By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:00pm
Is the FBI attaching GPS devices to cars, boats and planes and tracking them without a warrant? Even in the wake of the Supreme Court’s January decision in United States v. Jones, holding that attaching a GPS device to a car is covered by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, we don’t know for certain. That’s why today we filed a Freedom of Information Act request for two memos the FBI has prepared setting out its guidance on the Jones decision.
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.
By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:53pm
A new article in Wired covers the evolution of the gag orders that come with national security letters (NSLs), secret FBI demands for your communication, internet, financial and credit records in terrorism investigations. As we wrote on Wednesday, the FBI is now notifying NSL recipients of their right to judicial review as a result of years of ACLU client litigation.
By Devon Chaffee, Legislative Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 7:16pm
This morning, Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman continued to shock readers by exposing some of the most vehemently anti-Muslim training documents used by the U.S. government that have come to light to date. (See our past analysis of biased FBI materials.) The newly released military training materials not only contained erroneous stereotypes and derogatory remarks about Muslims and Arabs, they included a four-phase plan for transformation of Islam that would reduce Islam to a “cult status” and possibly result in “total war” against Islam.
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.
Today we sent a letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General asking him to investigate the FBI’s improper collection of intelligence about American Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities, and compilation of records describing community members’ First Amendment protected speech and activities in violation of the Privacy Act.
Over the course of two decades, the FBI went to war against Dr. Martin Luther King, even though the civil rights leader never knew he was under attack.
As Dr. King’s political power, stature and influence grew, the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, grew increasingly obsessed with King. In turn, they used various tactics in the ‘50s and ‘60s to try and discredit him, such as mounting a full-court press to portray him as a Communist provocateur, attempting to disrupt tributes after Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and repeatedly bugging his hotel rooms.
By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 3:28pm
Last week, the ACLU released FBI documents showing that the bureau is secretly and deliberately collecting information about innocent Americans through community outreach programs and retaining information about these Americans’ speech, beliefs, and other First Amendment-protected activities in violation of the Privacy Act. The Washington Post reported on Muslim community concerns over this practice.
