ACLU

A federal court today ruled that the government can continue to suppress transcripts of former CIA prisoners now being held at Guantanamo Bay talking about abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain transcripts from the [...]

Notwithstanding Rep. Louise Slaughter’s (D-N.Y.) impassioned plea, the House this afternoon passed that amendment to alter the Freedom of Information Act and hide detainee abuse photos — and to keep the question of what’s secret and what’s not away from the courts.

In light of the rally this afternoon that I wrote about earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union is cautioning that comprehensive immigration reform proposals should be careful not to compromise civil liberties.
“The ACLU is encouraged by the willingness of congressional leaders to lay out details of immigration reform, but we strongly oppose any reforms that [...]

I just spoke to Kevin Bankston, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, about his reaction to today’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup session on the Patriot Act, which resulted in passage of the Leahy-Feinstein bill, with a few amendments. Bankston, who’s been following this debate closely, was not pleased.
“We’re [...]

House and Senate members today approved language for a homeland security appropriations bill that would give the Pentagon the right to continue withholding photos of the abuse of detainees in its custody, the ACLU reported on Wednesday.
The ACLU has been trying to get its hands on those photos, as well as other records, since 2003 [...]

Though the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week included lots of expressed concern that the USA Patriot Act compromises civil liberties, the version of the bill being debated in that committee today fails to adequately address the problems, argues Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and  the American Civil Liberties Union.
According to the ACLU, the committee substituted [...]

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

Newly released guidelines from the Justice Department are calling renewed attention to the fact that the FBI is allowed to initiate “assessments” of individuals or groups without any factual basis for believing they’ve done anything wrong.

Fifteen years after the United States first instituted “Operation Gatekeeper” to reinforce the U.S.-Mexican border with more agents, walls and fences, the American Civil Liberties Union has released a report concluding that the enforcement effort has been deadly.
The report — a joint effort of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Mexico’s Commission [...]

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and committee members Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.), Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) are expected to introduced in the Senate today a bill that would repeal the immunity granted to telecommunications companies under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) passed last year. The immunity provisions ensured the dismissal of [...]