By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 9:53am
I’m in Guantánamo today, expecting to argue the ACLU’s constitutional challenge to the censorship of torture in the military commissions this afternoon or tomorrow.
The Guantánamo military commissions were created in part to hide the government’s illegal torture program while permitting the use of information obtained through torture. Because of improvements in 2009 in the law governing the commissions, it’s harder (though not impossible) for coerced evidence to be used in the proceedings. But the government still wants to hide from the public what it did to prisoners in CIA and military custody.
By Mitra Ebadolahi, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 10:55am
In April 2011, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a narrow yet critically important set of government documents: internal CIA reports detailing the use of unauthorized interrogation techniques at its secret overseas prisons, also known as “black sites” (you can read the request here). Investigative news coverage and earlier FOIA requests had alerted us to the potential existence of many such reports. Most notably, in August 2009 – in connection with a separate ACLU FOIA request – the government had released a partially-redacted version of one report, the Special Review: Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001–October 2003).
By Zachary Katznelson, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:36pm
Today, just weeks after the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the information, the government released the names of 55 of the prisoners approved for transfer from the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners were unanimously designated for transfer by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Bay Review Task Force, which announced a summary of its findings in January 2010. But before today, the government had said the list could not be released because doing so would hamper efforts to repatriate and resettle prisoners in other countries.
By Brett Kaufman, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 7:41am
This morning the ACLU will appear before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the CIA’s use of drone aircraft to carry out targeted killings around the world. We will argue that the court should put an end to the government’s double game of selectively disclosing information about the program in public while obstinately refusing to confirm or deny the very existence of the program in federal court.
By Brett Kaufman, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 3:59pm
Today, ProPublica published an important and illuminating news article and accompanying interactive web feature that demonstrates just how duplicitous the government is being regarding the CIA’s targeted killing program.
As we’ve argued in our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the CIA’s use of drones to carry out targeted killings around the world, the government continues to claim that it can neither confirm nor deny whether it even has a drone-strike program at all, despite the numerous public statements of government officials discussing the CIA’s drone program. This is an untenable position, and next Thursday, we will be making that argument before the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 12:31pm
Today the ACLU is launching a nationwide effort to find out more about automatic license plate readers (ALPR). By snapping photographs of each license plate they encounter—up to three thousand per minute—and retaining records of who was where when, license plate readers are fundamentallythreatening our freedom on the open road.
By Alexander Abdo, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:10pm
In Guantánamo Bay last week, I had an enlightening opportunity to talk with Brigadier General Mark Martins—the Chief Prosecutor of the military commissions—along with a handful of other NGO observers of the commissions. There was no agenda for our meeting, but we quickly launched into a vibrant discussion of the wisdom and legality of the military commissions.
By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 12:28pm
This morning a federal judge ruled that the government is free to continue pretending that the contents of State Department diplomatic cables already disclosed by WikiLeaks are secret. The case concerns an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request seeking 23 embassy cables that had been previously released by WikiLeaks, posted online, and widely discussed in the press. The government had responded by releasing redacted versions of 11 cables and withholding the other 12 in full.
Earlier this week, ProPublica published an article discussing the government’s attempts to censor the statements of the defendants in the 9/11 Guantanamo military commission trials. The article’s well worth reading because it discusses in detail the government’s arguments for censorship, as well as legal challenges brought by the ACLU, media organizations, and one of the 9/11 defendants’ lawyers.
