Blog

Automatic license plate readers collect and store highly sensitive information that can reveal where we work, live, worship, or seek reproductive health services. Sharing any ALPR information with out-of-state or federal law enforcement agencies has been forbidden in California since 2016. Read More

Companies and legislators are using misleading test scores to justify the expansion of facial recognition into our communities. That flawed approach understates the threat this dangerous technology poses to civil rights. Read More

The change appears to place significant limits on law enforcement’s ability to use “geofence warrants” (also called “reverse location search warrants”) to find out who was in a particular place at a particular time. Google’s announcement is welcome news, and we are cautiously optimistic that this change—once it rolls out—will protect people for years to come.   Read More

Our right to speak anonymously, long protected by U.S. courts, is increasingly under attack by corporations and wealthy individuals looking to upend decades of free speech precedent. Read More

We are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Meta and X have broken their anti-surveillance commitments Read More

The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an opportunity to redouble our commitment to its principles worldwide. For those individuals and organizations whose focus is human rights within the United States, we are called to do two things. First, rather than cede the US Constitution to powerful forces who would use it to turn back the clock, we must embrace a visio... Read More

For years, ACLU of Northern California has built momentum to ban the use of face surveillance by law enforcement. That’s why we put all our muscle behind a campaign to defeat AB 642, a bill that would have normalized real-time, mass surveillance. Read More

Fifty years ago a modern constitutional right to privacy was added to the state constitution. And for the last five decades, that right has helped to safeguard our homes, our families, our bodies, our thoughts, and our associations from invasion by government and corporate interests. Read More

In Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer,’ there is a scene where government agents creep outside a gathering of UC Berkeley-affiliated activists to write down the license plates of those parked outside the event. Instead of learning from this history, the City of Berkeley has taken a step towards repeating it.  Read More

How could San Francisco, a purported “progressive” city, authorize deadly police robots? And how do we stop this policy, or something similar, from returning? Read More

By a margin of 4-7, the San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to give the SFPD access to privately owned cameras. With the cameras, comes the power to put essentially the entire city under live surveillance indefinitely. Read More

Here in the Bay Area, we must do everything we can right now to bolster privacy protections, not build more surveillance. Read More