Civil Liberties

Picture says it all

BoingBoing | This week, the US Homeland Security department, Department of State, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency released 162 pages of intelligence oversight reporting, in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Tenth Amendment Center | Anyone who has ever participated in an online discussion forum knows that, sooner or later, all political debates are reduced to analogies of Hitler or Nazism. This self-evident fact of human existence is unofficially known as Godwin’s Law.

Orange County News | No one disputes that an on-duty Irvine police officer got an erection and ejaculated on a motorist during an early-morning traffic stop in Laguna Beach. The female driver reported it, DNA testing confirmed it and officer David Alex Park finally admitted it.

Online Library of Liberty | We believe that the first written reference to the concept of liberty is the ancient Sumerian cuneiform symbol "amagi" which Liberty Fund uses as its logo.

Electronic Frontiers | It’s hard for any government to resist pursuing a policy when children are involved, or are seen to be involved. The censorship push started its life as a cyber-safety policy, where ISPs would be required to provide a filtered solution to families, but has since morphed into something at once less useful and more sinister

Haaretz | Israel Border Police officers shot at an American student's laptop as she entered Israel via Taba, Egypt, two weeks ago.

Propublica | The New Orleans Police Department’s official 12-page report on the death of Danny Brumfield Sr. comes to this conclusion: The 45-year-old grandfather was to blame for his own demise.

Boing Boing | In this video, two British police officers come up to a young woman who is filming a building and harass her, imply that she is a terrorist, intimidate her, demand to see her footage.

Guardian | Those would be the same courts that kept the burglar free, despite 50 prior convictions, then?  The judge said Hussain's family had been subject to a "serious and wicked offence" and praised the bravery of his teenage son who escaped.

Philadelphia Daily News | The burglar's dad and brothers are all cops.  Preferential treatment for cops' kin?

ABC News | The Federal Government will introduce compulsory internet filtering to block overseas sites which contain criminal content, including child sex abuse and sexual violence.

Telegraph | A 12-year-old pupil at a Liverpool school where fatty drinks and snacks are banned has been suspended for ''crisp dealing'', it is reported.

Raw Story | Yolanda Madden, who was jailed in 2005 after being convicted of possession of and intent to distribute narcotics, was the reason that Barry Cooper came to Odessa, Texas last December. After being hired to embarrass the local police by Yolanda's father Raymond, Cooper set up a fake marijuana grow house and baited officers to stage an illegal raid

LA Times | Joe Arpaio has escalated his tactics, not only defying the federal government on immigration but launching repeated investigations of those who criticize him.

Freedom in our Time | For several panicked minutes, Joughin tried to flee the area and find help for his family. The police -- you know, those helpful people who, according to official propaganda, are supposed to protect innocent people from criminal violence -- reacted by closing ranks and blocking the Joughin family's escape. They didn't relent until someone in "authority" gave them permission to let the anxious man and his family leave.

Game Politics | In light of Australia’s refusal to classify Sega’s PC game Aliens vs. Predator, the country’s ABC News outlet ran a short video piece on the controversy with comments from everyone’s favorite Attorney General, Michael Atkinson.

Liberty Pulse | Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) releases its 2010 report on campus speech codes, revealing that for the second year in a row, the percentage of American colleges and universities that systematically violate students' and faculty members' right to freedom of expression has dropped. However, 71 percent of the 375 campuses analyzed still maintain codes that grant students less freedom of speech than they enjoy off campus.

The Newspaper | Motorists who receive minor parking or traffic tickets in Indianapolis, Indiana are being threatened with fines of up to $2500 if they attempt to take the ticket to court

Wired | Remember VeriChip, the Florida company that once dreamed of injecting its human-implantable RFID microchips in everyone from immigrant guest workers to prison inmates?

Lew Rockwell | HB1230 “Asserts the right of the State of Missouri to regulate the intrastate use and acquisition of certain firearms pursuant to the reserved powers of the state over intrastate commerce and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

The Guardian | Seven officers sent to check on Grant Smith, who was taking pictures of Christ Church in City of London

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition | U.S. House and Senate negotiators agreed on Tuesday on the final details of the FY 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which contains at least three BIG victories for reformers:

Deoxy | An advertising campaign from the Marijuana Policy Project, the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the U.S., is blanketing airwaves with the message that the U.S. government's own research contradicts its anti-marijuana propaganda

Oathkeepers | Corporal Steven Armbruster won an Oath Keeper of the year award at the first Oath Keepers conference in October 2009. In April 2007Armbruster refused to violate the constitutional rights of a group of Christians peacefully assembling on the Kutztown University campus.

Australia News | Aliens vs Predator, a video game based on the popular movie series, has been refused classification for containing high-impact violence, according to the Classifications Board.  "We will not be releasing a sanitised or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices," the game's maker, Rebellion Developments, told gaming blog CVG.

San Francisco Bay Guardian | San Francisco Police Department officers have added a controversial tactic to their aggressive raids on house parties (see "Fun under siege," 4/22/09): they're seizing laptop computers from DJs at the events.

The Agitator | Last month, Purdue University student Roy Sun was arrested and charged with “terroristic mischief.” He could face up to eight years in prison. His crime? He got a little too pissed off about a parking ticket.

Boing Boing | A woman who tried out her new pocket camera by video-recording a few minutes of her sister's surprise birthday party at a showing of "New Moon" has been charged with a felony -- "camcordering" a movie.

Duluth News Tribune | Engelking, 27, aimed to hunt deer Wednesday morning when he noticed a pipeline crew on his land. He hopped on his ATV and told workers they had no right to be on his property because he had received no compensation from Enbridge Energy Partners L.P. for an easement.

Dakota Voice | The Alliance Defense Fund is attempting to dissuade a New Hampshire court from ordering a 10-year old girl from homeschooling into a public school.  The parents of the girl are divorced, and as often happens in such cases, this family division has resulted in government meddling in the family.

Indymedia | This morning, police raided a warehouse located in Teglholmen, detaining and handcuffing 15-20 activists. The police spokesperson Flemming Steen Munch has apologized.  Climate activist were detained and handcuffed in a warehouse in Teglholm early Friday, December 4.

Surveillance Self-Defense | The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created this Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.

NPR | It seems like something from an earlier century in which native American children were forced to give up their Indian ways and for the culture of whites. A five-year old native American boy in Texas was punished for wearing his hair in two lengthy braids.

New Scientist | "This is the kind of snooping you'd expect in China, not a modern western democracy. It raises huge questions over privacy invasion and freedom of expression." So says Andrew Heaney - who is not, as you might imagine, a civil liberties campaigner, but a senior executive at TalkTalk, one of the UK's largest internet service providers. Along with other ISPs, his company faces the prospect of being forced to spy on its customers' downloads for signs of potential copyright infringement.

The Globe and Mail | Overruling recommendations by a local police force, B.C.'s Ministry of the Attorney-General won't lay impaired-driving charges after a fatal crash last year involving an RCMP officer who was also at the centre of the Robert Dziekanski case.

GPS Daily | The world's first device capable of tracking multiple people without attached sensors is here, and scientists see in the invention opportunities for more efficient military training and warfare readiness.

Wired | Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.

Camp FEMA | In a new CNN report deeply rooted in Department of Homeland Security propaganda, CNN’s John Acosta says that the Federal government is not building detention camps around the country and that there is absolutely no proof of these kinds of activities. However, a highly controversial documentary released a couple of months ago offers the viewers almost 90 minutes of heart-stopping proof that plans for martial law and FEMA camps are indeed very real.

The Future | When George Orwell wrote 1984, he probably never imagined that society would actually become that oppressive. Yet in some nations of the world it has. In fact, in nations such as the U.K., "Big Brother" controls have now been implemented that are so bizarre that Orwell could not have possibly envisioned them during the time in which he lived.

Topeka Capital-Journal | Kansas cops steal $550,000 from trucker : Shawnee County Sheriff Richard Barta and five members of the department have been named in a lawsuit alleging they violated the constitutional rights of Las Vegas trucker Eduardo Arencibia during a 2007 traffic stop in which $550,000 was seized.

Video | When Andrea Beleno was expecting her first child, she never dreamed his blood would become the focus of a federal lawsuit.  Neither did the other families who are suing the State of Texas to protect the medical privacy of their children.  Each year, more than 400,000 babies are born in Texas. State law mandates that before newborns leave the hospital, his or her heel will be pricked and five drops of blood are collected.  Two weeks later, their pediatrician collects another five drops of blood. The blood cards are submitted to the Texas Department of State Health Services as part of the Newborn Screening program. One or two drops are used to screen for a list of serious medical conditions.

Boiler Station | Wesley Allen organized a rally Monday afternoon to support Sun, 21, and protest what he deemed was an overzealous arrest by the Purdue University Police Department. Inside the package were $20, a wheel lock and a parking ticket that was issued to Sun a week ago.  Sun is one of three people suspected of leaving the package in a hallway Thursday morning at Purdue's Visitor Information Center -- prompting an evacuation of the building off Northwestern Avenue.

Campaign for Liberty | Can Obama force you to buy health insurance?  Nothing in the Constitution allows the individual mandate he proposes.

Video |  The boy has his hunting license, his car was not parked on campus, the shotgun was unloaded, he did nothing illegal in the eyes of the state.  So why was he expelled?

Alternet | Here's a question to ponder the next time you're taking off your shoes at airport security: Can you spot terrorists by the look on their faces?

Latina | The news team for Telemundo 52 recently reported on Alma Minerva Chacon, a women who was terrorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

World Net Daily | SWAT officers invade home, take 11-year-old at gunpoint. Cops demand boy go to doctor because of fall during horseplay

Common Dreams | Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms

South African News Blog | Peter Mandelson who is part of the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg wants to give the British government more power against illegal file sharers, he wants to give Rupert Murdoch his dream where a internet exists that only big companies benefit from.