News & Commentary

Harrisburg – The ACLU of Pennsylvania announced today that it is representing two anonymous Twitter users who have criticized State Attorney General Tom Corbett on a social networking site. Corbett's office asked a grand jury to issue a subpoena earlier this month to Twitter demanding the identities of his critics."Any subpoena seeking to unmask the identity of anonymous critics raises the sp

Raliegh – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of North Carolina today sent a letter to North Carolina Secretary of Revenue Kenneth Lay reiterating concern over a recent request by the state Department of Revenue (NCDOR) for the private records of Amazon.com customers. The letter informs Lay that the ACLU will take legal action on behalf of North Carolina residents who are Amazon.com customers if NCDOR persists in its demand for their constitutionally protected private information. Specifically, the letter says the ACLU and its clients will intervene in an existing lawsuit brought by Amazon.com to stop NCDOR from collecting individually identifiable information that could be linked to specific purchases made on Amazon.com.

If you are interested in dotRights online privacy issues and are interested in a more detailed analysis of the Fourth Amendment and the state of privacy today, check out The Crisis in Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, the new issue brief written by Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst at the National ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Program.

What you choose to read says a lot about who you are, what you value, and what you believe. That is why you should be able to read about anything from politics to health without worrying that someone is looking over your shoulder. But, as books move into digital form, new reader privacy issues are emerging.

Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is holding its first hearing to discuss the woefully outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (Did we mention that it was written in 1986?!)

The ACLU of Northern California's Santa Clara Valley Chapter is holding an essay contest for high school students residing in or attending school in Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Serano, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, or Sunnyvale.

Two surveys caught our eye today. The surveys are on two different Internet privacy topics–location information and cloud computing–but both reveal how important it is that we reform electronic privacy law to clearly cover useful digital services. Updating electronic privacy law is necessary both to protect the users of these services and for the businesses who hope to encourage Americans that these services are safe.

The very first sentence on Facebook's privacy guide page states: "You should have control over what you share."

We've known for a long time that electronic privacy law is woefully outdated. But what we haven't known is how often the government is taking advantage of this fact to engage in a shopping spree in the treasure trove of personal information being collected by companies like Google.