Archive

I was raped by a fellow soldier when I was stationed in Korea. I found out I was pregnant as a result of the rape when my commander called me into his office one day to charge me with adultery. A doctor at the medical center had told my commander – but not me – that I was pregnant. I hadn't reported the rape because I was trying to "soldier on" and I didn't trust my chain of command. As it turns o... Read More

Quick quiz: where did a government agency shut down cell service yesterday to disrupt a political protest? You wouldn't expect the answer to be San Francisco, but that's exactly what happened on Aug. 12, 2011. BART blocked cell service on trains and platforms in San Francisco after notifying riders that there might be demonstrations near Civic Center.All over the world people are using mobile devi... Read More

College presents the first opportunity for many students to become politically engaged and express their opinions through protest. Read More

This morning, Facebook announced its latest set of changes to its privacy controls that will start rolling out on August 25. The upcoming changes are intended to make it easier for you to understand and choose who can see both content you post yourself and tags created by other users. Allowing you to pre-approve tags and giving you better tools to manage your own profile is a positive step, and we... Read More

Sentencing Reform Key to 'Realignment'In May, in Brown v. Plata, the U.S. Supreme Court spoke definitively: California must stop imprisoning so many people. The High Court concluded that California's prison system is so bloated that it poses extreme risks to prisoners and to staff, and that reducing the number of people in state prisons is the only way to end grossly inadequate health care and "ne... Read More

The Golden State has a problem. An addiction problem. California is addicted to incarceration. We've hit rock bottom, and it's time for an intervention. To help the state break the addiction, yesterday the ACLU of California sent a 12-step plan to every county in the state, as part of a larger ACLU comprehensive public safety realignment report. The report urges a fundamental shift in criminal jus... Read More

A comprehensive report released today by the ACLU of California and sent to officials in every county across the state urges local jurisdictions to fundamentally shift criminal justice policies toward "smart-on-crime" alternatives to incarceration. The new report, Community Safety, Community Solutions, offers guidelines and tools for county governments scrambling to implement the Governor's new pu... Read More

Today the ACLU of Northern California urged the Davis Joint Unified School District to protect students from coercive police interrogations on campus. This comes after three instances in which the editor of the school paper and an A.P. Calculus student were subjected to unlawful questioning. During the interrogations, neither student was informed of their right not to answer questions, or advised ... Read More

The ACLU filed a class action suit against the U.S. government on behalf of adult immigration detainees, all of whom appear in immigration court shackled at the wrists, waist, and ankles, regardless of their history or capacity for disruption. All adult detainees are shackled for the duration of immigration court proceedings in San Francisco. There are no existing legal channels to challenge appli... Read More

BART is the first known government agency in the United States to block cell service in order to disrupt a political protest. In this case the demonstration was to protest the recent fatal shooting of a passenger by BART police. Pulling the plug on cell phones is the wrong response to political protests, whether it's halfway around the world or right here at home.On Thursday, August 11, BART shut ... Read More