News & Commentary

For all its interest in promoting human rights around the world, you’d think the United States would be more sensitive to the ways its own surveillance policies undermine those very rights.

This piece originally appeared in The Hill's Congress Blog.

Police body-worn cameras are a subject about which many people have differing intuitions. Some activists tell us they worry we are mistaken in conditionally supporting the technology; that it will become a tool for increasingly police power, but not oversight. Others point to situations in which the cameras have been crucial in bringing justice—or at least in exposing injustice. In light of such debates, the troubled police department in Albuquerque provides an interesting case study.

Modern technology makes our lives more convenient, and our deaths more complicated. Today when we die we leave behind not just physical belongings but also a vast amount of electronic “belongings.” Photos are no longer printed in an album on a shelf; but uploaded and shared. Diaries are not handwritten journals anymore; but a series of blogs or tweets. Salacious love letters aren’t penned on paper and burned or thrown away; but sent via email or text where fleeting feelings can be preserved forever.

Hundreds of Americans with disabilities die each year in police encounters, and many more are seriously injured. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case about one of these interactions.

As talk of law enforcement reform continues to swirl in the aftermath of the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report, some communities have quietly made progress in addressing how police interact with students.

This piece originally appeared at Slate.
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UPDATE: ICE Director Sarah R. Saldaña had this to say on Friday afternoon about her comments regarding Secure Communities: “Any effort at federal legislation now to mandate state and local law enforcement’s compliance with ICE detainers will, in our view, be a highly counterproductive step and lead to more resistance and less cooperation in our overall efforts to promote public safety.”  See full statement here.  -- 1:46 p.m., 3/20/2015

Kevin Thompson, a black teenager in Georgia, was jailed for five days in December 2014 because he could not afford to pay court-ordered fines and company fees related to a traffic ticket.