By Carol Rose, Executive Director, ACLU of Massachusetts at 10:27am
You know we are in the silly season of summer when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino fires up the old bully pulpit to roast his political enemies and fire up his base.
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 2:43pm
It’s perfectly understandable that after the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., everyone is casting about for an answer to a singular question: why?
As past is prologue, we shouldn’t be surprised that several members of Congress have settled on media violence as the possible culprit, noting stories that Adam Lanza may have “obsessively” played Starcraft and Call of Duty. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) is reportedly circulating legislation mandating a study on youth exposure to violent video games.
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 Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 9:54am
A story out of Utah this week neatly showcased the rising concerns among civil liberties and press freedom groups around so-called "ag-gag" laws, which, in various ways, make it illegal to document animal abuse on factory farms and other agricultural businesses. In Utah, authorities charged a local woman with taking photographs of animal cruelty from a public vantage point, and then quickly dropped the charges after significant public outcry.
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.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 2:37pm
We Americans cherish few rights more than the right to speak our minds. And yet that right often comes under attack. Most recently, the federal government has used laws criminalizing the “material support” of foreign terrorist organizations to prosecute people who hold unpopular political views. Take the case of Tarek Mehanna, a native of Sudbury, Massachusetts.
The ACLU and dozens of other organizations – including Free Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation – have teamed up to create the Declaration of Internet Freedom, which sets for a set of principles providing a positive vision to preserve the Internet as a platform for speech, innovation and creativity.
