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We've heard it all over the country, that Occupy encampments must come down because of "health and safety concerns."That was the justification offered by UC Davis Chancellor Katehi in a statement issued on Friday, November 18, 2011, calling for tents at the fledging Occupy UC Davis encampment to "be peacefully removed" by 3 pm that afternoon. Later that day, brave students sat cross-legg... Read More

Catherine CrumpACLU National OfficeIn a victory for the privacy rights of everyone with a cell phone, a court has held that law enforcement agents must get a warrant to access cell phone location records. The ACLU, ACLU of Texas and Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a brief urging the court to adopt exactly this position. The Constitution requires nothing less.In the case, the government as... Read More

By Sandra FultonACLU Washington Legislative OfficeToday in the Senate there was a major win for freedom of speech and the Internet. In a largely partisan vote Senate Democrats defeated a resolution introduced by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) which would have overturned the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) open Internet rules that are set to go into effect this month.Though the FCC's... Read More

The Oakland Police Department oversaw the use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland demonstrators, and now the department is refusing to hand over information about what really happened. Read More

The day after an enormous peaceful demonstration, and the first general strike this country has seen since the 1940s, some of the focus has turned to bonfires and tear gas. But as we continue looking into what happened during late-night clashes between demonstrators and the police, let's not forget the voices of the thousands upon thousands of people who peacefully came together and marched throug... Read More

In response to the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) transformation last week of downtown Oakland into this battle zone-like scene, the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers’ Guild demanded that OPD conduct a full and independent investigation of the recent enforcement actions on Occupy Oakland.On October 31, we received a letter from OPD informing us that it had opened up an Intern... Read More

Picture this. In response to a peaceful anti-war protest, the Oakland Police Department uses large wooden bullets, sting ball grenades and shot-filled bean bags, as a result of which at least 58 protesters are injured. That was 2003, and unfortunately sounds eerily similar to reports of OPD's response to an Occupy Oakland demonstration yesterday evening, in which bean bags or other projectiles app... Read More

We know that the government takes advantage of outdated privacy law to demand our personal information from online services that collect and hold our data. But what we rarely know is exactly how often this happens: the government isn't required to reveal how many demands for information they make or how many individuals are affected, and companies rarely volunteer this information. One of the very... Read More

Today's early morning raid by the Oakland Police Department on Occupy Oakland raises a number of questions. Read More

Today, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) turns 25 years old. On October 21, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed ECPA into law. As Wired reported today on the "Aging 'Privacy' Law," ECPA was passed "at a time when e-mail was used mostly by nerdy scientists, when phones without wires hardly worked as you stepped out into the backyard, and when the World Wide Web didn't exist. Four pr... Read More

Catherine CrumpACLU National OfficeCongress hasn't updated our basic electronic privacy law since 1986, long before most Americans sent their first email. So it's no surprise that our privacy protections haven't kept pace with new technological advancements. The current law even allows the government to read virtually all of our emails without a warrant. This extraordinary power is an egregious vi... Read More

By Christopher CalabreseWashington Legislative OfficeWe were planning to do a blog post every day to draw attention to Electronic Communication Privacy Act's (ECPA) anniversary but Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) gave us an anniversary present and we couldn't resist doing an extra one to crow about it.The senator announced today that the Senate Judiciary Committee, w... Read More