News & Commentary

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 misconduct.Before Copley Press, Penal Code 832.7 prevented public acces

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.

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.

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.

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 standards.

However, Facebook does not screen developers for trustworthiness, and cannot (and does not) guarantee that all third-party developers will follow these rules. See updated privacy policy

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.

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.

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 in digital storage capacity, and computers now capable of efficiently indexing and searching vast amounts of archived digital data, seem to be leading our society toward a digital version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon , a world in which citizens limit their speech and actions for fear of how endlessly retained surveillance or personal data might someday be used against them.

But some academics and scientists are turning technology on its head, developing technical solutions that help to enhance users' privacy.

For example, Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government argues in a recent working paper that personal digital information should have a reasonable, predetermined shelf life, enforced by the same technologies that collect and store it.

In a similar vein, Belgian and German researchers have proposed a system to help individuals manage the photographs taken of them with cell phone cameras, integrated into the very camera-phones that take and transmit the pictures.