News & Commentary

The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed an amicus brief in what will be the first case in the country to address the constitutional implications of a so-called "stingray," a little known device that can be used to track a suspect's location and engage in other types of surveillance. We argue that if the government wants to use invasive surveillance technology like this, it must explain the technology to the courts so they can perform their judicial oversight function as required by the Constitution.

Shortly before next week's one-year anniversary of the Oakland Police Department's brutal crackdown on Occupy Oakland, Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern announced that he was seeking funds to purchase a drone to engage in unspecified unmanned aerial surveillance. One of the many unfortunate lessons of OPD's Occupy crackdown is that when law enforcement has powerful and dangerous tools in its arsenal, it will use them. Drones raise enormous privacy concerns and can easily be abused. Before any drone acquisition proceeds, we need to ask a threshold question – are drones really necessary in our community? – and have a transparent and democratic process for debating that question. In addition, if the decision is made to acquire a drone, do we have rigid safeguards and accountability mechanisms in place, so that law enforcement does not use drones to engage in warrantless mass surveillance? The ACLU of Northern California has sent the Sheriff a Public Records Act request, demanding answers to these crucial questions.

Late last week, Gawker's Adrian Chen "unmasked" Violentacrez, a notorious "troll" on the content aggregator Reddit. Violentacrez is a remarkably unsympathetic figure; as the article put it, his "specialty is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls," and he "also issued an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed." Yet while the story and Violentacrez' subsequent decision to delete his Reddit account drew cheers from some, it also prompted at least one group of Reddit editors to ban Gawker content in retaliation and sparked a broader conversation about the role of free speech, anonymity, and privacy online, with plenty of outrage on all sides.

When Apple expanded the availability of its FaceTime videochat app to cell networks, AT&T responded by announcing that only iPhone and iPad users with a high-priced "Mobile Share" data plan would get to use the app on its network. In other words, ordinary AT&T customers—many of whom pay the carrier both for their mobile device and for the data they use—have been cut off from an easy way to communicate with friends and family. We are disappointed to see AT&T use its position to hinder, rather than help, its customers' communications, and we urge you to join advocates for Internet free speech and the deaf by voicing your concerns.

The Location Privacy Act of 2012 was intended to ensure the privacy of Californians by requiring law enforcement and other government entities to get a search warrant before obtaining information about the location of an electronic device. As a result, it garnered broad bipartisan support in its passage through the California legislature. Unfortunately, Governor Brown ignored this support and chose to veto the bill, leaving Californians with uncertain protection for these sensitive person data.

Last week, LA Weekly ran a story indicating that the Los Angeles Police Department is using a device called a "Stingray" to track cell phones. Law enforcement seems to think that because these devices can track cell phones without going to the trouble of even interacting with mobile carriers, they don't need a search warrant. Please tell Governor Brown to sign the Location Privacy Act of 2012 into law and ensure that law enforcement gets a search warrant before obtaining location information, whether by using a Stingray or demanding records from cell carriers.

Today the Location Privacy Act of 2012 passed through the California Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support. This is a critical step in protecting the privacy of all Californians in our modern world where a cell phone is closer to a necessity than a luxury.

In a victory for free speech on the Internet, social network giant Facebook last week corrected a mistake that had the unfortunate consequence of blocking political speech and affirmed its commitment to serving as a neutral platform for political advocacy. The controversy erupted when the social network, which positions itself as a key platform for reaching "a huge potential voter pool," rejected ads by Just Say Now and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, drug policy reform groups which both seek to promote discussion of marijuana legalization in the current election cycle. Facebook's rejection of these ads deprived drug reform groups of an important outlet for reaching potential voters and also deprived Facebook's 160 million users of a perspective on a public policy issue. Fortunately, after the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised concerns, Facebook reversed its rejection and permitted the ads to run.