News & Commentary

When I was in high school, I had to choose three books to read as part of my summer reading prerequisites for one of my Advanced Placement classes. I chose The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya.

My parents are classical musicians. As a young girl, my parents demanded I practice my violin for hours, perfecting the work by the masters, gaining an understanding of the nuances that defined their artistic choices.

This week is the 32nd annual Banned Books Week, the celebration of the freedom to read. All week, ACLU-NC staff members will be blogging about the impact that banned books have had on their lives.

New documents obtained by the ACLU of Northern California appear to show the Florida-based Harris Corporation misleading the Federal Communications Commission while seeking authorization to sell its line of Stingray cell phone surveillance gear to state and local police. The documents raise the possibility that federal regulatory approval of the technology was based on bad information. The ACLU today wrote a letter to the FCC asking for an investigation.

Last week, two men who had been sentenced to death 30 years ago were proven innocent by DNA testing. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were teenagers when they were wrongly accused of the brutal rape and murder of a child in North Carolina. One of the most shocking parts of the story is that prosecutors hid evidence that linked a convicted rapist to the murder, a man who went on to kill another child while McCollum and Brown were wrongly imprisoned.

As the former District Attorney of Los Angeles County, a county that sends more people to death row than the entire state of Texas, I know that the death penalty is deeply emotional, highly divisive, and very political. However, both sides of the death penalty debate can agree on one thing: California’s death penalty system is broken beyond repair.

“BART Watch" is a new app designed to encourage users to report suspicious activities. But we’re calling out this app for its own suspicious activities - having no privacy policy that explains the sensitive information it collects and may be sharing with others, and for encouraging people to file potentially spurious complaints about innocent residents.

This video contains all-too common stories in California: young students, even kindergartners, kicked out of school for minor incidents, conduct labeled “willful defiance.”

Get a warrant -- that’s what I would say if the police showed up at my door asking to look around. Why? Because it’s my right. It’s one of the core principles that this country was founded on: the government, including local police, can’t come into my home unless they prove to a judge that they have a real reason to invade my privacy.