Adam Schwartz writes:
EFF sent California Gov. Jerry Brown a letter urging him to sign S.B. 31. This bill, authored by Sen. Ricardo Lara, would prevent state and local government in California from assisting the federal government in creating a registry based on religious belief, national origin, or ethnicity.
All too often, governments use databases against people, especially vulnerable minorities. Sometimes that is the point of a database. Other times governments create a database for a benevolent purpose, and later use it for a harmful purpose. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau collaborated with Japanese internment by sharing with military officials its supposedly confidential data about the names and addresses of Japanese Americans. EFF opposes such misuse of government databases.
Read more on EFF.