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"My greatest hope for Robby is that he will just grow up accepting and loving himself," said his mother, Tracy Martinazzi, who took on a school district -- and a way of thinking -- that allowed her son to be the victim of name-calling, taunts, and, finally, brutal physical abuse based on his sexual orientation."And I really want my son to grow up without a victim mentality. I want him to be able t... Read More

On blogs, personal and political websites, and through user-generated content sites, ordinary citizens in extraordinary numbers are recreating a public sphere and reinvigorating the democratic debate at the core of our political system. 46% of Americans have already used the Internet in connection with the political campaign- more than during all of 2004. User-generated content is playing a partic... Read More

"We didn't do anything wrong," said Victor Lopez, one of the Latino students at Rodriquez High School (RHS) who in March 2007 were lined up in front of their peers, accused of being gang members, and photographed by Fairfield police. "I was just talking to my friends. The police shouldn't assume we're gang members just because we're Latino and wearing certain colors. Lots of kids were wearing the ... Read More

Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country?If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye. With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information &mdash... Read More

The Federal Communications Commission chastised Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer applications today, calling the practice unreasonable and ordering Comcast to change its network management policies.Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, responded, "We applaud the FCC for taking enforcement action against Comcast. The nation's second largest Internet service pr... Read More

In a clear victory for free speech, a federal court once again held that the ACLU is right and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a law that would criminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet, is unconstitutional. This decision is the latest in the ACLU's 10-year battle to defend free speech on the Internet. The American Civil Liberties Union challen... Read More

Dutch and British transit cards, California Senate ID cards, HID building access cards, some new generation credit cards, and now FasTrak.What do they have in common?They all use RFID technology and security researchers have shown that they all have glaring privacy and security risks.Researcher Nate Lawson has discovered that FasTrak transponders are vulnerable to sniffing, cloning, and surreptiti... Read More

Dutch Chipmaker NXP, formerly Philips Semiconductors, is taking Dutch Radboud University to court to try to prevent researchers from publishing their scientific paper showing how the RFID chips used in Dutch travel cards can be copied and cloned.The Bay Area recently released its own RFID-enabled transit card system,Translink. It is important to ensure that security research about these systems is... Read More

President Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, at 1:15 p.m. this afternoon in the Rose Garden.Immediately after he signed, the ACLU sued.Our clients are reporters, organizations like Amnesty International, Global Fund for Women, and Human Rights Watch, and defense attorneys, whose activities will be greatly curtailed by this new law.Our argument is simple: This bill is a clear vio... Read More

According to Google, the "time was right" for the company to post a link to a privacy policy on its homepage.It certainly was.The California Online Privacy Protection Act states that a company is in violation of the Act if they fail to post its policy within 30 days of being notified of noncompliance.Google released its modified homepage including the privacy link 30 days after receiving a letter ... Read More

Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California issued a ruling blasting key arguments made by supporters of telecom immunity last week.The lengthy opinion cuts through many common misconceptions and makes clear that the Senate is set to vote on telecom immunity based on misinformed arguments.The FISA bill is scheduled for a vote tomorrow, Tuesday, July 8. Contact your Senators to... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit today urging a federal court to order the Department of Justice to turn over records related to the government's use of people's cell phones as tracking devices.The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the records in November 2007 following revelations that federal officials are using Americans... Read More