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AT&T recently announced the launch of FamilyMap, a service that allows customers with a "Family Plan" to track the locations of other cell phones on the same plan.This is the kind of service that, whether well-intentioned or not, raises all sorts of privacy concerns: it can be used just as easily to monitor a partner or even a parent as to keep tabs on a child's location. Unfortunately, the se... Read More

Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society is hosting a panel event this coming Tuesday, April 7, from 5-7:30 p.m. about the ACLU of Northern California's new document, Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business. The event is free and open to the public and a limited number of individuals may also attend via webcast. Panel from 5-6:30 p.m., reception to follow.Panelists: Andre... Read More

Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business, released today by the ACLU of Northern California, is a first-of-its-kind publication offering hands-on tips for how businesses can build their reputations–while saving time and money–by properly protecting customers' privacy and free speech. The publication is based on dozens of case studies analyzing what prominent companies like Google, Yahoo!, Q... Read More

If you live or work in San Jose, please speak up for free speech and say no to library internet censorship!The San Jose City Council is deciding whether to install blocking software on library computers and endanger access to important information about healthcare, sexuality, art, and politics. If you live or work in San Jose, please tell the San Jose City Council and the Mayor that library Intern... Read More

Facebook, hardly a stranger to controversy, set off yet another firestorm recently when it changed its Terms of Use. The previous terms of service explicitly stated that Facebook's license to use user-created content expired as soon as the user deleted the content or cancelled her account:You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the lic... Read More

We have just won a victory for privacy and against biometrics, thanks to many of you!Thousands of faxes and emails from ACLU of Northern California members were critical in getting the California Legislature to send a letter rejecting the Department of Motor Vehicle's proposal to begin embedding biometric information — face and fingerprint scans — into our drivers' licenses.The DMV was trying to g... Read More

Today is the second annual Data Privacy Day, an international holiday "devoted to spotlighting computer privacy and protection issues." While Data Privacy Day is only two years old, warnings about online privacy have been popping up since 2000. Nearly a decade later, articles are still being published warning users about old and new risks to privacy online–and how we can protect ourselves.After al... Read More

People are talking about internet content filtering, especially since the ACLU won its case against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which tried to censor all speech about sex from the internet. But don't be confused between voluntary use of filters as an alternative to a criminal statute and governmentally imposed filters. ACLU First Amendment attorney Chris Hansen explains more about filt... Read More

The Child Online Protection Act was passed in 1998 in an effort to prevent minors from accessing "material harmful to minors," specifically depictions of sexual activity or nudity, on the Internet. Unfortunately, the Act did in a manner that substantially impaired free speech rights, and its implementation has been barred as likely unconstitutional on several occasions, including by the Supreme Co... Read More

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court today to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement. Both organizations, Long Haul and the East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS), are publisher... Read More

A report released today evaluating San Francisco's surveillance cameras concludes that the cameras have failed in their mission of reducing violent crime in the city. Following an outside evaluation of the City's ill-advisory video surveillance program, independent researchers at the University of California Berkeley issued today's report.In line with similar studies from around the world, the rep... Read More

'tis the season for private browsing, or so it seems. Apple's Safari Web browser led the pack in introducing a "private browsing mode" in 2005; in recent months, the other browsers on the market have finally followed suit, with Google's recently-released Chrome and beta versions of Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer adding similar features.What does "private browsing" mean, however? F... Read More