Blog

The ACLU of Northern California has filed a friend-of–the-court brief in support of neither party in Fair Housing Council v. Roommate.com, a case raising important anti-discrimination and internet free speech concerns.An expanded eleven-member (en banc) panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral argument in the case tomorrow in Pasadena.The ACLU of Northern California's brief argues th... Read More

Last week we blogged about the problems with Facebook's new "Beacon" web tracking and ad delivery system. We also discussed the insufficient changes Facebook has made to the system since its introduction.Controversy surrounding the intrusive Beacon program continues to grow. Over the past few days, several news outlets have reported that Facebook continues to receive web activity information from ... Read More

This past Thursday morning ACLU Legislative Director Caroline Fredrickson participated in an online chat on Firedoglake about the ongoing FISA fight and upcoming Senate floor debate.

The discussion includes a list of phone numbers of the senators who need to hear from their constituents.

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The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request yesterday with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to learn the details of the government's use of cell phones as tracking devices. The request follows on the heels of revelations that federal officials are using Americans' cell phones to pinpoint their location, sometimes without any court oversight.On November 23, t... Read More

In response to pressure from privacy advocates and an online petition signed by 55,000 of its members, Facebook has made some changes to its invasive ad system that we blogged about yesterday.Facebook's new ad system silently collects information on the things you do on dozens of major websites and distills those action down into ads they show to your friends. Previously, these ads had appeared wi... Read More

In August we blogged about privacy problems on the social networking site, Facebook, and its plans to unveil a new targeted advertising system. The system is now up and running. It not only analyzes your activity on Facebook , but also monitors your other Internet activities and reports them back to your Facebook friends in the form of advertisements.Buy a big-ticket holiday present at Sony for yo... Read More

A recent ballot initiative asked San Franciscans to decide whether they want a citywide municipal WiFi network. Almost two thirds of the city voted yes on measure J, the Citywide Wireless & Internet Network initiative, but they are unlikely to get their wish any time soon. EarthLink, the internet service provider that had planned to partner with San Francisco to provide free and low cost Inter... Read More

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office has announced a public workshop, CCTV: Developing Privacy Best Practices, December 17-18, 2007, at the Hilton Arlington Hotel (Ballston Metro Stop) in Arlington Virginia.The workshop will provide a forum to discuss the impact on privacy and civil liberties of CCTV and begin to inform the development of best practices for the use of CCTV by go... Read More

The ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl from Wisconsin and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, have just sent a joint letter urging the FTC to thoroughly explore Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of online marketing company, DoubleClick. Google has been taking substantial hits in the press for the last few months abo... Read More

What happens when you mix political speech, clips of "The Daily Show" and self-styled YouTube video blogs? Last spring Allen Asch found out first hand when Viacom sent him takedown notices for copyright infringement.After several letters from the ACLU of Northern California and other fair use advocates, Asch's videos are back up and running. Asch's experience highlights the current tension between... Read More

Last week, the ACLU of Northern California, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and several other public interest groups released a set of fair use guidelines for user-generated content (UGC).With the rise of YouTube and other video-sharing sites, the phenomenon of UGC has exploded, and with it, ambiguity over what constitutes fair use has also grown.The fair use doctrine provides that individuals... Read More

The California Research Bureau (CRB), the non-partisan government agency responsible for researching topics for the Governor and the State Legislature, has begun to tackle the thorny issue of RFID.Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are tiny computer chips that can be encoded with any type of information. These chips are embedded within documents or objects to be used for monitoring or trac... Read More