Archive

On April 8, 2010, the ACLU of Northern California and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area filed an amicus brief with the Alameda County Superior Court opposing a proposed gang injunction in Oakland. If granted, the gang injunction would give the Oakland Police Department wide discretion to label people gang members without having to present any evidence to a judge... Read More

On April 6, 2010, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California sent a letter to U.C. Berkeley, criticizing its handling of discipline against students involved in on-campus protests on December 11, 2009.Students were issued overbroad suspensions that limited even their off-campus communications with members of the University community, in violation of the rights to free association and speech, and t... Read More

In 1986, there was no World Wide Web, nobody carried a cell phone, and the president was a man born in 1911. That was the year that the statute that protects the privacy of your electronic life – email, search terms, cloud computing, cell phone location records, postings to Facebook – was passed into law. Even then, Congress recognized that computerized record-keeping would pose privacy issues as ... Read More

As the United States moves away from death sentences to permanent imprisonment, California – particularly Los Angeles County – lags behind, according to a new report on the death penalty by the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC). In 2009, the number of new death sentences nationwide reached the lowest level since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The Golden State, however, sent more peo... Read More

Today, Facebook released proposed changes to its privacy policy and its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Facebook's newest changes seem to be designed to encourage users to share more information with applications and sites that they visit and use, which fits in with the string of other changes that have been happening on Facebook and with Mark Zuckerberg's world view on changing social n... Read More

The ACLU filed an amicus brief yesterday to the Supreme Court in the case of City of Ontario v. Quon. At stake in this case is whether public employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy for the text messages they send on devices owned by their employers. But at stake more broadly is the balance between employer access and employee privacy in a world where communications via computers, email... Read More

Federal Judge Vaughn Walker ruled yesterday that the ACLU and Equality California must turn over campaign documents, including internal e-mails and memos, even though the groups are not parties to the legal challenge brought by Ted Olson and David Boies seeking to strike Prop 8. Read More

We spent the last few days in the middle of the exciting whirlwind of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas. The festival is one of the largest and most influential gatherings of technology and new media players in the world, and we thought that it would be an important and receptive audience for our online privacy message.Were we ever right!In addition to presenting... Read More

Many people are surprised to learn that it costs more to sentence someone to execution than permanent imprisonment, also known as life without parole. This page highlights key findings from the ACLU-NC's report The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Cost of Seeking Executions in California to answer some frequently asked questions about the costs of California's death penalty system.Click to v... Read More

A Freedom of Information Act request was filed by the ACLU of Northern California and others seeking records relating to federal government activity in connection to the FBI's investigation of Muslim communities. The groups seek records related to domestic intelligence practices including the use of informants and infiltrators (such as those reportedly used in gyms, community centers and mosques),... Read More