News & Commentary

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has become the latest federal appeals court to consider the question of whether law enforcement needs a warrant before it obtains cell phone location data. We have (with allies) filed an amicus brief in this case, as we did in cases now pending in the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits. 

With a history of civil liberties stretching back almost a century, the ACLU has got plenty of amazing cases for #TBT. Every Thursday, we'll be sharing updates on cases pulled from our archives of work in Michigan and beyond.

Jacques: Michigan Laws Make Criminals of Us All (Detroit News) Because of Michigan's extensive penal code, however, many everyday activities can cross over into the crime category — putting too many innocent individuals at risk of committing a "crime." A report that came out last fall highlighted just how egregious the situation is in Michigan, and showed how this state's criminal code outpaces its Midwest neighbors.

With a history of civil liberties stretching back almost a century, the ACLU has got plenty of amazing cases for #TBT. Every Thursday, we'll be sharing updates on cases pulled from our archives of work in Michigan and beyond.

We are the founders of PubPeer.com, an online forum for scientific discussion of research scholarship. We and many of the users of our website are anonymous. That anonymity is important for free speech, for academic freedom, and for scientific inquiry. But it’s being threatened, which is why we’re going to court to defend the First Amendment right to anonymity.

Today, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office recently became the first in Michigan to purchase a Hailstorm device, an incredibly powerful surveillance tool typically used by the NSA and CIA which allows police to routinely spy on thousands of people without them ever knowing.

A little noticed surveillance technology, designed to track the movements of passing drivers, is fast proliferating America’s streets. Automatic license plate readers (ALPR) mounted on police cars or on objects like road signs and bridges, use small, high-speed cameras to photograph every passing car. This system photographs every license plate it encounters - capturing thousands of cars’ information per minute – and uses software to read the number, add a time and location stamp, and then record the information in a database. A computer checks the information in these pictures against police department databases. If a scanned plate matches information in the database, an officer is alerted. License plate readers can be a useful tool for police officers, helping them recover stolen cars and arrest people with outstanding warrants. However, the spread of these scanners is creating what are, in effect, government location tracking systems recording the movements of many millions of innocent Americans in huge databases.  To protect the privacy of millions of Americans, there is a dire need for rules to make sure that this technology isn’t used for unbridled government surveillance. So why should you care?

Monday, we celebrated the 11th annual International Right to Know Day, recognizing the right of access to information and the importance of government transparency.