By Michael Risher, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California at 5:29pm
The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding Maryland's arrestee DNA testing law is a serious blow to genetic privacy. The ruling allows the police to seize the DNA of innocent Americans who have never been convicted of any sort of crime, without a search warrant. And as Justice Scalia makes clear in his scathing dissent, the majority opinion goes against decades of precedent that makes it clear that the police cannot search an individual for evidence of a crime (and that's clearly what they are doing here) without a specific reason to think that the search will actually uncover some evidence.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 10:17am
A Justice Department chart released to the ACLU through a public records act request reveals the location data retention policies of the major mobile carriers. What's your carrier's policy?
By Nathan Freed Wessler, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 11:00am
Everyone knows the IRS is our nation’s tax collector, but it is also a law enforcement organization tasked with investigating criminal violations of the tax laws. New documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant—a practice that one appeals court has said violates the Fourth Amendment (and we think most Americans would agree).
By Dennis Parker, Director, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 3:51pm
More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared laws barring interracial marriage unconstitutional, it was upsetting to learn that a Louisiana justice of the peace has denied a marriage license to an interracial couple. On one hand, the public's reaction to this terrible act shows we've come a long way since the Supreme Court ruled that preserving the racial integrity of its citizens does not justify Virginia's law banning people of different races from marrying. Yet that this act could happen at all, especially by an official of the state of Louisiana, is still sobering.
By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:48am
Smartphones can be a cop's best friend. They are packed with private information like emails, text messages, photos, and calling history. Unsurprisingly, law enforcement agencies now routinely seize and search phones. This occurs at traffic stops, during raids of a target's home or office, and during interrogations and stops at the U.S. border. These searches are frequently conducted without any court order.
Several courts around the country have blessed such searches, and so as a practical matter, if the police seize your phone, there isn't much you can do after the fact to keep your data out of their hands.
By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:43am
It’s a strange situation. What if they passed a federal statute that no one obeyed? Typically this isn’t a problem – there are a host of federal entities tasked with making sure that what Congress passes is followed. But in the case of Real ID, that is exactly what has happened.
The Real ID Act was aimed at improving drivers’ license security but its actual effect would have been to turn those same licenses into a national ID card. The law required a national database of all drivers and a common way for all licenses to be read by scanners. States would have to meet the standards in order for their citizens to use their driver’s licenses to board airplanes or enter federal facilities.
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 2:16pm
Patricia Spottedcrow of Oklahoma made headlines in 2010 when she was sentenced to 12 years in prison for her first criminal offense: the sale of a $31 bag of marijuana to an undercover informant. The senseless severity of her sentence caught the attention of advocates who quickly moved to support Spottedcrow, spawning a grassroots uprising that led to a highly unusual decrease in her sentence and, ultimately, to her early release on parole.
