News & Commentary

In the months since Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern made known his desire to acquire and deploy a surveillance drone, the ACLU has consistently warned that such a plan carries serious privacy implications, that it is imperative the advertised benefits of a drone be weighed against the costs and that strict privacy safeguards be put into place to ensure that drones are not used for warrantless mass surveillance.

These days, more and more people turn to the Internet to find true love – and in the process share some of their most personal information with companies looking to act as matchmakers. And while the ACLU may not help you find your soulmate on Valentine's Day, the latest edition of Privacy and Free Speech: It's Good for Business, our guide for companies, can help online dating services and other companies protect that private data and avoid a bad breakup with their users.

Bertha Mejia is a 53-year-old grandmother who fled political violence and sexual abuse in her native El Salvador as a girl. She has four U.S. citizen children and is the primary caretaker for her 9-year-old grandson, Pablo. The victim of rape at the hands of her employer, Ms. Mejia has a strong case for a "U-visa," a type of visa for victims of crime who cooperate with law enforcement. The police have already certified that Ms. Mejia is a victim who has assisted the police in apprehending the perpetrator.

No one wants something as valuable as their credit card numbers to fall into the wrong hands. That's why we limit private uses of this type of personal data. But what about government agencies that hold some of your most vulnerable, confidential information? We need to ensure that safeguards against unauthorized access to your data are in place, especially given the increasing amounts of personal information government agencies are able to collect. And those safeguards need to include measures that track government officials who access your data to ensure that their use of that data is legitimate.

This morning's media event was Facebook's announcement of "Graph Search," a new tool to find content and data on Facebook that could wind up making information about you far easier your friends or just about anyone else to find. Graph Search allows you to search Facebook for specific people, places, or content – for example, "friend of friends who live in New York and like sushi" or "restaurants liked by friends who also like Taco Bell" – using a brand-new interface. Here's what that means – and how you can follow Mark Zuckerberg's suggestion to "take some time to review your stuff" so that your private information isn't suddenly available to others.

In response to an ACLU of Northern California Public Records Act request, the California Emergency Management Agency, the state entity that administers federal homeland security grant funds, recently confirmed that the Alameda County Sheriff's Office is the only agency in the entire state of California to have applied for or obtained grant funding from Cal-EMA for a drone.

In a disturbing trend that can have a chilling effect on free speech, law enforcement agencies around the country are seeking wide-ranging information about the social networking activity of political activists. The San Francisco District Attorney recently issued subpoenas to Twitter for tweets by two political protesters, Lauren Smith and Robert Donohoe, who had been charged with rioting and unlawful assembly during a Columbus Day demonstration last year. They had been active on Twitter but disabled their accounts after the protest. The ACLU and EFF filed a brief in support of the protesters' motion to quash the subpoenas.