American Civil Liberties Union

Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.

The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation, are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power.  (Our original Freedom of Information Act request and our legal complaint are online.)

Earlier today, the ACLU and the ACLU of Vermont announced a fantastic settlement that we obtained in Baker & Linsley v. Wildflower Inn.   We brought the case on behalf of a same-sex couple who were told they could not have their wedding reception at a Vermont resort called Wildflower Inn because of the owner’s personal religious beliefs about marriage.   As part of the settlement agreement, Wildflower Inn agreed that Vermont’s public accommodations law prohibits unequal treatment of same-sex couples, which includes turning away same-sex couples seeking to have a wedding reception, failing to respond to inquiries from those couples, or discouraging those couples from using the facilities.  The resort also agreed to pay $10,000 to the Vermont Human Rights Commission as a civil penalty and to place $20,000 in a charitable trust to be disbursed by the couple.  The plaintiffs, Kate Linsley (nee Baker) and Ming Linsley, will not be retaining any of the money for themselves.

We know that photographers have been having problems all over the country with police harassment, and that demonstrators’ free speech rights have also been under assault. But with the Democratic and Republican political conventions coming up, we have all too much reason to expect that free speech rights will be swallowed up in the vortex of those events, which have become constitutional black holes in recent years.