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This Week in Civil Liberties (2/10/12)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 5:41pm

What were the consequences of prosecutorial misconduct for the district attorney’s office that hid evidence to send John Thompson to death row?

Who produced a short music video on photographers’ First Amendment rights?

This Valentine’s Day HBO will show a documentary on which couple who challenged Virginia’s interracial marriage ban?

Congress is attempting to pressure which agency to allow more aerial surveillance of Americans?

This Week in Civil Liberties (2/3/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 5:59pm

This week we sued the government for information on what program?

Why was ACLU of Ohio client Zach bullied and beaten in school?

Which movie rental company will be able to share your video rental records perpetually if H.R. 2471 is passed?

Which government department has announced a new rule that will prevent discrimination against LGBT families in its programs?

Which laws will the execution of Edwin Hart Turner violate?

This Week in Civil Liberties (1/27/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 6:11pm

Which search engine forces you to share your personal data with almost all of its products and sites?

A school district in which state will stop illegally promoting religion to public school students after a settlement with ACLU plaintiffs?

Which amendment did the government violate when it placed a GPS tracking device on Antoine Jones’s car?

Of which band is Billy McCarthy, who talks about solitary confinement in a new Prison Voices podcast, the singer and songwriter?

What Would You #AskObama?

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 2:54pm

Tonight and for the rest of the week, we'll be live-tweeting questions to Obama administration staff following the State of the Union address. Join us!

This Week in Civil Liberties (1/13/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 6:20pm

Are inmates on death row more violent or just unlucky?

Which Constitutional amendment does an Oklahoma law that discriminates against Muslims violate?

How many years has it been since the opening of Guantanamo Bay?

What search tool didn’t make privacy a default for its new social search?

Which Senator recently released a short video in support of LGBT youth and the Student Non-Discrimination Act?

This Week in Civil Liberties (1/6/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 6:12pm

Which bill, signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve, allows for indefinite military detention without charge or trial?

What comic book debuting this week features the same-sex marriage of two characters?

In which state is the ACLU challenging a law that bars LGBT public employees’ partners from healthcare benefits?

Which governor attempted to strike down a voter-approved medical marijuana law?

President Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Into Law
President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last Saturday, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.

This Week in Civil Liberties (12/30/2011)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 1:11pm

Which ACLU lawsuit did The New York Times write about this week?

Who has been stopped by a district court from detaining or arresting people solely because of their race?

In which state did the Justice Department block a voter ID law?

What rights was the ACLU of Massachusetts in court to defend this week?

WTF? (What the Fawkes?)
The ACLU of Massachusetts’ Kade Crockford had gone to court to listen to their legal team argue a case to protect the First Amendment rights — freedom of speech, the right to anonymity, and the right to be protected from unwarranted government search and seizure of our private information — of our client, Twitter user @p0isAn0n, a.k.a. Guido Fawkes. That user was the target of a Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney’s administrative subpoena to Twitter to hand over @p0isAn0n’s subscriber information, including our client’s IP address, which can be used to help track down someone’s physical residence. Instead of witnessing the hashing out of justice, Kade got a first-hand illustration of government secrecy gone wild.

This Year in Civil Liberties: 2011

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 2:51pm

2011 was certainly a year in which a number of the issues the ACLU works on really disturbed our blog readers. To sum up the year, we present you with some of the top issues from the past 12 months by taking a look at our most popular blog posts.

National Defense Authorization Act
This past year, there was no topic hotter on the Blog of Rights than the National Defense Authorization Act. In May, we blogged about the vote in the House of Representatives on a troubling expansion of war authority. Though the House passed the NDAA with the provision to authorize worldwide war, the Senate Armed Services Committee passed its version of the bill without that provision. Unfortunately, this version did include provisions for indefinite detention.

This Week in Civil Liberties (12/9/2011)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 6:21pm

Who is holding secret meetings regarding the National Defense Authorization Act and its indefinite detention provisions?

Who stood up for LGBT and gender-nonconforming kids to change her school’s unfair yearbook picture policy?

Which public middle school tries to force Christianity on its students?

What is the government trying to hide from the public by redacting or withholding State Department cables?

This Week in Civil Liberties (12/2/2011)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 5:50pm

Which amendment rejected by the Senate this week would have banned indefinite detention without charge or trial?

What can’t Siri help you find?

How does S-Comm violate U.S. citizens’ rights?

Which state repealed a law that allows death row prisoners the opportunity to try to commute their sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole based on racial bias?

Which agency uses “community outreach” programs to collect intelligence on innocent Americans?

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