News & Commentary

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.

In a victory for civil liberties and responsible government spending, the Budget Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Thursday to cut $300,000 from its invasive, intrusive, and ineffective video surveillance camera program.

The memory of another monumental day in court, 60 years earlier, hung over the March 4 hearings on marriage equality, and not just because the famous Perez v. Sharp decision was invoked repeatedly by lawyers.

In a recent victory for employee privacy and free speech, the Ninth Circuit told employers to stop snooping on email and text messages.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) set off a minor firestorm in the blogosphere over its new ID policy, which went into effect this past Saturday. At least one passenger has reported that he was asked which political party he is registered to vote for, as part of TSA's new authentication process.

Apart from the ceremonial naming of post offices, it has become an increasingly rare thing in Washington for Republicans and Democrats to band together on an issue. However, the effort by telecom lobbyists to steamroll retroactive immunity for AT&T, Verizon and Comcast is being met with stiff resistance by a broad coalition of activist groups.

The ACLU of Northern California has written extensively about the privacy and free speech implications of video surveillance.

Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been thrust into the media spotlight after his own private collection of photographs and videos was accidentally made available on the Internet.

SB 31 overwhelmingly passed the California Assembly Judiciary Committee on June 10 by a vote of 10-0.