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The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. In reaching its decision in Warshak v. United States, the court closely followed the reasoning in an amicus brief filed in the case by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, and the Center for Demo... Read More

The California Assembly Judiciary Committee passed five important RFID bills today, including the Identity Information Protection Act (SB 30), which ensures that no RFID tags will be embedded into state-issued IDs, without privacy and security protections. The San Jose Mercury News published a story about the bills on the front page today. You wouldn't post your social se... Read More

The issue of still photography of the public streets presents the need to balance two important civil liberties issues- the right to privacy and the free speech right to photography in public spaces which has also been under assault since 9/11. Read More

A new reporter's shield law, the Free Flow of Information Act, has been introduced in Congress. It would protect a broader group of people than earlier versions, including bloggers. It covers anyone engaged in journalism, such as gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information. Read More

What was the Copley Press decision and what did it do?On August 29, 2006, the California Supreme Court in Copley Press v. Superior Court held that records of an administrative appeal of sustained misconduct charges are confidential and may not be disclosed to the public. The decision prevents the public from learning the extent to which police officers have been disciplined as a result of miscondu... Read More

Google's new Street View service, which allows users of Google Maps to view and navigate street-level images may help some people get around, but it raises serious privacy concerns for individuals who are unwittingly captured by Google's candid cameras. Several websites have already taken up the sport of posting links to snapshots of the streets preserved by Google's camera vans. ... Read More

Today we filed a federal lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Company. We are suing on behalf of three victims of the United States government’s unlawful “extraordinary rendition” program—a program where terror suspects are flown to countries where the U.S. government knows detainees are routinely tortured or otherwise abused in violation of universally accepted legal st... Read More

The blogosphere is buzzing with commentary about Facebook's announcement that the social networking site is opening its doors to third-party developers. The newly announced feature, Facebook Platform, allows third-party developers (including heavyweights like Microsoft and Amazon.com) to create their own applications to provide Facebook's users with enhanced functionality, such as the... Read More

The Identity Information Protection Act (SB 30), the first bill in the country to require privacy and security protections for the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in state government-issued ID's passed the California State Senate this morning with a strong bipartisan vote of 33-2. Today's vote was an even more emphatic message to Governor Schwarzenegger that the priv... Read More

Earlier this week, the U.S. military ordered troops to stop posting to blogs and sending personal emails without getting clearance. More information here. And the regulations here. Now, the Defense Department is claiming that barring military troops from using social networking, video sharing, and other "recreational" sites such as YouTube and MySpace on military computers is purely a... Read More

We are now living in a world where the technology exists to keep track of everything we do and say and everywhere we go. Video surveillance, RFID chips that allow stored data to be read at a distance, and massive databases of who we call and what Internet sites we browse mean more information about our lives is being preserved, and being preserved for longer periods of time. Advances ... Read More

Late breaking news that the Board of Supervisor's Budget Committee will hold a public hearing on Monday afternoon about the Earthlink/Google contract. Read More