Send the ACLU to SXSW!

What kind of content do YOU think should be featured at one of the biggest technology events of the year?

By Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union

Placeholder image

An Innocent Man Is Dying of Cancer on Texas's Death Row

Max Soffar has a long history of self-medicating. When he was four, his parents found him passed out next to their car, gas cap in hand. Since birth, Max's brain has been damaged. That damage has been made worse by years of physical and mental abuse by adoptive parents and staff at mental institutions.

By By Sarah Solon, Communications Strategist, ACLU

Placeholder image

Ten Years Without Other People

Every time they throw my brother into solitary, he loses contact visits. When we visit, he's behind glass, or we can only see him via video. We can't hug him. He can't hold his new baby niece.

By By Nzinga A. Harrison, MD

Placeholder image

3 Reasons the Guantánamo Military Commissions Need the Senate Torture Report

On August 1, President Obama acknowledged again that "We tortured some folks." Last week, one of those people, Abd al-Rahim Hussayn al-Nashiri, was back in the courtroom in the Guantánamo military commissions, where he faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the bombing of the USS Cole.
While the

By By Marcellene Hearn, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project

Placeholder image

2+2=5? Why South Carolina's Creationism Compromise Doesn't Add Up

Politicians in South Carolina don't have a great track record with science. Earlier this year, creationists in the state legislature tried to derail an 8-year-old girl's request to make the woolly mammoth the state fossil. They demanded the resolution also declare that the wooly mammoth was "created on the Sixth Day with the other beasts of the field."
The creat

By By Carrie Ellen Sager, PFRB Legal Fellow, ACLU

Placeholder image

Are We Getting Fooled on Surveillance Reform?

This piece originally appeared on the Monkey Cage blog at washingtonpost.com.

By By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

Placeholder image

Numbers Tell the Story of Our Government's Watchlisting Binge

The government is adding people to its already bloated watchlisting system at breakneck pace, and it's still hungry for more. That's the unavoidable conclusion from documents published yesterday in The Intercept.

By By Hugh Handeyside, Staff Attorney, ACLU, National Security Project

Placeholder image

Border Crisis Prompting New Xenophobic Drumbeat for an Old Disgrace—Detention Camps

This piece originally appeared at The National Journal.

By Carl Takei, ACLU National Prison Project

Placeholder image

Happy Anniversary, CIA! 12 Years of Lawlessness!

Wow. Twelve years. The time has flown by. Seems like just yesterday that the Justice Department sent over its torture memos to then-CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, ramping up a CIA torture program that horribly abused more than a hundred men, killing a few of them. No one at the CIA was ever even charged with a crime. Some agents, in fact, got job promotions.

By By Chris Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

Placeholder image