News & Commentary

Consider for a moment how much you share about yourself over email, Facebook, Twitter, private blogs and the like. Many of us use these platforms to communicate far more than phones and snail-mail. Now imagine you are applying for a job, and your potential employer tells you that during application process they will be listening in on all your phone calls, reading your emails, and poking around your Facebook account - so please turn over your passwords. Only one of those things is illegal.

Though he narrowly finished behind Pope Francis as a runner-up for Time’s 2013 Person of the Year, Edward Snowden no doubt had a significant impact on the world last year. The reverberations from his revelations on government spying are still being felt, and if we do indeed see progress on privacy issues in the year ahead there is no doubt that Snowden should share a considerable amount of the credit.

Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.

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We received very good news today out of Washington when a federal judge ruled that the National Security Agency’s phone collection program is likely unconstitutional. Although the ruling is stayed pending appeal, the message from the bench was clear and we’re hopeful this is a sign of even bigger things to come in the legal fight over mass government surveillance.

Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.

The incredible thing about the information provided by Edward Snowden is that it shows just how incredibly broad and deep the U.S. government's surveilance programs are. There has hardly been a week in the past six months in which we haven't learned new information about what the government has been doing with our private information.

If you follow our blog then you know that Maine’s privacy laws are among the best in the country. Earlier this year we led the successful effort requiring law enforcement in Maine to get a warrant before accessing data created on or generated by your cellphone.

Today, the ACLU of Maine is joining a nationwide day of action calling for reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the federal law that says the government can access your email and documents in the cloud without a warrant.