News & Commentary

The 2014 Winter Olympics concluded last night in Sochi, Russia in spectacular, if not somewhat bizarre fashion, with the infamous giant bear mascot shedding a tear during the closing ceremony before the torch was passed to PyeongChang, South Korea, host of the 2018 Winter Olympics.

How many Japanese Americans were relocated to American concentration camps seventy one years ago?

There has been a lot of press coverage in the past couple of weeks about the Department of Homeland Security posting a solicitation for contract proposals regarding access to a national license plate reader database—and DHS’s decision, once mainstream news outlets began covering the story, to withdraw the solicitation. That has led to a lot of triumphant talk about how the agency shelved the plans in the face of widespread public outcry and bad press.

I get paid to defend unpopular speech. And, I’m the first to jump at the slightest hint of government censorship or coercion in the free market of ideas, as our recent comments critical of the IRS’s plans to regulate non-partisan political speech will attest.

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", as Percy Bysshe Shelley put it. I was reminded of this power that poetry has to illuminate social and political realities while reading Jamaal May's "There are Birds Here." May was born and raised in Detroit and his poem, dedicated to his native city, insists that Detroit is no desolate wasteland, but a place where children live, play and dream.

I watched a man yesterday plead guilty to war crimes in a military commission, and it troubled me. It troubled me because just the day before, I watched the defense counsel in another commission proceeding taking place at Guantánamo this week make compelling arguments that the very same charges should be dismissed because they are not legitimate war crimes.

Our crack communications staff here at the ACLU have taken the graphical blog post I did on location tracking, and what it might look like in the future, and turned it into a snappy new video.

Way back in 2007, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about how and when the government obtains cell phone location data without a warrant. Since then, we have learned that the practice of using cell phones as tracking devices is widespread, growing and conducted under various, conflicting legal standards, but the specifics of cell phone use in criminal investigations have largely stayed hidden (exceptions exist). This lack of transparency has stifled public debate on the practice, prevented it from being properly evaluated in the courts, and kept individuals who have been tracked from ever knowing about the surveillance.

The Federal Communications Commission has taken the first step in rebooting the net neutrality rules. Today's announcement by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler follows a major D.C. Circuit decision this year, which struck down the existing rules requiring that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) treat all data on the internet equally, while keeping the door open for future FCC action to prevent broadband providers from discriminating against or blocking certain websites or services.