The DC Circuit Court of Appeals just issued its opinion in the ACLU’s First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo. He was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service (part of the Library of Congress) in 2009 because of op-ed pieces he wrote in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal courts and others in the military commissions system.
By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 2:52pm
We filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in New York state court in support of Twitter’s efforts to protect the constitutional rights of one of its users. As we posted earlier this month, Twitter took a great step to defend its users’ rights by filing a motion to quash a subpoena that the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan issued in connection with the prosecution of an Occupy Wall Street protester.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:58am
Throughout the country, many of us have rightly been long concerned about the danger of the government using taxpayer funds to covertly influence public opinion. This issue came up again recently as part of this year’s defense authorization bill, which passed the House of Representatives on Friday. Reps.
After months of preparation, the ACLU of Illinois is working through the weekend deploying observers and volunteers to monitor NATO Summit protest activity. The NATO Summit will take place on Sunday, May 20th and Monday, May 21st at the McCormick Center, but protest activity has already been taking place in the week leading up to the Summit. Protesters and activists from around the world have descended on Chicago to demonstrate against a vast array of issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan, to health care, to corporate malfeasance on Wall Street.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:55pm
One of the very few pleasant things about being an attorney is that even some of the most boring cases have wacky backstories. This post is about one of the wackiest--though the issues raised illustrate certain constitutional concerns with a very short section in the very long Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which just passed the House yesterday over ACLU opposition.
In February of last year, a federal judge in Maryland issued a criminal complaint against one William Lawrence Cassidy. Mr. Cassidy, it seems, had allegedly infiltrated a Maryland area Buddhist community by claiming to be a “tulku,” a high-ranking Buddhist religious figure who, unlike lay Buddhists and the lesser-ranked “lamas,” gets to choose the form of his reincarnation. Through this alleged ruse, Mr. Cassidy attempted to gain the trust of Jetsunna Ahkon Lhamo (born Alyce Louise Zeoli), the first Western woman to legitimately be enthroned as a tulku.
By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 12:59pm
Twitter has filed a motion in state court in New York seeking to quash a court order requiring it to turn over information about one of its users and his communications on Twitter. This particular case involves a Twitter user, Malcolm Harris, who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for disorderly conduct in connection with the Occupy Wall Street protest that occurred on the Brooklyn Bridge last year.
Occupy Report from Oakland (by Rebecca Farmer, ACLU of Northern California)
The May Day protests in Oakland saw a great deal of police presence and use of force, but not quite to the degree that we saw during demonstrations in the fall of 2011. Still, reports of multiple rounds of tear gas, flash bang grenades and possibly other projectiles raise questions. The OPD has a clear policy governing how it should deal with protests, but the department has violated protesters’ rights on far too many occasions in the past. The policy and common sense require OPD to use the minimal force necessary to disperse a crowd.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:05pm
There’s been an uptick in protest activity this month around the country–May Day saw a resurgence in the Occupy movement, and further protests are expected around the NATO summit in Chicago, set for May 20th. It’s a safe bet that the vast majority of protesters, police and bystanders are going to have mobile phones (market penetration of the devices in the United States in 2011 was literally more than 100%, meaning lots of folks have more than one, which is so American). It’s also a safe bet that most of those phones will have cameras. Some of those cameras will even be able to take broadcast-quality video.
By Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 8:09am
“I Like Ike” is one of the most well-known and catchiest political slogans of all time. According to a decision that was issued by a federal judge in Virginia a few days ago, however, the modern-day equivalent—saying that you "like" a political candidate by using Facebook's "like" feature—is not even worthy of the protections of the First Amendment. That decision is wrong, whether you like or dislike Facebook.
The court’s decision appears to be premised on its belief that pressing a button to say that you “like” something—in this case, a candidate running for election to be a city’s Sheriff— is not “substantive” enough to be protected by the First Amendment. In the court’s words: “[M]erely ‘liking’ a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection . . . It is not the kind of substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional protection. The Court will not attempt to infer the actual content of [the plaintiff’s] posts from one click of a button on [the candidate’s] Facebook page.”
