Blog of Rights
Alexander
Abdo
04/16/2013
U.S. Torture

Blue Ribbon Task Force: U.S. Tortured Detainees—Leaders Responsible

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:39pm

Nearly two years ago, a non-partisan, constitutional think tank called the Constitution Project assembled its blue-ribbon Task Force on Detainee Treatment to examine the treatment of detainees in the years following 9/11. Today, the Task Force released its report—a 550-page, comprehensive condemnation of the role of senior Bush administration officials in the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.

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06/26/2012
U.S. Torture

ACLU Launches Torture Database in Recognition of International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:41pm
In recognition of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, we launched the Torture Database, a compilation of over 100,000 pages of documents related to the Bush administration’s rendition, detention, and interrogation policies and practices. The database is our effort to provide meaningful public access to the primary documentation of torture and abuse during the years following September 11, 2001.
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06/19/2012
Online Privacy

More Transparency Needed For Government's Use of National Security Powers For Data Requests From Companies

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:27pm

Google's transparency report reveals that the U.S. government asked Google for data on its users 6,321 times during the second half of 2011—a 75% increase from two years ago.

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03/09/2012
U.S. Torture

In Court Today: CIA Claims That Torture Technique Is an “Intelligence Method” Exempted From FOIA

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 9:29am

Today I will argue the CIA must release cables describing its use of waterboarding.

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12/26/2012
Freedom of Expression

Rhetorical Support Is Not “Material Support”

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:37pm

We Americans cherish few rights more than the right to speak our minds. And yet that right often comes under attack. Most recently, the federal government has used laws criminalizing the “material support” of foreign terrorist organizations to prosecute people who hold unpopular political views. Take the case of Tarek Mehanna, a native of Sudbury, Massachusetts.

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05/10/2012
U.S. Torture

Book Review: "Hard Measures"

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 11:03am

In an email sent to potential supporters a few days before releasing his book on CIA torture, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations, complained that his book, Hard Measures, would “be attacked from many quarters—mostly by people who will never read it.” 

Having just finished reading Mr. Rodriguez’s book, I am confident that its readers will be critics, too. Hard Measures is a shameless defense of torture, and it is a dishonest one. At its core, the book has two central contradictions.

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04/25/2012
U.S. Torture

Twisted Logic and the New Book by the CIA Spy Who Destroyed Torture Tapes

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:03pm

On Monday, the latest installment in the defense of torture — Hard Measures, by Jose Rodriguez — will hit bookshelves. Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations, will also appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Like many of torture's outspoken proponents, Rodriguez has a personal stake in defending torture: he was intimately involved in the CIA's brutal "enhanced interrogation" regime. According to an internal CIA report, for example, Rodriguez's office proposed the use of "coercive physical techniques" in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. In other words, the CIA's path to torture went directly through Rodriguez.

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06/27/2012
U.S. Torture

The White House's Blemished Record of Disclosure on Bush-Era Torture

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 10:46am

Of the thousands of now public documents related to the Bush administration's experiment with torture, a particularly remarkable one is a Justice Department memo from 30 May 2005 analyzing whether the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" violate the Convention Against Torture.

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05/25/2012
U.S. Torture

Appeals Court Says CIA Can Hide Torture Evidence from Public

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 1:52pm

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court ruled that the CIA can effectively decide for itself what Americans are allowed to learn about the torture committed in their name. At issue in the ACLU’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was the agency’s right to withhold secret cables describing waterboarding; a photograph of a detainee, Abu Zubaydah, taken around the time that he was subjected to the “enhanced interrogation techniques”; and a short phrase that appears in several Justice Department memos referring to a “source of authority.”

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09/14/2011
FBI

Secrecy About Secrecy: Making Sure the FBI Is Following the Rules on Surveillance Gag Orders

By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project & at 4:07pm

Every year, the FBI sends about 50,000 "national security letters" (NSLs) to Internet service providers and others requesting information about their customers. Today we filed a lawsuit aiming to make sure that the government is following the rules when it uses this controversial tool.

NSLs allow the FBI to collect information that's extremely sensitive — e.g. the names of websites that a person has visited, or the email addresses with which she has corresponded — and to do so without judicial oversight. Unsurprisingly, government reports have detailed significant abuses.

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