Civil Liberties
Change... Your World | A recent Gizmodo story, “Are Cameras the New Guns?,” created quite a stir in journalism circles recently. Gizmodo found that there appears to be an increase in the number of citizens arrested for filming abuse by police, or just police in action:
The Final Hour | Another document has emerged that shows exactly what the U.S. government thinks about the patriot movement. A recently discovered Department of Justice guide on terrorism and extremism actually lists "constitutionalists" and "survivalists" alongside Al-Qaeda and...
Carlos Miller | Dixon, who has served as District Court Judge since 2002, last week convicted a woman named Felicia Gibson for resisting arrest for refusing to go back inside her house as she stood on her front porch videotaping police making a traffic stop.
Wired | The ACLU’s Margaret Winter and Peter Eliasberg tell the LASD that they “strongly oppose the view that it is ever appropriate to deploy against the detainees of a county jail – or any other incarcerated population — a military weapon intended to cause intolerable pain and capable of causi...
Star Tribune | Though the number of such cases appears to be small, they are exposing a new legal gray area, with workers complaining of rights violations and company officials scratching their heads over how to enforce a uniform policy for a drug that the federal government has not recognized a...
Examiner | Last week, John McCain introduced a bill into the U.S. Senate which, if passed, would actually allow U.S. citizens to be arrested and detained indefinitely, all without Miranda rights or ever being charged with a crime.
Huffington Post | For a typical college student, if it didn't happen on Facebook, it didn't happen. That gives the social networking behemoth an out-sized influence on the confines of political debate, if that debate falls outside what Facebook deems acceptable discourse.
Daily Mail | The software works be creating an algorithim of the face - a measurement of the arrangement of features including the eyes, nose and mouth.
KDVR | Defense attorneys also claim the laws give the impression police are above the law. Police work is done in public and if they are being photographed in public that gives the public the ability to judge their work. Unlike people in the private sector who work for shareholders of indiv...
Guardian | When Americans read British newspapers referencing "her Majesty", "his Highness" or "Lord So-and-So", we bask in the smug patriotic pride of knowing ours is no nation of aristocrats, but a country based on principles like equality before the law and authority granted by merit.
KTSM | When we asked the deputy who ordered him to question our reporter he answered the Department of Homeland Security. Briana Stone, a civil rights attorney, says that's a common excuse from cops since 9/11.
The Cost Of Marijuana Prohibition: 850,000 Arrests, $340 Billion In Lost Tax Revenue, And $14 Billion On The Drug War A Year To Keep Marijuana Illegal. These are the facts that everyone should know by now.
Catastrophist | John Young (in April): “The so-called privacy policies that all ISPs put up (and websites) are completely phony and deceptive. There’s no such thing as privacy on the internet, of any kind. Because it starts with your signing up for the service."
RAW Story | In one of the first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a US military judge has ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.
Video | The two guys who are deaf were in the Clothing store XXI and apparently they were shopping, Staff must have seen them do something to suspect them of stealing, but that doesn't have any support or facts. Before I started filming.
CBS | The devices would record in a continuous loop and would only save information if there is unusual vehicle motion or a crash. They could also be capable of transmitting the information to a central control center the moment of the accident.
Marijuana Policy Project | The DEA has gone rogue. Despite clear guidance from the Department of Justice directing them to do otherwise, agents are conducting raids of homes and businesses where the occupants are acting in compliance with state medical marijuana laws.
Electronic Frontier Foundation | The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone's car without a search warrant.
Boing Boing | Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today released evidence it says indicates that the Bush administration conducted "illegal and unethical human experimentation and research" on detainees' response to torture while in CIA custody after 9/11.
Cnet | For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded."
Oregon Live | DHS workers visited the home and met the father, who appeared to be "under the influence of a controlled substance." The agency later learned that the father was a registered sex offender. The mother arrived home later and denied using drugs.
The Weekly Constitutional | A report in Wired is claiming that both Google and the CIA are financially backing an Internet monitoring project that scours Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, and can also “predict the future”.
ACLU | In the eighteen months since the issuance of those executive orders, the administration’s record on issues related to civil liberties and national security has been, at best, mixed. Indeed, on a range of issues including accountability for torture, detention of terrorism suspects, and use...
The Age | The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".
Newsweek | It’s a place where medical marijuana is already legal, and pot dispensaries are wedged between clothing boutiques and coffee shops. It’s got a marijuana university, Oaksterdam, where attendees can learn the ins and outs of pot politics, horticulture, cooking, even “budtending.”
Telegraph | The clash between Patrick Pogan, the officer, and the bike-riding activist happened in an instant, however, the fallout lasted for almost two years after video of the confrontation that became a YouTube hit.
New York Daily News | The decision strikes down the policy of fining broadcasters for foul language that was put in place after the January 2003 NBC broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show when U2 front man Bono used the F-word.
Activist Post | The war on terror is a worldwide endeavor that has spurred massive investment into the global surveillance industry - which now seems to be becoming a war on "liberty and privacy." Given all of the new monitoring technology being implemented, the uproar over warrantless wi...
Boing Boing | Full-body scanners will not be used in Dubai airports because the systems "contradict Islam, and out of respect for the privacy of individuals and their personal freedom," said the head of the Dubai police force airport security division, in a Dubai newspaper. Brigadier Pilot Ah...
Renegade Partisan | It occurred to me, and has in the past that many are drawing their lines in the sand. Some of us are younger than others, and some are no longer here with us. Some saw the beginning of this, and did not see the end. While some did not see the beginning and will definitely se...
Free Software Foundation | As our mission here at the Free Software Foundation is to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users, we also have to defend against ill-conceived and misguided laws.
Sioux City Journal | U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett has ordered Osceola County Sheriff Douglas L. Weber to issue a gun permit to a resident and to complete a college-level course involving the First Amendment.
The Register | The US National Security Agency (NSA) is embarking on a secret domestic surveillance project dubbed "Perfect Citizen", intended to monitor and protect important national infrastructure such as power grids and transport systems.
ProPublica | The photographer, Lance Rosenfield, said that shortly after arriving in town, he was confronted by a BP security officer, local police and a man who identified himself as an agent of the Department of Homeland Security.
Infoshop | Over one year after his indictment for a 2008 mink liberation, a federal judge sentenced Alex Hall to 21 months in prison this week. The sentence was 3 months less than that of his co-defendant William Viehl, yet still more than three times the recommended sentence of six months.
Pablo Perez Ruby | People opposing U.S. policies in Central America, giving sanctuary to refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador, struggling for Black liberation, and against nuclear weapons, are today more than ever likely to receive visits from FBI agents or other federal investigators. ...
BBC | In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law. The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadba...
ABC | "When we went to board the plane they told me 'I'm sorry, we can't let you get on the plane. You're on the U.S. no-fly terrorist watch list,'" said Washburn. Now Washburn who made it home after a carefully scripted 72 hour journey through Germany, Brazil, Peru and Mexico to avo...
Wired | That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union concluded Tuesday with a report chronicling government spying and the detention of groups and individuals “for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Courthouse News | In his civil rights complaint, Francisco Olvera says Sealy Police Sgt. Justin Alderete's charge of "illegal photography" baffled him and several witnesses.
Daily Tech | While they may never be able to truly defeat piracy and drive it from the lurking depths of the internet, copyright protection attack-dog organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have long dreamed of the day when they would no longer have to pay for their own copyright ...
Union Leader | When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., ...
Atlanta Journal Constitution | For the past decade, the federal government has been moving to gain effective control over the internet. Now, thanks to legislation just crafted by Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the government may finally realize its goal of being able to control...
Times Online | Julian Assange, who does not have an official home base and travels every six weeks, told the Australian current affairs program Dateline that immigration officials had said his passport was going to be cancelled because it was looking worn.
WCCO | Cops taser non resisting man until he passes out Minneapolis Police Department Taser 11/03/09. "Takes that Taser, puts it to the back of his neck and shocks him until he is incapacitated on the ground, slumped before the squad car," said attorney Albert Goins.
Courier Mail | The CMC says the case could amount to official misconduct and has referred the allegations to the police Ethical Standards Command. It is the latest scandal for Surfers police, who are at the centre of a major CMC probe into allegations of involvement in the Glitter Strip's nigh...
Cnet | It's vital that the president can "say to an electric company or to say to Verizon, in the national interest, 'There's an attack about to come, and I hereby order you to put a patch on this, or put your network down on this part, or stop accepting any incoming from country A,'" said Liebe...
Salon.com | The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning to Canada in 2002, held incommunicado for two weeks, and then rendered to Syria, wh...
AFP | The case of computer engineer Maher Arar, detained in New York in September 2002 after a tip-off from Canadian police who suspected him of terrorism, could have wide implications for others seeking legal redress against the system known as "secret renditions."
CNN | A new Congressional cyber security proposal would give the president emergency powers to protect critical private networks under attack, but the bill's sponsors insisted it does not allow the government to take control of any private cyber-network.