Washington Markup
12/18/2012
U.S. Torture

Shedding Light on the Dark Side – A Call to Congress to Release the SSCI Report

By Amshula Jayaram, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:07am

Last week, nearly four years after President Obama closed the CIA’s Detention, Interrogation and Rendition Program, the American public is one step closer to learning the truth about a program that sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. To date, it has remained shrouded in secrecy, tarnishing our international reputation and severely damaging our nation’s security. Under the leadership of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has voted to adopt a 6000-plus page report, based on an analysis of more than six million pages of CIA records, detailing the findings of the committee’s three-year investigation into the program. We urge the committee to publicly release the document with as few redactions as possible.

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12/13/2012
287(g)

Petitions, Sign-on Letter Sent to Administration Calling for End to Controversial Immigration Program

By Abdi Soltani, ACLU of Northern California & Joanne Lin, Washington Legislative Office at 12:03pm

Communities across the country are saying no to 287(g)...

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12/12/2012
Government Surveillance

Nation’s Top Spies Still Mum on How Many Americans They’ve Surveilled

By Robyn Greene, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:29pm

Last month I wrote about how Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been rebuffed in his multi-year effort to get answers to very basic questions about how the government uses the sweeping authorities granted under the FISA Amendments Act (FISA).

Wyden spearheaded two more letters to the National Security Agency (NSA) Director and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).  Again, he was denied answers.

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12/12/2012
Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The Truth about the Current State of Immigration Enforcement

By Shawn Jain, ACLU at 11:08am

On Monday, “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on MSNBC featured an interview with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, and the discussion turned to immigration. Matthews asked Crist about his views on immigration enforcement and said that part of being a Democrat (Crist’s new political party) is being weak on enforcement.

You can watch the discussion here.

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12/11/2012
First Amendment

Selling Drugs and the First Amendment

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:46pm

A few folks have asked me about the recent Second Circuit decision in United States v. Caronia, in which the court found that criminalizing the promotion of “off-label” pharmaceutical uses by a drug company sales representative violated the First Amendment. I cover a lot of commercial speech issues in the legislative context, so let me try to explain why I think the decision is probably right (“probably” being the operative term), and significant.

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12/11/2012
Juvenile Detention

Groundbreaking Senate Hearing Shines a Light on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

By Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Kimberly Humphrey, Washington Legislative Office at 10:23am

Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights will hold a landmark hearing entitled, Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline. It is the first time a congressional panel will look at this disturbing national trend where children are pushed out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems because of an overreliance on punitive school discipline policies.

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12/06/2012
ECPA

Who Controls Your Texts?

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:58pm

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly approved with bipartisan support a sweeping update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access all electronic communications, including email, Facebook posts, photos and cell phone communications. It was a long-fought battle and a huge step forward in updating our privacy laws.

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11/29/2012
NDAA

Don't Be Fooled by New NDAA Detention Amendment

By Chris Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:14pm

The Senate is once again debating the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and is within a day or two of voting yet again on the issue of indefinite detention without charge or trial in the United States itself.

Last year, Congress passed the NDAA and made permanent very broad authority for the military to throw civilians into prison without charge or trial. While military detention without charge or trial is illegal in the United States, some key senators urged that even American citizens and others picked up in the United States could be detained under NDAA.

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11/29/2012
Immigration Detention

President Obama: Close the 10 Worst Immigration Detention Facilities

By Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:07am

The post-election immigration policy focus has rightly been on the pressing need to establish a path for aspiring Americans to become full members of their communities.

However, one of the most dire aspects of the immigration system is the ongoing crisis in mass immigration detention. Detained immigrants face widespread abuse and denial of basic rights, at enormous taxpayers’ expense. The number of detainees is unnecessarily high and must be drastically reduced.

As part of Detention Watch Network’s Expose and Close campaign calling for the immediate closure of the10 worst Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, the ACLU and its allies have sent a letter to President Obama  urging him to take these vital first steps toward reforming a detention system where immigrants suffer in deplorable conditions.

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11/19/2012
LGBT News

Highlighting Our Heroes in the Fight for Transgender Rights

By Shawn Jain, ACLU & John Knight, LGBT Project at 5:11pm

As Transgender Awareness Week 2012 (November 12-19) concludes, today we feature three of our heroic clients who’ve made our work to end discrimination against transgender people possible. Not only have our clients been willing to stand up against discrimination, but they’ve also taken on the challenge of teaching others – legislators, judges and the general public – what it means to be transgender and the challenges transgender people face. The following people have helped make our transgender rights work possible in the areas of employment discrimination and identification documents. The LGBT community has seen astounding progress, but a great deal of work still needs to be done to secure greater understanding and acceptance along with basic legal protections for transgender Americans for whom discrimination is still commonplace.

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