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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

Dear Marriage Allies:We are writing as partners in the fight for LGBT equality because we believe that too much of the conversation about getting rid of Proposition 8 is focusing on the wrong question.As you probably know, the ACLU has been involved in the fight on virtually every important civil rights initiative at least since Proposition 14 in 1964. We fought against the death penalty, "three s... 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

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

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

Brittany Dalton's high school flute ensemble won at a prestigious statewide competition. But her school tried to keep her from playing in the competition because Brittany refused to submit to a drug test. Read More

In April 2006, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a non-profit business government coalition in San Jose, California, released a request for proposals for it's new initiative, Wireless Silicon Valley, an ambitious project to create a region-wide wireless system to "anyone, anywhere, involving any device." Nothing in the extensive vision and planning documents discussed privacy and free spe... Read More

Unlike other cities, implementation of municipal wireless in San Francisco began in a very promising manner when the city stated in its request for proposals that they were interested in a network that protects the privacy of its users and respects the choices made by consumers. The city also required vendors who submitted proposals to answer specific questions in regards to how they would protect... Read More

by Christopher CalabreseACLU NationwideSecretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said today that Real ID was "DOA". That's "Dead On Arrival" for the tiny percentage of you out there who don't watch a lot of cop shows on TV. What she meant was that states are not implementing Real ID. She repeatedly referenced the fact that 13 states have opted out of Real ID altogether, passing statutes that... Read More