News & Commentary

Like many awkward teenagers in the mid-90s, I was obsessed with the television drama My So-Called Life. But while some peers dyed their hair red and wore their fathers’ flannels and others picked up sheet music to learn “Blister in the Sun” and “I Wanna Be Sedated” on their violins and oboes—or whatever they played in orchestra, I simply yearned for Angela’s privacy.

On Friday, ACLU SoCal and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the opening brief in our lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department for information on how the agencies are using Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR). We argue the departments are improperly withholding these records, keeping important information about this invasive surveillance technology from the public.

From revelations of widespread NSA spying to high profile data breaches, transparency about how personal information is collected, used and disclosed is more important than ever. 

For years, we at the ACLU have been warning that the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative – a vast information sharing program that encourages the collection and sharing of “suspicious activity” among private parties and local, state and federal law enforcement – would lead to violations of our privacy, racial and religious profiling, and interference with constitutionally-protected activities.

The California Assembly will soon vote on a bill (SB 397), which would allow the California DMV to distribute new drivers' licenses "enhanced" with tiny computer chips called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags.

A little noticed surveillance technology, designed to track the movements of every passing driver, is fast proliferating on America’s streets. Automatic license plate readers, mounted on police cars or on objects like road signs and bridges, use small, high-speed cameras to photograph thousands of plates per minute.

It's been almost exactly a month since President Obama welcomed a debate about government surveillance, saying it was healthy for our democracy, but we have yet to see the debate begin. A debate entails a discussion on a particular matter in which opposing arguments are put forward. But, as we are now seeing, if only one side has the information relevant to the matter, there can be no meaningful debate.

The recent disclosure that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been tracking the Internet and phone activity of American citizens is about more than just government surveillance: It has profound implications for freedom of the press.

ACLU of Southern California Deputy Legal Director Ahilan Arulanantham argued yesterday before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, defending a simple position: when the U.S. government lies to a court, it should not go unpunished.