Blog

In 2001, an African-American student at Grace Davis High School in Modesto was involved in a fight with another student over race–the other student called him a "nigger." While the black student was suspended for more than a month and then transferred to another school, the white student was suspended only briefly.The African-American student's family filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of ... Read More

The rights of two African-American students were violated when they were expelled from Deer Valley High School following an off-campus incident in which police officers pepper-sprayed the students and forcefully arrested them, a judge ruled in May 2008. The judge overturned the expulsions. Read More

"I can't remember a day at school when I wasn't called a faggot or gay," said Robby Martinazzi. Throughout elementary and middle school, Robby had been the target of taunts, physical abuse, and name-calling based on his sexual orientation. After years of asking officials at his Lake County school district to intervene, Robby's parents called the ACLU of Northern California.The result was a compreh... Read More

"My greatest hope for Robby is that he will just grow up accepting and loving himself," said his mother, Tracy Martinazzi, who took on a school district -- and a way of thinking -- that allowed her son to be the victim of name-calling, taunts, and, finally, brutal physical abuse based on his sexual orientation."And I really want my son to grow up without a victim mentality. I want him to be able t... Read More

On blogs, personal and political websites, and through user-generated content sites, ordinary citizens in extraordinary numbers are recreating a public sphere and reinvigorating the democratic debate at the core of our political system. 46% of Americans have already used the Internet in connection with the political campaign- more than during all of 2004. User-generated content is playing a partic... Read More

"We didn't do anything wrong," said Victor Lopez, one of the Latino students at Rodriquez High School (RHS) who in March 2007 were lined up in front of their peers, accused of being gang members, and photographed by Fairfield police. "I was just talking to my friends. The police shouldn't assume we're gang members just because we're Latino and wearing certain colors. Lots of kids were wearing the ... Read More

Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country?If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye. With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information &mdash... Read More

The Federal Communications Commission chastised Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer applications today, calling the practice unreasonable and ordering Comcast to change its network management policies.Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, responded, "We applaud the FCC for taking enforcement action against Comcast. The nation's second largest Internet service pr... Read More

In a clear victory for free speech, a federal court once again held that the ACLU is right and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a law that would criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet, is unconstitutional. This decision is the latest in the ACLU's 10-year battle to defend free speech on the Internet. The American Civil Liberties Union challen... Read More

Dutch and British transit cards, California Senate ID cards, HID building access cards, some new generation credit cards, and now FasTrak.What do they have in common?They all use RFID technology and security researchers have shown that they all have glaring privacy and security risks.Researcher Nate Lawson has discovered that FasTrak transponders are vulnerable to sniffing, cloning, and surreptiti... Read More

Dutch Chipmaker NXP, formerly Philips Semiconductors, is taking Dutch Radboud University to court to try to prevent researchers from publishing their scientific paper showing how the RFID chips used in Dutch travel cards can be copied and cloned.The Bay Area recently released its own RFID-enabled transit card system,Translink. It is important to ensure that security research about these systems is... Read More

President Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, at 1:15 p.m. this afternoon in the Rose Garden.Immediately after he signed, the ACLU sued.Our clients are reporters, organizations like Amnesty International, Global Fund for Women, and Human Rights Watch, and defense attorneys, whose activities will be greatly curtailed by this new law.Our argument is simple: This bill is a clear vio... Read More