The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is one of the most influential and powerful organizations in the US. Founded in 1920, it has been at the forefront of many major civil liberties victories over the past 100 years. From campaigns for racial justice to defending LGBTQ+ rights and much more, its work has made a lasting impact on American society. Recently, ACLU has been in the spotlight due to several high-profile collaborations with tech giants like Facebook and Bloomberg. In this article, we will delve deeper into these partnerships and explore how they are helping to advance some of ACLU’s most important causes. So get ready to learn more about how Facebook and Bloomberg are partnering with one of America’s most iconic civil liberties organizations!

Who is aclu?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization that defends the rights of individuals and groups in the United States. The ACLU has been involved in many landmark cases, including the successful defense of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to privacy.

Aclu’s role in the facebook-bloomberg case

In May of 2018, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the City of New York on behalf of Murphy and Facebook. The suit accused the city of unconstitutionally using facial recognition technology on a large scale without the consent of those being monitored.

The complaint alleged that the NYPD had been using a program called “Domain Awareness System” (DAS) to run facial recognition searches against a database of photographs, including those from social media sites like Facebook. According to the ACLU, these searches were conducted without a warrant, and without any suspicion that the people in the photographs had committed a crime.

The DAS program was created in 2012 with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. At the time, then-Mayor Bloomberg touted it as “the first step on our path towards making New York City’s counterterrorism efforts the best in the world.” But civil liberties groups warned that the system could be used to surveil innocent people, and that it would disproportionately impact communities of color.

After the ACLU filed its lawsuit, city officials announced that they would no longer use facial recognition technology without explicit approval from the City Council. This was a victory for privacy advocates, but the case is still ongoing.

How aclu’s involvement has changed the course of the case

Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has been at the forefront of many landmark cases that have had a significant impact on the course of American history. One of its most recent and high-profile cases is that of Murphy v. Facebook, in which the ACLU is representing plaintiff Katherine Murphy in her lawsuit against Facebook for alleged discrimination in housing advertisements.

The case began in 2016 when Murphy, who is African American, was looking for an apartment to rent on Facebook and saw an ad for a unit that was available only to people of “Caucasian background.” She filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which launched an investigation into Facebook’s advertising practices.

In March 2018, HUD announced that it had found evidence that Facebook had engaged in housing discrimination by allowing landlords and real estate brokers to target ads for rental units only to people who fit certain criteria, such as being of a certain race or ethnicity. HUD referred the case to the Justice Department, which filed a civil rights lawsuit against Facebook in August 2018.

The ACLU became involved in the case soon after it was filed, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Murphy and arguing that Facebook’s advertising practices violated the Fair Housing Act. In September 2019, a federal judge ruled in favor of the ACLU and Murphy, finding that Facebook had indeed violated the Fair Housing Act and ordering the social media giant to change its advertising practices.

What aclu’s goals are in this case

The American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) goal in this case is to have Facebook user data stored in the U.S., not Europe, where it is subject to different and potentially weaker privacy laws. The ACLU argues that Facebook users in the U.S. have a right to have their data protected by U.S. law, which is stronger than European law.

What the implications of this case are

This case has implications for how we think about the role of social media in our society. It raises questions about the responsibility of social media companies to protect users’ speech rights, and whether they are doing enough to ensure that users are not being censored.

The case also has implications for how we think about the First Amendment. The ACLU has argued that the government cannot force Facebook to take down content that is critical of it, and that this would be a violation of the First Amendment.

This case is still ongoing, and it will be interesting to see how it develops.