The U.S. Constitution protects your right to be free from government intrusion into your personal space and your life. You—not government—should determine the course of your life.

The ACLU of Minnesota protects your right to privacy by fighting for it in court and by pushing for policies that ensure your privacy rights remains intact. We actively promote responsible uses of technology that enhance privacy and freedom, while opposing those uses of technology which undermine our freedoms and move us closer to a society dominated by surveillance.

Biased Technology

Technology does not exist outside of the biases and racism that are prevalent in our society. Studies show that facial recognition is least reliable for people of color, women, and nonbinary individuals. And that can be life-threatening when the technology is in the hands of law enforcement.  

Facial recognition automates discrimination.  

The ACLU-MN is fighting to end law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology in Minnesota. More than a dozen large cities have banned the technology, including Minneapolis, Boston, and San Francisco. If Minnesota adopts a policy to ban the technology, it would be the first state to do so.  

Learn more about facial recognition technology and the ACLU-MN's fight against it here. 

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

  • The federal law protecting your electronic information was passed in 1986, making it older than the World Wide Web.
  • The government argues that the Fourth Amendment protects information that you keep in your desk, but not information that you keep online, like old emails or pictures.
  • In order to carry out mass surveillance, the NSA has weakened the security of the communications systems that we all rely on.

WHAT'S AT STAKE

We are living in an age of dramatic technological progress. That progress has brought us many conveniences and advantages, but one result has been a rash of new spying and surveillance technologies. These include new or greatly improved imaging devices, location-tracking technologies, communications eavesdropping systems, and new means of collecting ever-more-granular data of all kinds about individuals and their activities.

All too often, the deployment of these technologies happens faster than our social, political, educational, or legal systems can react, producing a “land rush” in which companies and government agencies deploy new privacy-invasive technologies before subjects are aware that they exist—and certainly before we have consented to their use through our democratic political system.

The ACLU promotes the preservation of privacy and other values in a manner that maximizes the advantages that such technology might bring us. In some cases, technology-specific rules might be warranted. In all cases, we would benefit from the application of basic privacy principles, such as the globally recognized Fair Information Practice Principles. 

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