News & Commentary

Some leading police officials around the nation seem to be realizing that high-technology surveillance systems need to be deployed with great care, lest they prompt a public backlash. As the Atlantic Cities pointed out in a piece Friday, the Seattle police department has unilaterally pulled the plug on a new citywide mesh surveillance network after a local newspaper highlighted the department’s lack of rules and policies surrounding how the network would be used, and lack of public awareness or input surrounding the system.

Boston Police Department bosses want to install GPS monitoring devices in every patrol car, to enable dispatch to more efficiently process 911 calls. But police officers and their union are outraged, saying that the ubiquitous tracking is too invasive of their personal privacy. Tracking the location of officers as they go about their days would reveal incredibly detailed information about their lives, the officers say.

As revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden continue to mount, Americans have been shocked by the NSA's incredible invasions of privacy - some more so than others.

Life in Congress last week wasn't as entertaining as it was in Toronto.

Grammy Award-winning jazz bassist, composer, and singer Esperanza Spalding today released We Are America, a new music video highlighting the injustice of prolonged indefinite detention at the prison at Guantánamo Bay. She discusses her motivations for the project below.

Which rapper showed off his ACLU membership card in a new video by the ACLU of Washington?

Alfredo Prieto sits alone 23 hours a day in a locked, seventy-square-feet box. The lights never go out.

As any fan of NBC's Parks and Recreation knows, Pawnee Councilwoman Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) loves democracy. But just how much?

It should outrage us that a homeless man will be in prison for the rest of his life because he was the middleman in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana. We can all pretty much agree that the punishment of growing old and dying behind bars for such offenses is a wildly extreme, tragic and wasteful overreaction to the crime.