Blog

Across the country we're seeing ongoing attacks on access to reproductive health care. Massive attacks. The Guttmacher Institute released data today detailing that, just a few months into 2012, hundreds of provisions to restrict abortion access have been introduced in state legislatures around the country. Several have already been enacted. Now, more than ever, it's vitally important that Californ... Read More

The long-awaited report on the infamous incident of UC Davis police pepper-spraying non-violent, seated student protesters has been released. It concludes what we all know from watching the shocking videos: "The pepperspraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented." That's the opening to the report, which outlines the various ways that Chancellor Katehi... Read More

The California Location Privacy Act (SB 1434) authored by State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and co-sponsored by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation updates California privacy law to reflect the modern mobile world by providing needed protection against warrantless government access to a person's location information.Most Californians are now carrying tracking devi... Read More

November 9, 2011 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is writing to ask that you make a greater commitment to protecting very personal information about your customers. In particular, we are writing to ask that you stop routinely retaining data about your customers' location history that you happen to collect as a byproduct of how mobile technology works. Documents t... Read More

An Online Privacy Fact Sheet from the ACLU The more email you send, the more digital footprints you leave behind. The information in your email messages is valuable. Online email services make it easy to keep in touch with friends and family. But all those emails say a lot about your interests, habits, beliefs, and concerns. And outdated privacy laws, written before the I... Read More

An Online Privacy Fact Sheet from the ACLU The more you connect online, the more digital footprints you leave behind. The information you share on social networking sites is valuable. Social networking sites are an amazing way to connect with friends and family. But the information that these sites collect about you – not just what's on your profile but also the rec... Read More

An Online Privacy Fact Sheet from the ACLU The more you search online, the more digital footprints you leave behind. The information in your search records is valuable. Searching online is an amazing way to find information about anything and everything. But when you browse those online stacks of information, you leave a trail that reveals a lot about you: your interests,... Read More

An Online Privacy Fact Sheet from the ACLU The more photos you move online, the more digital footprints you leave behind. The information in your online photos is valuable. Moving your photos from photo albums and computer hard drives to online photo services can be convenient. But the photos you upload to these sites—and what you do with them—can say a lot ab... Read More

An Online Privacy Fact Sheet from the ACLUTHE MORE YOU READ & WATCH ONLINE, THE MORE DIGITAL FOOTPRINTSInformation about what you watch and read online is valuableOnline book and video sites are an amazing way to learn about anything and everything. But the videos you watch and the books you read can say a lot about your interests, hobbies, habits, and concerns. And outdated privacy laws, writ... Read More

After decades of tough-on-crime policies and draconian sentencing practices, California's correctional system - a state with one of the highest incarceration rates in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates - finally buckled under its own weight. Faced with last year's historic Supreme Court order requiring a reduction in prison overcrowding, the state enacted AB 109 to realign the c... Read More

By Allie BohmACLU National OfficeThe state of Maryland just passed the first bill in the nation that bans employers from asking for the social media passwords of job applicants and employees. In a statement that the ACLU of Maryland issued about the bill's passage, Melissa Goemann, Legislative Director of ACLU of Maryland, said, "We are proud of Maryland for standing up for the online privacy of e... Read More

By Sarah RobertsACLU National OfficeIn January, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in U.S. v. Jones, ruling unanimously that when the D.C. police and the FBI attached a GPS device to Antoine Jones's car and tracked him for 28 days, they violated the Fourth Amendment. But now the government — instead of fixing the way it conducts this kind of invasive surveillance — has simply set its sig... Read More