By Peter Bibring, ACLU of Southern California at 4:26pm
Yesterday, a district court judge threw out claims brought by members of Southern California’s Muslim community that the FBI undertook a massive operation to surveil them on the basis of their religion.
By Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:31pm
In a throwback to the J. Edgar Hoover-era COINTELPRO investigations targeting civil rights and anti-war activists, the FBI is now training its agents to be on the lookout for "Black Separatist" terrorists, according to FBI training materials released today by the ACLU. These new disclosures, obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation, are the latest in a growing flood of FBI training materials that include factually flawed and biased information.
The government’s surveillance of Americans in the name of national security remains overwhelmingly secret. Some of the secrecy is legitimate, but much of it is not. The ACLU has been chipping away at secrecy and “gag order” provisions that interfere with the ability of the public and the courts to monitor the government’s surveillance activities. Recently released documents suggest that we’ve made some progress.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 10:44am
Every year, the FBI issues tens of thousands of “national security letters”—or NSLs—demanding that internet service providers, telephone companies, credit card companies, and others hand over information about their customers if it is “relevant” to a counterterrorism or counter-intelligence investigation. That information could include the web sites we visit, the email addresses of our contacts, or even information linking us to our anonymous political speech online. This practice has been shrouded in secrecy, though, because the FBI gags recipients of NSLs—preventing companies from telling their customers that the government has asked for records about them.
By Devon Chaffee, Legislative Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:31am
Today, the ACLU released a 2011 FBI “primer” on overseas interrogation that calls into question whether the FBI is adhering to its own policy prohibiting coercive techniques. The 2011 primer was obtained by the ACLU and colleague organizations through Freedom of Information Act litigation. It was written by an FBI Section Chief within the counterterrorism division, and is ironically titled “Cross Cultural, Rapport-Based Interrogation,” – ironic because it encourages FBI agents to request that detainees in foreign or military custody be put in isolation to prolong the detainee’s fear for interrogation purposes. Isolation was a key component to many of the abusive interrogations that took place in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and in secret CIA black sites after 9/11, in some cases causing extreme psychological trauma. This morning, we wrote to the FBI Director Robert Mueller expressing their concerns with the primer.
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.
By Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 10:24am
The ACLU is appearing today before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to argue on behalf of our client, Nick George.
In August 2009, Nick went to the Philadelphia International Airport to catch a flight to California and begin his senior year at Pomona College. At the airport, he was detained, abusively interrogated, handcuffed, and jailed for several hours in a holding cell – solely because he was carrying a set of Arabic-English flashcards for his language studies, and a book critical of U.S. foreign policy.
By Linda Lye, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California at 10:23am
Just shy of the one-year anniversary of the inaugural Occupy Wall Street protests, the ACLU of Northern California obtained initial documents from the FBI about surveillance of Occupy demonstrations in the region (see the FBI’s response here).
The documents came after an ACLU-NC lawsuit filed after the FBI refused to release any documents in a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents are significant for two reasons:
By Adrienne Lucas, Legal Intern, Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 3:32pm
Today the ACLU filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to force the FBI to release two memos guiding the bureau’s policy on GPS tracking. The memos were written in the wake of the Supreme Court’s January decision in U.S. v. Jones, which held that the Fourth Amendment applies when the government secretly attaches a GPS device to a car and tracks its movements. (See today’s legal complaint, our original FOIA request (made July 18), and a blog post we wrote about that request).
