By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:10am
The Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last week called, “Countering Online Radicalization in America,” which strongly endorsed First Amendment principles in rejecting censorship as an appropriate tactic for addressing violent extremist content on the Internet. The report evaluated the many methods governments around the world use to censor the Internet – including filtering or blacklisting online content, taking down websites (either through legal means, cyber attacks or appealing to private sector providers), and prosecuting Internet content producers – and rejected them all as both ineffective in stopping the spread of undesirable ideas, and an affront to American values: “For the United States, the cost-benefit analysis would be even clearer: with its long and cherished tradition of free speech, the creation of a nationwide system of censorship is virtually inconceivable.” But the BPC’s positive recommendations are potentially undermined by its continuing embrace of a radicalization theory that draws too close a causal connection between “radical” ideas and violent action.
By Sandra S. Park, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:54pm
Today, the Supreme Court granted our petition seeking review of an appellate court’s 2-1 ruling upholding patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. We represent 20 plaintiffs, including geneticists, patients, and scientific organizations representing over 150,000 pathologists and laboratory professionals. The case is the first challenging whether human genes can be patented.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:25pm
With one major exception, the Roberts Court has been quite protective of unpopular (and even revolting) speech under the First Amendment. That exception, however, is a doozy. It involves a statute criminalizing “material support” for terrorism, and the danger of the law was on stark display this week with reports of a petition to hold Twitter responsible for allowing Hamas to use the service.
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:42am
Recently I wrote about an ACLU of Michigan report that highlighted the problem of police cameras being installed outside of people’s private homes. Last week I learned from my colleague Doug Bonney of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri about an even more egregious incident involving video surveillance of a private home in Missouri. Bonney described the situation to me:
By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 10:05am
One of the technology-related civil liberties battles that ACLU affiliates around the country have been fighting in recent years involves defending students’ rights to privacy and free expression in the new electronic media that are becoming such a large part of their lives. For some reason many school officials seem to believe that when it comes to online communications, students have no such rights
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:36pm
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) deserves significant credit for placing a hold today on a draft intelligence spending bill that would place enormous new obstacles in the path of journalists trying to report on government illegality, fraud and waste in the intelligence community. Although it is true that national security sometimes requires secrecy, restrictions on freedom of the press would do little to benefit the national security while significantly insulating government wrongdoing from public scrutiny.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:52am
The Petraeus Affair Affair is salacious stuff. It also, naturally, raises a lot of questions about privacy. But there’s also an interesting First Amendment angle underneath the sensation: why did the FBI investigate Paula Broadwell—the Petraeus biographer and paramour who allegedly sent “harassing” emails to Tampa housewife Jill Kelley—in the first place? The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that none of the Broadwell emails contained “overt threats,” and really amounted to “cat-fight stuff” (a source’s words, not mine). Further, it appears the email that initially prompted Kelley to go to the FBI (titled “kelleypatrol”) was forwarded by General Allen, not sent directly. And, apparently, prosecutors expressed doubt that any of the emails constituted a threat.
The ACLU LGBT Project and the ACLU of Utah filed a lawsuit earlier today challenging a decision by Davis School District in Davis County, Utah, to remove a children’s picture book about a family with two moms from all elementary school libraries in the district. The book, called In Our Mothers’ House, was written by Patricia Polacco, an acclaimed author of award-winning children’s literature. The School Library Journal gave In Our Mothers’ House a rave review and recommends the book for children in grades 1 to 4. The school district decided to remove the book from the library shelves and hide it behind the librarians’ desks in response to complaints from some parents that the book “normalizes a lifestyle that we don’t agree with.” The school district has claimed that having a book about a family with same-sex parents on the library shelves would also violate Utah’s sex-education laws because it would amount to “advocacy of homosexuality.”
The right to peacefully assemble, enshrined both in the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law, is an intrinsic element of the democratic fabric of the United States. Yet according to a report released Friday by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an international organization of which the U.S. is a member, America is failing to uphold this fundamental right. The report is the first comprehensive OSCE report on violation of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly that covers the U.S.
By Brian Hauss, Legal Fellow, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 9:30am
(Updated below)
In another round of the legal battle over the records of Twitter users sought by the government in connection with its WikiLeaks investigation, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are appearing before a federal appeals court in Richmond this morning, arguing that the public has a right to know about secret court orders and other documents related to government efforts to obtain Internet users’ private information without a warrant.
