News & Commentary

In response to a letter from the ACLU of Northern California, the Linden Unified School District will not read private text messages stored on students' cell phones unless there is good reason to believe that the search will show that a law or school rule was violated. The District's new policy also limits the scope of the search to the alleged infraction leading to the seizure of a cell phone.

The Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference is on May 20-23, 2008 at the Omni Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut. Early Bird Registration is open until this Friday, May 2.

Tomorrow, Thursday, April 24, the Sacramento Library Board will be debating its internet use policy, which directs library staff to ask Internet users to "end a search or change a screen" if the content they are viewing is deemed to interfere with the "a safe, welcoming and comfortable environment."

Is the federal government gearing up to spy on Internet users who visit .gov websites? That was one of the concerns at a hearing on the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) cybersecurity program called "EINSTEIN".

The ACLU Washington Legislative Office, the Technology and Liberty Program, and the ACLU of Northern California submitted written comments on net neutrality today to the Federal Communications Commission in preparation for this Thursday's public hearing at Stanford.

Last week, a coalition of consumer and public-interest groups in the U.S. and Europe presented a resolution to U.S. government representatives that called for policies to promote net neutrality on the Internet.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is holding a hearing on internet freedom and net neutrality in Palo Alto next Thursday, April 17. With the future of the internet at stake, it is absolutely critical that those who support freedom of expression show up in force.

San Jose and Sacramento are currently debating whether to censor access to internet information at their libraries. The internet has become a pivotal means of accessing information at the library and with its growth in importance, the age-old issues of library censorship have followed.

In September 2007, a U.S. District Court judge in Oregon struck down two provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act as unconstitutional. Brandon Mayfield, a Portland-based attorney, was arrested and detained in connection with the 2004 bombing of a train station in Madrid, but was released after two weeks when a fingerprint at the scene alleged to be his was matched to an Algerian terrorist. The court found that the secret searches of Mayfield's house and office, although done under a FISA warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.