A big worry about U.S. law enforcement’s expanding use of drones is the lack of rules protecting from privacy violations. But drone manufacturers are also considering offering police the option of arming these remote controlled aircraft with non-lethal (for now) weapons like rubber bullets, Tasers, and tear gas. This eye-opening new video from The Daily takes a closer look:
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An amazing video posted on The New York Times website today lays out in chilling detail how the National Security Agency is sucking up every piece of communication data in America – from phone calls to emails to cell phone location – and has the ability to tie together all of the information for a single person (watch it here).
By Josh Bell, Media Strategist, ACLU & Noa Yachot, Communications Strategist, ACLU at 5:04pm
You shouldn’t have to trade your privacy rights for the ability to use digital technology. But with technological advances coming so quickly, privacy protections are having trouble keeping up. That’s why the ACLU created the dotRights campaign – to let Americans know about what’s really going on with digital privacy, and to press corporations and the government to respect our rights.
You might switch off the GPS function on your cell phone – but that doesn’t mean that your wireless carrier can’t still track your location, store it for long periods, and hand it over to the government on request (it can and does). You might think that you control who can see what you do on the internet – but tightening your Facebook privacy settings or deleting your browser’s tracking cookies won’t change the fact that your online activities are being recorded and sold for profit to the highest bidder.
The ACLU recently released a report prompted by the increasing use of surveillance drones by U.S. law enforcement and other agencies. It finds that current privacy protections are lacking, and recommends that new federal rules for domestic drones are needed to safeguard personal privacy and civil liberties.
The Atlantic Wire was good enough to call the report “well-sourced and pretty accessible for even non-privacy experts as it explains everything from how the Federal Aviation Administration is (or isn't) updating regulations to take drones into account and a good old fashioned review of what the Fourth Amendment means.”
Since the killing of Osama bin Laden, there has been much debate over whether the torture of detainees in U.S. custody helped American intelligence find the terror leader. It would be hard to find a better authority on where the truth lies than CIA Director Leon Panetta. Now the Washington Post's Greg Sargent has released part of a letter from Panetta to torture opponent Sen. John McCain — and the contents leave little doubt that torture played no role in locating the courier who eventually led to bin Laden. Panetta wrote:
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals just issued its opinion in the ACLU’s First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo. He was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (part of the Library of Congress) in 2009 because of op-ed pieces he wrote in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal courts and others in the military commissions system.
Today the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union called on New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to investigate religious and racial profiling by the New York Police Department.
In a series of articles, the Associated Press reports the NYPD spied on mosques and Muslim college students far outside New York City, without evidence or allegations of criminal activity. The NYPD surveilled mosques and businesses in Muslim and ethnic communities in Newark and on Long Island, and monitored college students in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, according to documents released by the AP.
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.
