Blog of Rights
05/21/2013
First Amendment

Justice Department's Overreaching on Leaks Threatens Freedom of the Press

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:54pm

A week after the Department of Justice notified the Associated Press that it had secretly seized records for more than 20 phone lines in a leak investigation, The Washington Post uncovered an overlooked search warrant in another leak case that raises similar – and perhaps more serious – constitutional concerns.

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05/21/2013
Human Trafficking

Prestigious Law Firms Join Fight for Guestworkers' Rights in Major Human Trafficking Case

By Noa Yachot, Communications Strategist, ACLU at 11:30am

Eighty-three Indian guestworkers who fell victim to a massive human trafficking scheme filed suit today against Signal International, LLC. The lawsuits allege that the defendants trafficked over 500 Indian guestworkers after Hurricane Katrina and forced them to work for Signal in grossly exploitative and abusive conditions after they were lured to the United States under fraudulent assurances of becoming lawful permanent U.S. residents.

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05/21/2013
Immigration Reform 2013

Two Big Wins for Civil Liberties in Monday's Immigration Markup

By Sarah Mehta, Fellow, Immigrants' Rights Project, ACLU & Alex Berger, Legislative Assistant, ACLU at 9:36am

In yesterday's flurry of activity in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the comprehensive immigration reform bill, there were two big wins for civil liberties: Blumenthal 2, an amendment that limits solitary confinement in immigration detention, and Blumenthal 8, an amendment that restricts Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers from conducting raids in schools, churches or hospitals.

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05/20/2013
U.S. Death Penalty

Running Scared in Nebraska: Death Penalty Loving State Senators Hide Behind a Filibuster

By Amy Miller, ACLU of Nebraska & Tyler Richard, ACLU of Nebraska at 2:36pm

This week in Nebraska, a handful of senators – four in particular – used filibusters and frivolous amendments to stall a full debate...

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05/20/2013
Anti-Immigrant Laws

A Key Lesson from the 1986 Immigration Reform Is in Jeopardy

By Diana Scholl, Communications Strategist, ACLU at 12:45pm

Another day, another amendment to the Senate immigration reform legislation from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would harm immigrants' civil liberties. Amendment 17, which will be up for consideration this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee's markup of the immigration reform bill, would unwisely (and unconstitutionally) restrict the ability of immigrants to correct erroneous denials of legalization by barring the courthouse door to them.

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05/20/2013
E-Verify

Immigration Reform: Week Two Is Through

By Michael Macleod-Ball, Chief of Staff, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:59am

After two more long days last week of largely unsuccessful attempts to scuttle the immigration reform bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee now is looking at the gargantuan task of wrapping up consideration – somehow, some way – before the end of this week. On Tuesday, the Committee completed work on the border security section of the bill and then began consideration of the section dealing with non-immigrant visas – addressing labor needs. Work on those issues continued on Thursday and then transitioned to enforcement, including the E-Verify employment verification system. All told, the Committee was busy this week – considering 64 amendments and adopting 40 of them. All but two of the amendments were adopted on a bipartisan basis. Ninety-nine amendments have now been considered (including modifications), and quite a few more have been withdrawn, out of the 300 amendments originally filed. Despite the accomplishments, the Committee still must figure out a way to deal with perhaps 150 amendments before Senators return to their home states at the end of the week for the Memorial Day recess.

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05/20/2013
Voter Suppression

Happy 20th Anniversary to the National Voter Registration Act! May It Have Many More

By Dale Ho, Managing Attorney, ACLU at 11:50am

Twenty years ago today, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), in order to make voter registration free, fair, and accessible for all Americans. The statute has been a resounding success, helping to enfranchise millions of Americans across the country.

The NVRA is often referred to as the "Motor Voter" law, because it requires states to offer voter registration with applications for driver's licenses. But other provisions are equally important. The NVRA requires states to offer voter registration to applicants for public assistance programs such as Medicaid and the new health benefit exchange that is required under the Affordable Care Act. . It also protects the right of citizens and civic associations to conduct volunteer voter registration drives, and removes state-imposed barriers to registration, by creating a one-page standardized voter registration form for use in all states, on which voters affirm their eligibility as citizens by signing a sworn affidavit.

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05/20/2013
Government Surveillance

AP Phone Records Scandal Highlights a Broader Problem: Lack of Checks and Balances on Government Access to Records

By Patrick C. Toomey, Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 11:36am

Last week we learned that the Department of Justice, in an unprecedented intrusion on the work of journalists, had obtained records for twenty telephone numbers belonging to the Associated Press or its reporters, spanning April and May 2012. The telephone records obtained do not include the content of phone calls, but they likely reveal the phone number of each and every caller on those lines for a period of weeks and, therefore, the identity of scores of confidential media sources.

The seizure of these records came to light only because the government has a special set of guidelines that require it to notify any media organization of a subpoena for its records within (at most) 90 days. The AP appears to have learned of the seizure of its phone records, albeit after the fact, only because of this special policy.

The notice given to the AP has generated a healthy debate over the limits on the government’s authority to acquire our telephone and internet records. But what if you aren’t a media organization and, therefore, do not benefit from the special government policy entitling you to notice when the government obtains your telephone or internet records? What information can the government get about you, and is it even required to tell you when it does so?

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05/20/2013
BRCA

Barbara Brenner, 1951-2013

By Bennett Stein, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:00am

The ACLU mourns the loss of a great leader, tenacious activist, and close friend of the organization. Barbara Brenner, the longtime director of Breast Cancer Action ("BCA"), was a frequent and trusted ACLU collaborator – as an employee at the ACLU of Southern California's women's rights project, as a law intern at the ACLU of Northern California, as an affiliate and national board member, as a cooperating attorney, and, most recently, as a client.

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05/20/2013
Drones

"Drones" vs "UAVs" -- What's Behind A Name?

Representatives of the drone industry and other drone boosters often make a point of saying they don’t like to use the word “drones.” When my colleague Catherine Crump and I were writing our drones report in 2011, we talked over what terminology we should use, and decided that since our job was to communicate, we should use the term that people would most clearly and directly understand. That word is “drones.”

Drone proponents would prefer that everyone use the term “UAV,” for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or “UAS,” for Unmanned Aerial System (“system” in order to encompass the entirety of the vehicle that flies, the ground-based controller, and the communications connection that connects the two). These acronyms are technical, bland, and bureaucratic. That’s probably their principal advantage from the point of view of those who want to separate them from the ugly, bloody, and controversial uses to which they’ve been put by the CIA and U.S. military overseas.

I suppose there is a case to be made that domestic drones are a different thing from overseas combat drones. Certainly, there’s a wide gulf separating a $17 million Reaper drone armed with Hellfire missiles and a hand-launched hobbyist craft buzzing around somebody’s back yard. But drone proponents themselves would be the first to say that drones are a tool—one that can be used for many different purposes. They can be used for fun, photography, science, surveillance, and yes, raining death upon people with the touch of a button from across the world. Even the overseas military uses of drones vary, including not just targeted killing but also surveillance and logistics.

Putting aside well-founded fears that even domestically we may someday see the deployment of weaponized drones, in the end, the difference between overseas and domestic drones is a difference in how the same tool is used. Regardless of whether you’ve got a Predator, a Reaper, a police craft, or a $150 backyard hobby rotorcraft, that tool is what it is. What it is is a drone.

I can’t touch on this subject without quoting from George Orwell’s famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” in which Orwell argued that bland and needlessly complicated language was a political act—a symptom of attempts to cover up

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