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Yesterday we sent a letter to the San Francisco Entertainment Commission highlighting our concerns with proposed new rules for bars, clubs, and other venues that host various forms of live entertainment. The new rules would require the venue to use ID scanners and video cameras to monitor every performer and attendee. In doing so, they would constitute a massive invasion of the privacy rights that... Read More

Today the California Assembly Education Committee passed Seth's Law in a 7-3 vote. AB 9, also known as Seth's Law, is a comprehensive bill that addresses school bullying by providing California schools with specific tools to prevent and address the pervasive problem in order to create a safe school environment for all students. The bill is named "Seth's Law"' in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13 year-old... Read More

Download the Spring 2011 ACLU of Northern California Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

We recently announced that it's time for a privacy check-in for location-based services and mobile devices. Apparently Apple didn't get the memo, as its latest iPhone and iPad regularly record your location in a hidden file. Join us and tell Apple that you demand control over your sensitive location information!As we discussed at our panel yesterday at Where 2.0, user trust is critical for a compa... Read More

Apple (and, to a lesser extent, Google) has dominated the recent headlines after news broke that iPhones and iPads keep a massive log of your location history in a hidden but unencrypted file on the device. It's a good reminder that technology can certainly pose a threat to privacy by making it hard for you to control and protect your own personal information.But that's not always the case. There ... Read More

Jay StanleyACLU National OfficeApple has finally responded to the revelation that iPhone and iPads keep records of their users' whereabouts. We're glad that Apple has promised to change this practice. At the same time, nobody should think of this dust-up as some overblown quirk or mere bug, as Apple has portrayed it. This incident should be a wakeup call to Americans that we need to demand greater... Read More

[Update: Sony has stated that they did not "understand the scope of the breach" until April 25. It remains unclear at what point they became aware that at least some user data had been compromised.]Less than a week after the revelation that Apple's iPhones and iPads keep location data logs, Sony announced a doozy of a privacy snafu of its own: a recent security breach on its PlayStation Network re... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and The San Francisco Bay Guardian (The Guardian) filed a preliminary injunction motion today, asking the court to order the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to disclose records regarding the worldwide scramble for execution drugs by state prison officials. The ACLU of Northern California and The Guardian filed a federal laws... Read More

In April, following months of lively debate, city officials in the town of Redding, California, adopted a policy that restricts leafletting in the plaza in front of the Redding Municipal Library. On May 4, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which challenged the policy on the ground that it violates the First Amendment and the California Constitution, obtained a temporary re... Read More

Today the ACLU of California sent an open letter to Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez asking that two key reforms targeting waste in prison spending are included in the May revised budget. These two reforms alone would save the state hundreds of millions annually: making possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use a misdemeanor inst... Read More