Archive

An attempt by two landlords to identify two dozen people who posted comments anonymously about the apartment buildings where they live is nothing more than an effort to intimidate critics and should be denied, Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California said in a federal court brief filed today in California. Read More

On November 19, 2008, the California Supreme Court granted review in the legal challenges to Proposition 8, which passed by a narrow margin of 52 percent on November 4. In an order issued today, the Court agreed to hear the case and set an expedited briefing schedule. The Court also denied an immediate stay. Read More

Microsoft recently announced the Windows Sensor and Location Platform, a component of the next release of the Windows operating system that allows applications to access sensors, including location sensors. Tracking a user's location, and sharing that information with any application that requests it, carries serious privacy concerns. Other tools, such as Mozilla Geode, allay some of these concern... Read More

The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) today filed a California Public Records Act request seeking to prompt the San Jose Police Department (SJPD) to release police reports relating to all 2007 arrests for public intoxication. The formal request for the reports stems from the recent revelation, reported in the San Jose Mercury News, that the SJPD arrests people for alleged public drunkenness at... Read More

Search users trust companies like Google to keep the contents of their search private. Recently, Google threatened that trust in using search queries to track flu outbreaks. Even though the motivation for this use may be wholly altruistic, and the information may be entirely aggregate without any personal identifiers, this still demonstrates that Google considers search queries Google property to ... Read More

Recently, Mozilla introduced Geode, an extension for the Firefox browser that can determine where you are and share that information with Web sites and other services. This allows Web sites to deliver location-based services, which, as we recently discussed, carry serious privacy concerns. Geode's privacy policy mitigates some of these concerns, but ultimately our ability to control location infor... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes. The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution's core commitment to equality for everyone b... Read More

The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation's leading LGBT legal groups agree that the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married between June 16, 2008 and the possible passage of Proposition 8 are still valid in the state of California and must continue to be honored by the state. Read More

For the third time in four years, voters in California rejected a measure that would have endangered the health and safety of pregnant teenagers. Proposition 4 represents a third strike against mandatory parental notification laws and the harms they cause.The ACLU of Northern California is pleased and proud that voters made it clear that the health and safety of young women must come first, before... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes. The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone ... Read More