In August 2011 the ACLU issued public records requests to over 380 state and local law enforcement agencies and found that virtually all of the departments that responded tracked cellphones, most without warrants. (more)
During the National Action Network Convention on Wednesday, ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office director Laura Murphy told a large audience that in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, she emailed her neighbors asking them not to call 911 on her son. (more)
While the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of Obamacare and the nation reels from the Obama administration’s order that Catholic hospitals must provide contraceptives and abortifacients to their employees, the ACLU of Arizona is attacking a proposal to restore employers’ freedom of conscience. (more)
Which part of the U.S. Constitution guarantees women the right to have other people pay for their birth control pills and abortifacients? Which part says that the federal government has the power to force religious employers to violate their beliefs or face fines? (more)
The Senate has rejected an attempt to remove language from the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the administration to place terror suspects in military detention indefinitely. (more)
After a federal judge in Alabama refused to halt key provisions of the state’s controversial immigration law last week, the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal Friday with the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to stop the law from being enforced. (more)
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Manufacturing subpanel will continue its series of hearings on consumer privacy on Thursday morning. Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) recently met with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley leaders and has yet to tip her hand as to whether she thinks new laws are necessary to protect consumers’ privacy online. (more)
At a recent luncheon at the National Press Club, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul warned journalists that they could be placed on a “kill list” should the government deem them a threat to national security. (more)
NEW YORK (AP) — A document obtained by the ACLU shows for the first time how the four largest cellphone companies in the U.S. treat data about their subscribers’ calls, text messages, Web surfing and approximate locations. (more)
The schoolyard has always been prime turf for bullies. But these days it’s not just students who are victims. School administrators and the taxpayers who foot the bill for municipal legal costs are prime targets as well. (more)
Glenn and Kathy Kiederer’s 12-year-old daughter wanted to join the school scrapbooking club. The Shohola couple was surprised at the consent form she brought home two years ago. It acknowledged that to be in the club, she would undergo a urine test for drugs and submit to random drug tests in the future. (more)
In its long history of empowering nuisances that shatter civility, the ACLU has chalked up another victory. (more)
The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called “extraction devices” to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they’re not suspected of any crime. Naturally, the ACLU has a problem with this. (more)
A corrections officer from Baltimore says he was required to hand over his Facebook password to an investigator as part of a job reapplication process, and had to watch as his personal page and its postings were perused. (more)
The Kelso School Board on Monday approved a new cell phone policy that allows school administrators to search a student’s phone if they suspect it contains sexually explicit pictures or messages. (more)
Chicago’s network of more than 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras has solved crimes, prevented police misconduct and made residents feel safe, Mayor Daley said Tuesday, rejecting the American Civil Liberties Union’s call for a moratorium on new cameras and strict controls on existing ones. (more)
An Arizona city’s proposal to require fingerprinting at pharmacies for certain painkillers is a prescription to violate individual privacy rights, civil liberties advocates say. (more)
Donny Dunlap was given a one-day suspension when school officials found out that he had logged on to Facebook one afternoon after receiving three times his standard amount of homework to vent. “[My teacher is] a fat ass who should stop eating fast food, and is a douche bag,” Dunlap wrote. The suspension was retracted, though, when the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union stepped in, claiming that Dunlap’s First Amendment rights were violated by the school. (more)
Jared Loughner’s question for Gabrielle Giffords was utterly incomprehensible. When the Arizona representative couldn’t makes sense of Loughner’s nonsense during a 2007 rally, it set the alleged Tucson gunman off (“Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question“). Loughner felt ignored and then the questions stopped. (more)
Noted author Paul Kengor has unearthed declassified letters and other documents in the Soviet Comintern archives linking early leaders of the ACLU with the Communist Party. (more)























