Archive

Sacramento – In his revised 2011-12 state budget, Governor Brown today recommitted to his criminal justice realignment plan, but left out safe and simple sentencing reforms that would ensure that the plan is effective and affordable. The governor's plan keeps people convicted of minor felonies at the county level instead of in state prison. Advocates highlighted, however, that a key part of the so... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and The San Francisco Bay Guardian (The Guardian) filed a preliminary injunction motion on April 28, 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 Foundation of Northern California and ... Read More

By Christopher CalabreseACLU Washington Legislative OfficeIn light of the recent disclosures about iPhone and Android location tracking, Sen. Al Franken and the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking the very welcome step of shedding light on privacy and smart phones with a hearing tomorrow. The senators will undoubtedly quiz Apple and Android's parent company Google about their practices of s... Read More

Today, California lawmakers took an important step towards updating reader privacy for the digital age. The California Senate passed the Reader Privacy Act of 2011 (SB 602) with a unanimous bipartisan vote of 40-0.The Reader Privacy Act is authored by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo), co-sponsored by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and supported by dive... 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

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

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

[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

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

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