By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:17pm
How is the Department of Justice using location tracking? If you were looking for an answer to this simple question, this was not the week. Instead, as Congress attempts to oversee this crucial privacy question, it is getting double talk and stonewalling.
Let’s start with the legal standard the Department is using. Earlier this week Senator Al Franken (D-MN) asked Attorney General Holder to clarify the Department’s position on location tracking. Specifically, he asked why, even though experts agree that the recent Supreme Court case US v. Jones stands for the proposition that law enforcement needs a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on a car, DOJ is arguing in another case for a lower, non-probable cause standard. (In an amicus, the ACLU argued that the Fourth Amendment requires that police obtain a warrant to engage in GPS monitoring.) The Attorney General replied that he wasn’t familiar with the case but agreed with Senator Franken that in interpreting Jones they were “likely to be dealing with a situation where we need a warrant.” This frustrating answer seems aimed at reassuring Congress that Americans’ constitutional rights are being protected while DOJ is arguing precisely the opposite in court.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 11:32am
Today the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to force the government to release statistics about its use of powerful electronic surveillance tools that law enforcement can use against any American simply by stating to a judge that it’s relevant to an investigation. The Department of Justice is required to disclose these statistics to Congress each year, yet routinely fails to do so. Today’s suit is an effort to compel the DOJ to follow the law (here are our complaint and our FOIA request).
By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project at 12:05pm
Last Thursday’s release of the long-delayed national Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) regulations by the Department of Justice reminds us of the hundreds of prison rape victims we’ve heard from over the years who could not seek justice because the prison officials who failed to protect them were essentially immunized from liability by a 1996 federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The announced purpose of the PLRA was to curb the filing of frivolous litigation by prisoners. In reality, the law makes it
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:24pm
We haven’t pulled punches in our criticismof the HolderJusticeDepartment, so it’s especially important that we give credit where credit is due. In support of an important case brought by the ACLU of Maryland defending the right to record, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division forcefully and unequivocally endorsed our view in an unusual (but welcome!) 11-page letter to the Baltimore Police Department.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:51pm
Sen. Al Franken (D- MN) is trying to get some answers to straightforward questions about cell-phone location tracking. Today, using our recent nationwide FOIA as a jumping off point, he sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to provide basic information about a practice that, in the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”
Last week, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reported the results of its extensive survey on intimate partner and sexual violence in the United States. The findings were staggering. In the past year alone, 1.3 million women were raped. In their lifetime, approximately 1 in 5 women have been raped and 1 in 6 women have been stalked. 1 in 4 women have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner.
By Chris Rickerd, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:32pm
It’s long past time for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop passing the buck on Secure Communities (S-Comm) and take responsibility for the controversial immigration enforcement program. S-Comm has caused unprecedented harms to public safety and community trust in the police: DOJ must urgently take action to end this disastrous initiative.
S-Comm has been implemented by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 1,659 jurisdictions across the country, disregarding the opposition of numerous states and localities. Under S-Comm, the FBI shares the fingerprints of every arrested person with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — despite the fact that sharing these prints contravenes agreements made between the states and the FBI.
By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 11:19am
On Wednesday, yet another report confirmed the use of factually incorrect and bigoted training materials on Islam and Muslims — this time by the Department of Justice. Wired published a 2010 PowerPoint presentation created for the U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which teaches that "Islam is convinced of the superiority of its culture; and obsessed with the inferiority of its power" and that "No Major Muslim group has ever renounced the doctrine of jihad of the sword." It also includes a slide from a briefing by an FBI intelligence analyst notorious for his anti-Islam views, which claims that today, "Civilians, Juries, Lawyers, Media, Academia, and Charities" are engaged in a "Civilizational Jihad" in the United States. The article also reports that anti-Islam training materials are used in military intelligence schools, an online university geared towards people seeking jobs in intelligence, and the Army's center at Fort Leavenworth.
Sen. Dick Durbin calls the recent rash of state voter suppression efforts, "a threat to our democracy." Yesterday he held a hearing on this disturbing trend at which the ACLU submitted a statement for the record.
In recent months, state legislatures across the nation have erected new barriers to the ballot through the passage of a range of highly restrictive voter suppression laws. Regressive measures were introduced in more than 30 states, and thirteen states proceeded to adopt new or expanded barriers to voting.
