Today the ACLU was in court arguing that the Library of Congress violated Col. Morris Davis’s First Amendment rights when it fired him from his job at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) because of opinion pieces he wrote criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Guantánamo detainees in federal courts and others in the military commissions system.
Col. Davis served as Guantánamo’s chief prosecutor until October 2007, when he resigned because he came to believe that the military commission system had become fundamentally flawed. He has openly and publicly criticized the commissions eversince.
The next time you send an email or make a phone call to a friend outside the country, consider this: the National Security Agency could be making a copy of your communication and storing it.
The ACLU was in court yesterday trying to hold officials accountable for the torture of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. In 2002 he was taken from a New York jail by the military, declared an "enemy combatant," and secretly transported to a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
He was imprisoned without charge for nearly four years, subjected to extreme abuse, and unable to communicate with his lawyers or family for two years. The illegal treatment included forcing Padilla into stress positions for hours on end, punching him, depriving him of sleep and threatening him with further torture and death.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other prisoners accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks will soon be tried at a military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay, despite the Obama administration's earlier stated intention to try the men in federal court.
On Sunday, a New York Times editorial lamented that despite improvements in the military commission system made by the Obama administration, "even the best-managed trial will not be able to change the fact that this country has in the last decade accepted too many damaging and unnecessary changes to its fundamental principles of justice and human rights."
On Monday the Obama administration made its latest attempt to defend the government’s targeted killing program. Attorney General Eric Holder provided the most detailed public discussion yet of the program, but disappointingly took the “trust us” approach, essentially arguing that the American public should trust the executive branch when it says that the targeted killing program (including the killing of U.S. citizens) complies with the constitution and international law, and that no judicial review of the administration’s legal standards, process, or evidence is required.
This week marks 10 years since the Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The ACLU is hosting a blog series that will address some of the sweeping changes to surveillance laws over the past decade. To learn more about the Patriot Act, visit www.aclu.org/patriot.
Congress is currently considering new cybersecurity measures, including some proposed by the Obama administration. But the plans threaten to make the same mistakes as the Patriot Act, which has its 10th anniversary this Wednesday.
Yesterday in federal district court in Manhattan, we appeared for the latest round in our long fight for the release of information about the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in facilities throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, we were arguing against the government's suppression of over 2,000 photographs depicting the abuse of detainees. In the face of the government's claim that it could withhold the photographs from the public without any judicial review, we argued that the core principles of transparency and accountability embodied in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) required the court to review the government’s decision. Unfortunately, the judge ruled against us.
The Supreme Court has just agreed to consider whether plaintiffs represented by the ACLU have the right to challenge the constitutionality of a controversial law that authorizes the National Security Agency to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
At issue is an appeals court ruling that allowed the ACLU’s challenge to the law – called the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – to move forward. Responding to today’s news, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
We’ve just learned that the Obama administration has asked the court for another extension for filing briefs in the ACLU’s FOIA lawsuit seeking information about the government’s targeted killing program (see the government’s letter here, and the ACLU’s response opposing the request here). Responding to the news, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said:
