News & Commentary

A man named Carlos was waiting at a bus stop in San Bernardino County one recent evening when officers stopped and questioned him "because he looked suspicious." When Carlos was unable to show identification, the police arrested him. Carlos, who works as a janitor, has lived in the United States for 12 years and is married to a U.S. citizen, was jailed and slated for deportation.Carlos is among thousands of people in California who pose no threat to public safety but have been pulle

The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are calling for answers to critical privacy and safety questions that loom over a controversial federal program to track preschoolers with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips at George Miller III Head Start program in Richmond, California.

On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and were handed jerseys embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are tiny computer chips that are frequently used to track everything from cattle to commercial products moving through warehouses. Now the school district is apparently hoping to use these chips to replace manual attendance records, track the children's movements at school and during field trips, and collect other data like whether the child has eaten or not.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about United States v. Maynard, a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requiring the government to obtain a warrant when it uses a GPS tracking device to monitor someone's movements.

Every year tens of thousands of people in California are arrested for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana. These arrests overload our already stressed courts and jails. They also divert scarce public safety dollars that could be used to address violent crime. California's Proposition 19, on the November 2, 2010 ballot, offers a remedy that will move marijuana policy in a direction that makes sense. The California Legislative Analyst's Office explains that the passage of Proposition 19 would allow redirection of court and law enforcement resources to solving violent crimes.

Imagine you're a soldier stationed overseas and discover you're pregnant. If you want to have an abortion but are living in a country where it's illegal, you might as well be living in pre-Roe v. Wade America. Why? Current federal law prohibits almost all abortion services at U.S. military hospitals, even if a woman pays for the procedure herself. So, like a woman in the 1950s, you can fly to another country to obtain safe, legal abortion care (if you can afford to travel and can arrange leave) or take your chances with an unsafe, illegal, local or self-induced abortion.

Is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spying on Muslim communities in Berkeley, Fresno, Visalia, San Jose or other Northern California communities?

Hundreds of millions of sensitive records have been compromised by data breaches. If your personal records were compromised by a breach, wouldn't you want companies to be required to tell you important information about the breach and how to protect yourself?

While the ACLU of Northern California and Facebook both agree that location information is very sensitive, we disagree that Places gives users adequate control of how and when to share this information. (Next time I visit my hometown, I'd like to be able to hang out with some of the Facebook crew at the Nut House without being asked again and again and again if I want that shared with everyone nearby!).