rebecca@sfbg.com

About 500 people packed into Berkeley's St. John's Presbyterian Church on June 11, days after revelations of a massive National Security Agency electronic surveillance program had hit the news.

They were there for panel talk titled "Our Vanishing Civil Liberties," and the discussion revolved around Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who leaked top-secret documents to reveal the scope of the massive NSA spying infrastructure, triggering a firestorm of public debate internationally.Read more »

Jack Abramoff says "legalized bribery" is corrupting our political system, and as a lobbyist who went to prison for taking the practice of buying favors from Congress to obscene new depths, he should know. But if we're relying on him to help reform that system, a cause he's now taken up, we could be in real trouble.Read more »

NO RESPECT Read more »

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco officials are attempting to ban the public use of e-cigarettes under the same laws that restrict smoking cigarettes, which are banned in most public places purportedly because secondhand smoke endangers others. However, the alleged lack of toxic emissions from e-cigarette vapor raises questions about the basis for the crackdown.Read more »

Rebecca@sfbg.com

On June 3, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it's legal for law enforcement to collect DNA samples from people who are arrested — even when the individuals taken into custody are never convicted of a crime. The justices were narrowly split, and the decision immediately drew criticism from civil liberties advocates like American Civil Liberties Union, who characterized it as a blow to American's Fourth Amendment right to privacy.Read more »

rebeccab@sfbg.comRead more »

steve@sfbg.com

Facebook and other popular gathering places on the Internet are fast becoming the equivalent of a public commons, where many of our essential personal, professional, and governmental interactions take place, and a portal through which we access a large and growing variety of goods and services.Read more »

Regional planning hits Chinatown

When regional planners at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission funded a study to create a bus-rapid transit system on Van News Avenue, they decided, in the interest of speeding the buses along, to allow only one left turn — onto Broadway.Read more »

tredmond@sfbg.com

The intersection of Cesar Chavez and Evans Avenue is a good enough place to start. Face south.

Behind you is Potrero Hill, once a working-class neighborhood (and still home to a public housing project) where homes now sell for way more than a million dollars and rents are out of control. In front, down the hill, is one of the last remaining industrial areas in San Francisco.Read more »

news@sfbg.com

With my partner-in-crime Keith Chandler at the wheel, we're driving through San Francisco on our way to Stanford University Law School for the Three Strikes Summit, a deeply personal topic to both of us. Three Strikes is partly why I served 15 years in prison, and Stanford's Three Strikes Project is a big reason why I was released earlier this year.Read more »