News & Commentary

On April 4, 1968, I was 11 and growing up in Memphis when the news came that Martin Luther King had been murdered. My parents couldn’t hide how bad it was – they were angry. They were afraid. And most memorably to my childhood self, they were crying. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I know now that I was afraid that killing the dreamer could kill the dream.

We learned last weekend that a trove of personal information from 50 million people — one in three U.S. Facebook users — was harvested for an influence and propaganda operation led by Cambridge Analytica, a company later used by the Trump campaign. Was Facebook hacked? Nope. All of this personal information was accessed through the Facebook “app gap,” a major privacy hole in Facebook’s app platform that the ACLU had been challenging since 2009, when we showed how Facebook quizzes posed this threat.

ACLU response to AG Sessions' weak lawsuit challenging California's new 'sanctuary' laws.

When my son recently brought home a certificate for making honor roll at his middle school, I was so proud. That quickly faded the next day when I received several calls from my child informing me that he had been pulled out of class. Because of his hair.

Companies developing facial-recognition software need to consider how their products enable dragnet surveillance, discriminatory enforcement, and abuse.

In California, the broad “disruption or willful defiance” category is a legit reason to suspend students from school. This subjective category must be abolished - here's why.

In January 2017, Trump issued his first Muslim ban, an unconstitutional executive order which sent countless lives into disarray. What happened next?

Douglass’s life and words continue to illustrate the struggle of being Black in America. In honor of his legacy and the movement he helped lead, we have asked members of our staff to read passages from his work and reflect on the meaning of his words.

Last night, the Bay Area city of Alameda unanimously rejected a proposed $500,000 contract to purchase license plate reader technology from Vigilant, a company that recently sold ICE access to its nationwide database. This is a win for the rights of all residents.