Blog

Is the federal government gearing up to spy on Internet users who visit .gov websites? That was one of the concerns at a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) cybersecurity program called "EINSTEIN".The goal of EINSTEIN is to track and detect attacks on federal networks, whether those attacks are meant to disable network nodes, or actually penetrate and steal information. The prog... Read More

The ACLU Washington Legislative Office, the Technology and Liberty Program, and the ACLU of Northern California submitted written comments on net neutrality today to the Federal Communications Commission in preparation for this Thursday's public hearing at Stanford.Click here to read the comments.We will also be at the meeting to submit oral testimony.We hope that you will join us at the event and... Read More

Last week, a coalition of consumer and public-interest groups in the U.S. and Europe presented a resolution to U.S. government representatives that called for policies to promote net neutrality on the Internet.The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue [TACD] has some 65 members, including the ACLU, Public Knowledge, the European Public Health Alliance and the European Consumers Organization.In order to... Read More

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is holding a hearing on internet freedom and net neutrality in Palo Alto next Thursday, April 17. With the future of the internet at stake, it is absolutely critical that those who support freedom of expression show up in force.Your comments in person will send a strong message to Washington that Americans will not tolerate private corporate Internet gat... Read More

San Jose and Sacramento are currently debating whether to censor access to internet information at their libraries. The internet has become a pivotal means of accessing information at the library and with its growth in importance, the age-old issues of library censorship have followed.To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and Heather Has Two Mommies are just a small selection of material that s... Read More

In September 2007, a U.S. District Court judge in Oregon struck down two provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act as unconstitutional. Brandon Mayfield, a Portland-based attorney, was arrested and detained in connection with the 2004 bombing of a train station in Madrid, but was released after two weeks when a fingerprint at the scene alleged to be his was matched to an Algerian terrorist. The court foun... Read More

Today was a really good day for the First Amendment. And it was also a good day for our court system. The judge made it clear in the Wikileaks case that he took the Constitutional issues seriously, at one point reminding the court that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.From the very beginning of the argument over what should happen in the Wikileaks case, the judge made it clear that ... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last night filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the domain name Wikileaks.org shut down. The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and used documents on the Wikileaks.org website in their work and want to c... Read More

Today was a really good day for the First Amendment. And it was also a good day for our court system.From the very beginning of the argument over what should happen in the Wikileaks case, the judge made it clear that he took the Constitutional issues seriously, at one point reminding the lawyers for the Bank that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.In the end the Court not only dissolv... Read More

In a new YouTube video released Feb. 28, 2008, Aundre Herron talks about why California’s death penalty has to go.  As both a former prosecutor and murder victim survivor, Herron has a unique and incisive perspective on the death penalty, which she shared with the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.Watch her testimonyHerron commented that she empathizes with the ... Read More

Order To Shut Down Wikileaks.org Violates First Amendment, Groups SayThe American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last night filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the domain name Wikileaks.org shut down. The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and us... Read More

We are deeply saddened by the apparent murder of 26-year-old Arthur Carmona on Feb. 17, 2008.Arthur was just 16-years-old when he was wrongfully convicted of a robbery as a result of mistaken eyewitness identification in 1998. Arthur spent two years in prison before his innocence was proven, largely as a result of the tireless efforts of his mother, Ronnie Carmona, and his pro-bono legal team... Read More