By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 5:23pm
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.
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 11:03am
On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and were handed jerseys embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are tiny computer chips that are frequently used to track everything from cattle to commercial products moving through warehouses. Now the school district is apparently hoping to use these chips to replace manual attendance records, track the children’s movements at school and during field trips, and collect other data like whether the child has eaten or not.
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 5:35pm
Wednesday, ten of the nation’s top privacy organizations, including the ACLU of Northern California, EFF, EPIC, and CDT, sent a joint letter to Facebook (PDF) calling for the social networking giant to fix remaining issues concerning user privacy and control.
Facebook recently took a step in the right direction and addressed some of its privacy issues. But Facebook users’ personal information is still visible through privacy cracks most people don’t even know about, including the "app gap." It’s time for Facebook to plug the app gap and give users real control over all of their information.
The privacy groups’ open letter (PDF) calls on Facebook to demonstrate its commitment to its own principles by addressing six outstanding areas of concern:
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 9:35am
Today, the House Judiciary Committee is voting whether to approve legislation that would create a sweeping new provision requiring Internet companies (email, cloud, social networking, and more) to collect and retain hundreds of millions of records about the identity of online users. The bill, HR 1981, the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011," – if only it were that narrow! – is a direct assault on the privacy of Internet users and overlooks some key fixes that could actually help to address the very real problem of child exploitation.
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 4:56pm
Need to get directions when you are lost? Want to know if your friends are in the neighborhood? Location-based services—applications and websites that provide services based on your current location—can put this information and more in the palm of your hand. But navigating the complex web of privacy policies and settings for these services can be far more difficult.
That’s why the ACLU of Northern California has released Location Based Services: Time for a Privacy Check-In, a guide (PDF) outlining privacy considerations for mobile location-based services, and a side-by-side comparison of six popular social location-based services (Foursquare, Facebook Places, Yelp, Gowalla, Twitter and Loopt).
By Nicole Ozer, Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California at 2:12pm
On June 16, ten of the nation’s top privacy organizations sent a joint letter to Facebook (PDF) detailing outstanding privacy concerns. Facebook’s response glossed over many of the critical points raised about necessary next steps. The following reiterates our concerns and addresses Facebook’s response to our June 16 letter. We look forward to discussing these issues and Facebook’s plans in more detail to resolve these issues.
On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and 
