News & Commentary

Federal courts are scrutinizing the government's use of its secret No Fly List, and they don't like what they see. In two recent decisions, judges have either rejected or expressed skepticism about the government's arguments for secrecy and against a meaningful process for people to challenge their inclusion on the blacklist that bans them from travel to or from the United States or over American airspace. These decisions come on the heels of an August 2013 ruling in the ACLU's No Fly List challenge, in which a court found, in a first-of-its-kind preliminary ruling, that our clients' ability to fly internationally is protected by the Constitution.

This piece was originally published on Slate.

"We just want to be married."

Yesterday I wrote about how the spread of cameras throughout our public lives is irrevocably changing our privacy in public spaces, as well as society expectations around video surveillance—with people increasingly surprised when an unusual incident that takes place in public is not captured on video.

Guess what crime is the most prosecuted at the federal level in the United States? Rape? Murder? Assault? Robbery? Racketeering? Financial fraud?

Yesterday, at 9:32 p.m., the state of Texas executed Edgar Arias Tamayo, a 46-year-old Mexican national. Injecting lethal drugs into Mr. Tamayo's bloodstream was a clear violation of the United States' international obligations, and yet the state of Texas wasn't deterred.

When I wrote about Justin Bieber's trouble with the law last week, we didn't know how far he'd fall in just a few days. Now Bieber has been arrested for late-night drag racing in Miami Beach. If convicted, another immigrant in his situation would very likely languish in immigration detention before being deported. That person—like 84 percent of people in immigration detention-- would also likely not have an immigration attorney, let alone a high-priced one.

The ACLU has long opposed the spread of government video surveillance in American public life. We published this piece, The Four Problems With Public Video Surveillance, way back in February 2002 for example, and we had been saying similar things long before that. When I wrote that piece, the United States was undergoing a rapid expansion of private video surveillance cameras, and there was a lot of talk about surveillance in the wake of 9/11, but surveillance cameras were still largely privately owned and decentralized. Cell phones with still cameras were just going mainstream, and video smartphones wouldn't become common until 5 years or so later.

Hard to believe, but until recently, all detained immigrants appearing in the civil immigration court in San Francisco were forced to give critical testimony while restrained by shackles and chains at the wrists, waist, and ankles. The inhumane practice was particularly problematic for asylum seekers and immigrants who had suffered from torture and domestic violence in the past—and it was unnecessary since the majority of immigrant detainees appearing in civil court proceedings are peaceful individuals.