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Last Thursday, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which requires a warrant before California law enforcement can seize the contents or metadata of your communications, demand location records from your cell phone provider, or use a StingRay to gather information about your smartphone. Read More

What’s in a name? If you ask Facebook, it’s the text on a driver’s license or a formal document like a utility bill or library card. Read More

If Gov. Brown fails to veto SB 249, the DMV will issue driver’s licenses enhanced with unencrypted computer chips that would make Californians' personal data vulnerable. Read More

UPDATE: The vote has been rescheduled to Tuesday, Oct. 13. TAKE ACTION - Ask your Alameda County Supervisor to vote NO!The Alameda County Sherriff has requested authorization from the Board of Supervisors to upgrade the county’s StingRay surveillance equipment.StingRays are a highly intrusive cell phone surveillance technology used by law enforcement to intercept information from a target cel... Read More

In response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Sacramento Sheriff has now admitted that it used intrusive cellphone surveillance technology – commonly known as a “StingRay” – without obtaining court approval. Days after this stunning admission, the Sheriff publicly announced a new policy for the use of StingRay technology. While having an actual policy in place is certainly a step in the right ... Read More

It was a really good week in California for privacy rights. The legislature passed the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA SB 178) with strong bipartisan support. The bill is now on Gov. Brown’s desk, and he needs to hear from all of us that it’s time to update privacy law for the modern digital world and sign CalECPA into law. Read More

After three years of litigation, we’ve finally settled a portion of one of our long-running Freedom of Information Act suits against the federal government for information about its location tracking practices.  A person’s digital location information reveals detailed, private information that the government should only be able to get through a warrant based on probable cause.  As part o... Read More

What if once a week the police drove by your home and took a picture?That is what the San Jose City Council proposed last week with an effort to install automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) on garbage trucks.ALPRs are high-speed cameras that sit atop patrol cars or on roadsides and are capable of snapping photos of thousands of license plate numbers per hour, including their location. This tech... Read More

Public-records laws are designed to ensure that constituents and journalists have access to information on public affairs. They protect a bedrock value of our democracy: transparency. Read More

For communities of color, surveillance isn't just an invasion of personal privacy, it’s a tool for high tech racial profiling that can have disastrous and fatal consequences. Read More

A federal district court held that the government must obtain a warrant to obtain historical cell phone location data. This important ruling makes it clear that we don’t have to give up privacy to participate in modern society. Read More

The ACLU of Northern California has joined the Federal Public Defender’s Office and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in supporting a warrant requirement for access to cell phone location information. Read More