Facebook, hardly a stranger to controversy, set off yet another firestorm recently when it changed its Terms of Use.

We have just won a victory for privacy and against biometrics, thanks to many of you!

Thousands of faxes and emails from ACLU of Northern California members were critical in getting the California Legislature to send a letter rejecting the Department of Motor Vehicle's proposal to begin embedding biometric information — face and fingerprint scans — into our drivers' licenses.

Today is the second annual Data Privacy Day, an international holiday "devoted to spotlighting computer privacy and protection issues." While Data Privacy Day is only two years old, warnings about online privacy have been popping up since 2000.

People are talking about internet content filtering, especially since the ACLU won its case against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which tried to censor all speech about sex from the internet. But don't be confused between voluntary use of filters as an alternative to a criminal statute and governmentally imposed filters. ACLU First Amendment attorney Chris Hansen explains more about filtering and when it works and doesn't.

The Child Online Protection Act was passed in 1998 in an effort to prevent minors from accessing "material harmful to minors," specifically depictions of sexual activity or nudity, on the Internet. Unfortunately, the Act did in a manner that substantially impaired free speech rights, and its implementation has been barred as likely unconstitutional on several occasions, including by the Supreme Court in a case argued by the ACLU.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court today to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement. Both organizations, Long Haul and the East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS), are publishers of information for social and political activists.

A report released today evaluating San Francisco's surveillance cameras concludes that the cameras have failed in their mission of reducing violent crime in the city. Following an outside evaluation of the City's ill-advisory video surveillance program, independent researchers at the University of California Berkeley issued today's report.