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In late September, US District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the PATRIOT Act's changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. The sections of FISA struck down by Judge Aiken detail how and under what circumstances federal officials can get a warrant to wiretap. Prior to the passage of the... Read More

State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) announced today that Governor Schwarzenegger signed his Senate Bill 362, which would prohibit employers and others from forcing anyone to have a radio frequency identification (RFID) device implanted under their skin. The bill will go into effect on January 1, 2008.RFID "tags" are tiny chips with miniature antennae that can be embedded in almost anything. U... Read More

Over the last week, Americans in places as far as upstate New York and as nearby as downtown San Francisco have noticed ads on billboards and taxi cabs for Google's new service, Google 411. Google 411allows users to call a 1-800 number to get local business information for no fee. Users can also connect to the requested number without a charge and can have the phone number sent as a t... Read More

Last November we learned that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been secretly compiling data on millions of innocent Americans. According to the Washington Post, the DHS has been using its Automated Targeting System (ATS) originally developed for cargo security to generate "terrorist" risk ratings on American travelers. This past August the DHS proposed a rule that would continue the c... Read More

In case you missed it on our National ACLU blog, here is an entry written by the ACLU's Catherine Crump about the government's latest attempt to censor the Internet. As expected, the government is appealing the ACLU's March 2007 victory in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) case. COPA is an Internet censorship law that makes it a crime to place content deemed "harmful to minors" o... Read More

In case you missed it on the National ACLU blog, check out this post by Michael German, Policy Counsel on national security, immigration and privacy. He explains how some of the Director of National Intelligence's public statements in support of warrantless wiretaps distort reality, the issues, and the law. There's been a lot of confusion of late about just how vital the Protect Ameri... Read More

A controversial new program to use spy satellites for domestic surveillance has been postponed due to concerns brought to the attention of Congress by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups. On September 6, Barry Steinhardt, the Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, testified before Congress, asking for a moratorium on the domestic use of military spy satellites un... Read More

In case you missed it on the National ACLU blog, check out this post by Noam Biale from the National Technology and Liberty Program. It discusses how companies that stand to profit significantly from a massive national ID and database system are trying to use their pull to convince Congress to fund this privacy and security nightmare. The federal Real ID Act doesn't have many friends ... Read More

In case you missed the story on our National ACLU blog, here is a great entry written by Marv Johnson, Legislative Counsel in our Washington Legislative Office about this week's stories about Verizon Wireless' attempts to censor messages on its text-message network. If you want to see what the Internet will look like in a few years without net neutrality, you need look no further than... Read More

According to a recent study by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CIAA) , the fair use doctrine in copyright law not only facilitates criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research, but fair use-related industries add $2.2 trillion dollars to the United States economy each year in the process. While some corporations see fair use as a thorn in the side,... Read More

Signing up with one company for multiple goods or services or just visiting one store or internet site to buy everything for your home often seems like a good idea. It can mean dealing with fewer bills, saving some time on a busy day, or keeping a few more dollars in your wallet. But, as you buy more things from fewer companies, they are not just pocketing more of your money, they may also be coll... Read More

Figures released last week by the London Assembly of Liberal Democrats suggest that London's video surveillance network, totaling over 10,500 cameras in all, does not help solve crimes. The Liberal Democrats looked at the percentage of crimes solved in the boroughs of London and compared those figures with the number of video surveillance cameras in each borough. While the number of... Read More