News & Commentary

In January a Black man with his hands up was shot to death by a police officer in New Jersey. Video (and audio) of the incident was captured by the officer's dashcam. The incident didn't receive the attention of the Walter Scott video released Tuesday, probably because it seemed to many to be less clear-cut, and because it lacked a dimension of race-based abuse since the shooting officer was also Black.

It’s déjà vu. And it’s also a nightmare.
Police gunning down unarmed black men

It’s déjà vu. And it’s also a nightmare.

Last month, the police chief of Lincoln, Nebraska announced that the security cameras watching over the city’s downtown bar scene have not proven effective in his department’s efforts to stem criminal activity. Police Chief Jim Peschong said that the recordings hadn’t helped investigators either identify new suspects or bolster evidence against current ones. Peschong also stated that the cameras hadn’t lowered crime in their vicinity: according to Lincoln Police statistics, there were 128 assaults within 500 feet of the cameras last year, numbers that are on par with the department’s five-year average.

My name is Anthony. I’m 16 and I live in Clearwater, Florida, with my moms and three siblings. I was adopted by my parents when I was 13 years old after having spent four years in foster care.
I heard about the bill that the Florid

My name is Anthony. I’m 16 and I live in Clearwater, Florida, with my moms and three siblings. I was adopted by my parents when I was 13 years old after having spent four years in foster care.

In 2011, for the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon's declaration of America's "War on Drugs," I wrote a roundup of some of the ways in which the War on Drugs has eroded privacy. Yesterday's news about the DEA's enormous program to collect Americans' call records is a hell of an addition to the list. But with the DEA story fresh in the headlines, it's important to remember a key point about why the drug war has been so corrosive of privacy: drug use is a victimless crime.

Last June, the New York Civil Liberties Union asked the Erie County Sheriff's Office to release information to the public about how it uses stingrays, which are used to track and record New Yorkers’ locations via their cell phones, and can collect information on all cell phones in a given area as well as track and locate particular phones. The Sheriff's Office refused, so in November we sued. Last month, a New York state Supreme Court Justice ruled in our favor, telling the Sheriff’s Office that it had to hand these documents over.

Last week, Indiana brought a startling transformation: The primary tactic of opponents of LGBT equality turned instead into a driver of LGBT equality all across the country.