News & Commentary

The ACLU Facebook Quiz and its developer, Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow Chris Conley, were recently featured on NPR's radio show, All Things Considered. If you missed it, you can listen to it here.

Ability To Track Readers Puts Privacy At Risk, Says ACLU

A coalition of authors and publishers, represented by the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law, filed an objection this morning in the Google Book Search case. The objection urges the federal judge to reject the proposed settlement because it lacks critical privacy rights for readers and writers.

Late yesterday afternoon, September 3, 2009, Google finally issued a privacy policy for Google Books, both the current service and the extensive new book-related services they hope to have a federal court approve in October.

Last week, in response to an inquiry by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Facebook announced plans to enhance user privacy over the next year. Some of these plans address third party applications, like quizzes and games, that have access to a lot of your personal information.

Did you know? Facebook apps can collect a lot of data about you and your friends. Take our quiz.

Unlike other cities, implementation of municipal wireless in San Francisco began in a very promising manner when the city stated in its request for proposals that they were interested in a network that protects the privacy of its users and respects the choices made by consumers. The city also required vendors who submitted proposals to answer specific questions in regards to how they would protect the privacy and information transmitted by users. Unfortunately, the proposals that were received proposed few limitations on the amount of information collected, the length of which it could be kept, and how the companies would protect information from third party demands.

In April 2006, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a non-profit business government coalition in San Jose, California, released a request for proposals for it's new initiative, Wireless Silicon Valley, an ambitious project to create a region-wide wireless system to "anyone, anywhere, involving any device."

by Christopher CalabreseACLU Nationwide