American Civil Liberties Union

This week, the House Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee took a nice first step toward restoring the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to its original form.

LSC was created by Congress in 1974 as an independent nonprofit corporation to help fill in the growing justice gap by providing vital legal assistance to the nation's less fortunate. The program thrived for two decades until the Republican Revolution of 1996, when conservative members crippled the program as part of "comprehensive welfare reform." Among the changes was a prohibition against the LSC handling certain types of cases, including class-action lawsuits.

Cell phones are synonymous with life in the 21st Century. They do everything — display maps, send email, play games and music. They also do one other thing — track you.

Every seven seconds, your cell phone automatically scans for the nearest cell tower which can pinpoint your location as accurately as within 50 meters. A GPS chip in your phone can reveal your location within a few yards. In just one year, Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with the specific whereabouts of an unknown number of customers more than 8 million times. They required law enforcement to provide neither a warrant nor probable cause to access this information. Sprint even set up a website for law enforcement agents so they could access these records from the comfort of their desks. "The tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement," said Sprint’s “manager of electronic surveillance.” I bet it has.

During the Palmer raids from 1919 to 1921, the U.S. government created 150,000 secret files on Americans it believed held radical views. And in the 1950s it once again trampled all over our civil liberties when the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee ruined the careers of many loyal Americans based purely on their associations. The ACLU fears we are coming dangerously close to reliving these events.

Your internet usage is being monitored. There is big money in behavioral advertising and even the government is paying for the privilege of knowing what sites you are visiting.

How Behavioral Advertising Works

Cookies — along with being delicious treats — are one of the primary web tracking technology devices data brokers use to collect information on consumers. Long ago, in a simpler time, advertisements were targeted to a website. A visit to a blog, for example, would expose a web surfer to ads for shoes, energy bars, and other running aids. Times have changed, advertisers have grown cunning, and now when you visit some sites advertisers place a cookie on your machine; a cookie that will let that advertiser identify you and record any personal information you disclose on the site.