News & Commentary

Tomorrow, Google will put in place a new privacy policy across the vast majority of Google products and platforms. As we told you when they announced the new policy back in January, the new policy makes clear that Google will, for the first time, combine the personal data you share with any one of its products or sites across almost all of its products and sites (everything but Google Chrome, Google Books, and Google Wallet) in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of you. And short of signing out of your Google account, there is no opting out.

In the past week, the White House, the Federal Trade Commission, and the California Attorney General's Office have all released reports or announced agreements designed to promote consumer privacy. These announcements incorporate several good ideas that, if implemented and enforced, would give users more control over their own personal information. But the recent moves are just a starting point for protecting privacy, not the finish line.

By Chris CalabreseACLU Washington Legislative Office

UC Davis students filed a federal lawsuit over the University's treatment of protesters during a demonstration in which campus police doused seated protesters with pepper spray.

The war on drugs has failed, and people are ready for a change. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. One in every 31 adults is on probation, in jail or in prison. FBI figures show that over 800,000 people in the U.S. are arrested for marijuana offenses each year. The vast majority of these arrests are for low-level, nonviolent simple possession offenses.

I'm heading to Palo Alto tomorrow for the Stanford Technology Law Review's symposium and looking forward to the first panel of the day, Taking Forgetting Seriously.

The right to vote is a fundamental right and all eligible individuals must be allowed to exercise their right. The California Constitution disenfranchises individuals on the basis of criminal conviction only if they are "imprisoned in state prison or...on parole as a result of the conviction of a felony." League of Women Voters of California v. McPherson, 145 Cal. App. 4th 1469 at 1486 (2006).

Want to keep your information private now that Google has started rolling out "Search, plus Your World," a new search results format? For those signed-in with a Google account, the new feature combines search results from the public web plus private information and photos you have shared (or have been shared with you) through Google+ or Picasa.

First, the good news: over the course of the day yesterday, thousands of people demonstrated in Oakland without any violent response from police. And the Oakland Police Department reportedly relied on its own officers to manage the crowd of protesters rather than bringing in other law enforcement agencies on mutual aid agreements.