One of the more amusing memes coming out in the wake of new revelations about government surveillance is the one to the effect that “gosh, Obama has even lost the ACLU now.” I’ve seen it in many places, but one example is from Michael Savage, promoted by the Worldnutdaily.
Category Archive: Civil Liberties
Jun 12 2013
Will Congress Reign In the NSA?
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a very far right congressman who wrote the Patriot Act, now says that he wants to pass legislation to restrain the business records provision that is being used to justify the seizure of metadata from all the major cell phone carriers (nope, not just Verizon; AT&T and Sprint are turning it over …
Jun 12 2013
Feingold Was Right
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, only one person in the entire U.S. Senate, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, had the courage to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act. And with the recent revelations that the NSA has access to nearly everything you say or do on the internet, it’s worth revisiting his statement …
Jun 11 2013
NSA Denied Collecting Data on Americans
In a Guardian article revealing yet another way the NSA is spying on us without warrants (their third such revelation in three days), we find this very interesting exchange from March, a few weeks before the court order that was leaked to the Guardian about the Verizon metadata seizures:
Jun 11 2013
Obama Defends PRISM, Verizon Seizures
In advance of a meeting with the Chinese premier in California, President Obama spent about 15 minutes defending the spying programs exposed by newly leaked information. The case he made is quite unconvincing, essentially saying “trust me, I wouldn’t abuse this power.”
Jun 11 2013
Why the Verizon Seizures are Clearly Illegal
The revelation that the government gets daily reports from Verizon that includes the metadata on every single communication sent through their network shows the dangers of data mining, something clearly forbidden both by the 4th Amendment and statutory law. Benjamin Wittes gives one very good reason why:
Jun 09 2013
Obama Has New Whistleblower to Go After
I waited a couple days to write anything about the new revelations concerning the government’s ongoing surveillance and data mining program, mostly because there’s just so much information coming out and so much to look at. There are actually two different leaks, one involving Verizon and the other involving a number of internet companies and …
Jun 08 2013
Ethics Complaint Filed Against Prominent Federal Judge
Judge Edith Jones, former chief judge of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and a very big name in conservative legal circles (big enough to be on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination during the Bush administration), has been hit with an ethics complaint over remarks she allegedly made at an address at …
Jun 07 2013
Racism in Law Enforcement? Perish the Thought
A new federal study has confirmed what anyone paying attention has known all along, that the war on drugs is fought primarily against black people rather than white people. Blacks are almost 4 times as likely to be arrested as whites for marijuana, though they use and sell it at the same rate.
Jun 06 2013
SCOTUS Upholds DNA Testing for Arrestees
The Supreme Court handed down another controversial 5-4 ruling on Monday morning, but this was not the usual lineup. The court ruled that it was constitutional for the police to take a cheek swab DNA sample and enter it into a federal database when someone is arrested for a violent crime. You can read the …
Jun 04 2013
Judge Orders Google to Comply With NSLs
In a very strange development, a federal judge who previously declared the FBI’s use of National Security Letters unconstitutional has now ordered Google to comply with nearly 20 such NSLs and turn over the information requested — and to not talk about who the target is or what information was turned over.
Jun 04 2013
Sullivan Eviscerates Bloomberg
I pretty much despise New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. From his ever-present crusades to control what we eat and drink to the stop and frisk program he so zealously defends, he is an authoritarian to the core who clearly finds the entire concept of individual rights to be useless and antiquated. Andrew Sullivan agrees:
Jun 03 2013
Obama to Nominate Comey to head FBI
The New York Times reports that President Obama is going to nominate James Comey to head the FBI, which I think is a brilliant move. If you recognize the name, it’s because Comey was a high-ranking DOJ official during the Bush administration. He’s the guy who refused to sign off on the warrantless wiretap program …
May 31 2013
SCOTUS Gets One Right on Due Process
The Supreme Court got one right on a criminal justice and due process issue, which is always cause for celebration. And it’s a case from Michigan, McQuiggin v. Perkins, which involves a murder conviction for someone who may well be innocent. Floyd Perkins says he is innocent and he has affidavits from several of the …
May 30 2013
Will State Marriage Equality Laws Affect SCOTUS?
AP has a story speculating on whether the rapid advance of pro-marriage equality cases in several states over the last few months will influence the result of either the Prop 8 case or the DOMA case that the Supreme Court are considering right now, with a ruling expected in about a month.
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