News & Commentary

Earlier this week the ACLU of Massachusetts called for a statewide moratorium on the use of license plate readers. We did so because a MuckRock/Boston Globe investigation revealed serious abuses by the Boston Police Department in its use of the controversial surveillance technology. Even the BPD itself announced that it was putting its license plate reader program on hold, until it could come up with policies and procedures to address the serious issues the Globe uncovered.

I joined a drug ring when I was 17 years old and, for just over a year, sold crack and powder cocaine in Rockford, Ill. I was arrested when I was 19 years old.

There were certainly moments when the weather on the East Coast was NAGL this past week(end), but then again, it's December, so what do you expect?

True or false: T-Mobile and AT&T received nearly 600,000 requests from law enforcement for customer information in 2012.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent a letter yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to release the two Department of Justice legal memos providing guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators about the proper use of GPS devices and other location-tracking technologies. Emphasizing that "there is no room in American democracy for secret interpretation of public law," Sen. Wyden and Rep. Chaffetz told Holder that it is "critical" for both members of Congress and the American public to "understand DOJ's precise views on the current state of the law and existing legal requirements and protections." They requested that the he provide them with unredacted copies of the Justice Department memos by the end of January. (You can read the letter for yourself here.)

Yesterday, a district court ruled that the federal government may no longer display a 43-foot Latin cross on Mt. Soledad in San Diego, California. The Court's order, which prohibits the government from "displaying or continuing to allow the display of the current cross on federal land as part of the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial," follows a 2011 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit holding that the display violates the fundamental principles underlying the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

About midway through yesterday's immigration chat with Vice President Biden and Domestic Policy Advisor Cecilia Muñoz, I started to get the sneaking suspicion that the conversation was a tightly controlled event, with the questioners chosen beforehand, even though it wasn't advertised as such.

Originally posted on The Huffington Post.

It seems that literally no one is safe from the NSA. Even digital alter egos living in fantasy realms in the online gaming world are being caught up in the NSA's surveillance dragnet.