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Losing a loved one to homicide is a devastating and life-changing event. In Oakland alone, 148 residents were murdered in 2006, leaving behind hundreds of family members and loved ones whose lives were forever changed. Read More

We all want to live in safe communities, where we have an equal opportunity to succeed. To effectively build safe and healthy communities, we need to solve more violent crimes—especially murders—and we need to prevent more violence by investing in our children. But we don’t have the resources needed for these vital programs because the death penalty is draining millions of dollars every year from ... Read More

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court today to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement. Both organizations, Long Haul and the East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS), are publisher... Read More

The Child Online Protection Act was passed in 1998 in an effort to prevent minors from accessing "material harmful to minors," specifically depictions of sexual activity or nudity, on the Internet. Unfortunately, the Act did in a manner that substantially impaired free speech rights, and its implementation has been barred as likely unconstitutional on several occasions, including by the Supreme Co... Read More

People are talking about internet content filtering, especially since the ACLU won its case against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which tried to censor all speech about sex from the internet. But don't be confused between voluntary use of filters as an alternative to a criminal statute and governmentally imposed filters. ACLU First Amendment attorney Chris Hansen explains more about filt... Read More

Today is the second annual Data Privacy Day, an international holiday "devoted to spotlighting computer privacy and protection issues." While Data Privacy Day is only two years old, warnings about online privacy have been popping up since 2000. Nearly a decade later, articles are still being published warning users about old and new risks to privacy online–and how we can protect ourselves.After al... Read More

Download the Winter 2009 ACLU-NC Newsletter and read about our latest events and initiatives. Read More

Moving to protect the free speech rights of anonymous online posters, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed a motion on Nov. 19, 2008 asking a San Francisco federal court to reject two landlords' attempt to require a website to identify people who had posted anonymous criticisms of their apartment complexes. The motion was jointly filed with Public Citizen. We further sought to have the... Read More

We have just won a victory for privacy and against biometrics, thanks to many of you!Thousands of faxes and emails from ACLU of Northern California members were critical in getting the California Legislature to send a letter rejecting the Department of Motor Vehicle's proposal to begin embedding biometric information — face and fingerprint scans — into our drivers' licenses.The DMV was trying to g... Read More

Facebook, hardly a stranger to controversy, set off yet another firestorm recently when it changed its Terms of Use. The previous terms of service explicitly stated that Facebook's license to use user-created content expired as soon as the user deleted the content or cancelled her account:You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the lic... Read More