Archive

Grand Jury Issued Subpoena To Twitter Demanding Twitter Users' IdentitiesHarrisburg – The ACLU of Pennsylvania announced today that it is representing two anonymous Twitter users who have criticized State Attorney General Tom Corbett on a social networking site. Corbett's office asked a grand jury to issue a subpoena earlier this month to Twitter demanding the identities of his critics."Any subpoe... Read More

What you choose to read says a lot about who you are, what you value, and what you believe. That is why you should be able to read about anything from politics to health without worrying that someone is looking over your shoulder. But, as books move into digital form, new reader privacy issues are emerging.Digital book services are capturing detailed information about readers including who they ar... Read More

Following protests around California against education budget cuts, student demonstrators at several universities faced harsh disciplinary crackdowns. The ACLU of Northern California has stepped in on behalf of students at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State University about questionable discipline of a student protester. The ACLU of Northern California's role involv... Read More

San Francisco – As spending on California's massive prison system continues unabated, Governor Schwarzenegger's office has declared that the revised budget to be released tomorrow will propose "absolutely terrible cuts." The American Civil Liberties Union, Drug Policy Alliance and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights call on the Governor to choose three effective, budget-saving reforms over wasteful... Read More

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California has written the attached letter to Morgan Hill Unified School District in response to media reports regarding students at Live Oak High School being prohibited from wearing American flag t-shirts to school on May 5, 2010. The letter criticizes the school's censorship of the students' patriotic expression in light of student speech rights under the First A... Read More

Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is holding its first hearing to discuss the woefully outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (Did we mention that it was written in 1986?!)The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution was designed to protect the privacy of our personal information. Unfortunately, innovation has far outpaced electroni... Read More

Should the police be able to follow you around and collect and analyze your DNA from something you discard, without a warrant or even a reason to believe you have committed a crime? 

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After securing a key ruling regarding the First Amendment from the Ninth Circuit, the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) yesterday produced documents relating to its efforts to defeat Proposition 8. The ACLU had sought to appeal an order requiring it to produce its No on 8 documents, arguing that the First Amendment should cover communications between groups working together on a political caus... Read More

The ACLU of Northern California's Santa Clara Valley Chapter is holding an essay contest for high school students residing in or attending school in Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Serano, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, or Sunnyvale.Find out more here. Please note, the deadline has been extended to May 15, 2010.You rely on the Internet to learn, share, shop, ... Read More

Two surveys caught our eye today. The surveys are on two different Internet privacy topics–location information and cloud computing–but both reveal how important it is that we reform electronic privacy law to clearly cover useful digital services. Updating electronic privacy law is necessary both to protect the users of these services and for the businesses who hope to encourage Americans that the... Read More