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 Doug Bonney, Chief Counsel & Legal Director, ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri at 2:05pm
Seventeen years ago this week, cooperating lawyers recruited by the ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri were doing battle for the First Amendment in a major trial over the Olathe, Kansas School District’s removal of Nancy Garden’s award-winning young adult novel Annie on My Mind from all of the District’s school libraries.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of “Banned Books Week,” the American Library Association’s rousing celebration of free speech, and its condemnation of government shackling of library bookshelves across the nation. Free speech is a core mission of the ACLU: books are speech. They enrich us; they teach us; they entertain us; they confound us; and they challenge us. And sometimes, they make us uncomfortable. But there is no room on library shelves for censorship.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:07pm
At a time when the anger abroad over the Innocence of Muslims video shows no signs of abating, President Obama gave an impassioned speech Tuesday at the United Nations that was a full-throated, unqualified defense of the American tradition of free expression.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:59am
Back in the waning years of the Clinton administration, Congress quietly enacted an important internet privacy bill (the passage of which was overshadowed by other, more salacious developments). The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) requires any website “target[ing]” children under the age of 13 to notify a child’s parent and receive verifiable consent before collecting personal information from that child. A lot of COPPA is about controlling online marketing activities involving young children, who may not appreciate the dangers in disclosing sensitive personal information to commercial entities.
Approximately 3,000 protesters from across the country amassed in New York City’s financial district to celebrate Occupy Wall Street’s one year anniversary. Refusing to be deterred by the barricades and checkpoints that precluded them from entering the area by the New York Stock Exchange, protesters broke into numerous roving marches, chanting, singing and throwing confetti. The NYPD’s response to many of these marches was more tempered than previously observed in other Occupy protests, and a fair number of arrests were the result of civil disobedience.
By Naomi Gilens, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:28pm
This morning, faced with the threat of criminal and civil contempt, Twitter turned over information about Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris to a New York criminal court judge. This development follows Twitter’s months-long effort to challenge the Manhattan District Attorney Office’s subpoena for Harris’s information, which was issued as part of the D.A.’s disorderly conduct prosecution of Harris stemming from his participation at an Occupy event last fall.
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 Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:02pm
Adam Thierer of the libertarian Mercatus Center posted a thoughtful critique of my recent piece on online tracking and consumer “choice.” I wrote about a new paper on behavioral advertising and how it “demonstrates the absurdity of the position that individuals who desire privacy must attempt to win a technological arms race with the multi-billion dollar internet-advertising industry.”
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:22pm
The second coming of the “Stolen Valor” Act (the Supreme Court struck down the first iteration on First Amendment grounds last term) is on the House’s “suspension” calendar today, meaning it will pass with a two-thirds majority vote, without amendment and after 40 minutes of debate. The bill would create additional federal penalties for “fraudulent” representations concerning military decorations.
