thing you expect to hear is that they may be secretly spying on you. But that is exactly what happened to us as community activists with Fresno Faith In Community/Live Free. Read More

Public cynicism about government is at an all-time high – and we all know the reasons. That's why it's pretty remarkable when activists use public government processes to attack a scary and overwhelming problem like surveillance – and it works. Read More

When Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA in 2013, I didn’t yet know that my own city of Oakland had futuristic surveillance problems of our own. Oakland had quietly embarked on a path towards building a city-wide surveillance network called the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), comprised of over 700 cameras throughout schools and public housing, facial recognition software, automated license p... Read More

The ACLU and EFF are urging the Federal Communications Commission to order local police to stop using Stingrays, at least until the FCC can create rules to protect against excessive secrecy and abuse. Read More

Five years ago today, BART made the unprecedented decision to shut off cell service at multiple stations in order to suppress a protest. Scores of riders were left without the ability to communicate. Read More

I’m the first to admit: I love Pokémon Go. Another thing I love? Privacy. I was shocked to find out that in signing up to explore the Pokémon world, I'd given Pokémon Go permission to explore my Gmail inbox. Read More

Imagine: You pull out your phone to record police misconduct—suddenly, your camera just doesn’t work. Turns out, your phone’s camera has been disabled by an infrared emitter. Apple’s newly patented technology may make this possible. The technology places an infrared sensor in your phone that has the potential to be disabled remotely. While the technology is being promoted as a tool to prevent the ... Read More

Santa Clara County has passed a landmark law to stop secret and discriminatory surveillance. The passage of this new law comes on the heels of San Jose's secret acquisition of a drone, the Santa Clara Sheriff's attempt to quietly buy an invasive cell phone tracking device, and revelations that Fresno and Bay Area police departments have been using social networking software that monitors Black Liv... Read More

It’s pretty simple: our social media content is protected by the First Amendment. That’s why the ACLU is concerned that the federal government is pressuring social media companies to limit content on platforms that hundreds of millions of people use every day. Read More

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter is no longer going to allow US intelligence agencies to access a Twitter-affiliated business service that compiles and analyzes the hundreds of millions of daily tweets on the service. Read More