Blog

On Wednesday, November 18 the Tiburon, California Town Council approved a license-plate camera surveillance system that will keep track of every vehicle that enters and leaves the city. These cameras are expensive: The system carries an initial price tag of between $137,000 and $196,000, with an additional $15,000 yearly maintenance fee.There is no evidence that they will do anything to make the T... Read More

Your life, your data. Or is it?When we update our status on Facebook, post those photos on Flickr, or shop for holiday gifts on Amazon, a whole lot happens behind the scenes. The more we do online, the more digital footprints we leave behind. Many sites we visit collect detailed information about us–our politics, hobbies, relationships and more.Outdated privacy laws often fail to keep your persona... Read More

On Saturday, we wrote that the amended Google Book Settlement fails to answer the core privacy problems raised by the ACLU, the EFF and the Samuelson Clinic.Last night, at a debate at the Commonwealth Club on the future of books, U.C. Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson asked Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy why the settlement neglected to address privacy. Clancy's response? "We didn't... Read More

The Amended Google Book Search Settlement, filed with the Court on Friday, November 13, does not resolve the privacy concerns.The ACLU, along with EFF and the Samuelson Clinic, have been working to ensure that Google Book Search does not become a one-stop shop for government surveillance into the reading habits of millions of Americans and pushing for robust privacy and free speech safeguards to b... Read More

New Directives Address Inappropriate Searches Like The One Ron Paul Campaign Treasurer Endured Following a lawsuit filed by American Civil Liberties Union, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has revised its policies governing airline passenger screening to make clear that TSA agents are authorized to conduct searches related to safeguarding flight safety, not to engage in general la... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report recommending steps Congress should take to create the vigorous privacy oversight institutions that are desperately needed in the United States to counterbalance the rush of new technologies and expanding government powers, and called for the Obama administration to move quickly to fill the seats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Overs... Read More

The ACLU Facebook Quiz and its developer, Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow Chris Conley, were recently featured on NPR's radio show, All Things Considered. If you missed it, you can listen to it here.So far, more than 115,000 people have taken the ACLU's Facebook Quiz to see what happens behind-the-scenes to their personal information when they - or a friend - take a quiz on Facebook.The ACLU... Read More

Ability To Track Readers Puts Privacy At Risk, Says ACLUA coalition of authors and publishers – including best-sellers Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, as well as leading security author Bruce Schneier – is urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy and ... Read More

A coalition of authors and publishers, represented by the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, filed an objection this morning in the Google Book Search case. The objection urges the federal judge to reject the proposed settlement because it lacks critical privacy rights for readers and writers.The objec... Read More

Late yesterday afternoon, September 3, 2009, Google finally issued a privacy policy for Google Books, both the current service and the extensive new book-related services they hope to have a federal court approve in October.While there are some good things in the policy – many that the ACLU of Northern California and its coalition partners the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Samuelson... Read More

Last week, in response to an inquiry by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Facebook announced plans to enhance user privacy over the next year. Some of these plans address third party applications, like quizzes and games, that have access to a lot of your personal information.Wondering what this is all about? Concerned about your privacy on Facebook?If you're a Facebook user, check out the ACLU o... Read More

Did you know? Facebook apps can collect a lot of data about you and your friends. Take our quiz. Read More