A federal judge has heard oral arguments for and against the decision of the city of Evansville in Southwestern Indiana to allow local churches to display crosses on public land along the Ohio River, and is expected to issue a ruling before Aug. 4. American Civil Liberties Union argued the crosses would violate the Constitution. …read more
Source: The Christian Post
In a new report, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for police departments to purge data of car sightings obtained through license plate recognition within a few weeks unless officials have evidence of an infraction or crime. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Police in New Jersey will soon have to get warrants if they want to track suspects using cellphone data, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a decision that affords citizens here more privacy protections than they enjoy under federal law.
In a unanimous ruling Thursday stemming from the arrest of a burglary suspect in 2006, the court directed that beginning in 30 days, all law enforcement officers must get a search warrant based on probable cause if they want to get access to cellphone locating data. Since 2010, police have had to satisfy a lower standard of demonstrating there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the information would be relevant to an investigation.
“No one buys a cell phone to share detailed information about their whereabouts with the police,” Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote. “That was true in 2006 and is equally true today. Citizens have a legitimate privacy interest in such information.”
Rabner noted that federal courts have been divided over the issue of cellphone tracking by law enforcement. In some other areas, he wrote, New Jersey’s constitution goes farther than the Fourth Amendment in protecting citizens from unreasonable search and seizure — particularly in previous cases involving Internet usage, bank records and hotel telephone records.
“When people make disclosures to phone companies and other providers to use their services, they are not promoting the release of personal information to others. Instead, they can reasonably expect that their personal information will remain private,” Rabner wrote. “For those reasons, we have departed from federal case law that takes a different approach.”
Rubin Sinins, an attorney who argued on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and a state criminal defense lawyers association, called Thursday’s decision “vitally important.”
“I’m not surprised it was unanimous because the basic premise of the opinion is quite logical and consistent with citizens’ reasonable expectation of privacy in their cellphone usage,” he said.
In the 2006 case, police tracked Robert Earls to a motel on Route 9 in Howell using information provided by T-Mobile about the location of a cellphone believed to be in his possession. When he opened the door to his room, police saw items they believed had been stolen and arrested him. He eventually pleaded guilty to burglary and theft.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Earls’ case would be affected by the ruling since a lower …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By Damon Lowney
Filed under:
The proliferation of automated license plate readers in police departments around the country has increased dramatically over the years, leading the American Civil Liberties Union to commission a report to find out what they are being used for, the policies governing their use and how they should be used to benefit the American public. The report, which has just been released, is called You Are Being Tracked. The report’s findings, according to the ACLU, show that plate readers are not being used in a lawful manner that benefits US citizens.
Automated plate readers are placed on roads, highways, overpasses, police cars, etc., and snap photos of all vehicles and license plates that pass by them. Software reads the numbers, adds a time and location stamp to them and then stores them in a database – often for an indefinite amount of time, even if the drivers are innocent of any crime. The ACLU claims that storing plate data indefinitely, or for an unnecessarily long period of time, is an invasion of privacy because many facets of citizens’ personal lives can be found out if their location is being tracked at all times.
In a 2011 survey, the ACLU found that almost three-quarters of police departments in the US were using plate readers and 85 percent of them were planning to increase their use of the readers over the next five years.
One city that has no plate-read storage policy, Milpitas, CA, the ACLU points out, has a population of 67,000, yet it had 4.7 million stored plate reads as of August 2, 2012. Jersey City, NJ, has a policy to store read data for 5 years, but with a population of 250,000, it still has about 10 million plate reads stored. The Minnesota State Patrol is striking a better balance with the technology, the ACLU states, with a patrol area covering 5.3 million people but a plate-read storage policy of 48 hours. The MSP stores less than 20,000 reads because of its policy, which the ACLU says limits the chance that innocent drivers can be tracked over time. The Ohio State Patrol’s policy is even stricter than the MSP’s, the ACLU reports, as its policy states that all non-hit records can’t be stored and must be deleted immediately.
Fueling the debate, the ACLU report found that, “In Maryland, for every million plates read, only 47 (0.005 percent) were potentially associated with a stolen car or a person wanted for a serious crime.” What do you think about this technology? Check out the ACLU’s press release below, then have your say in Comments.
Continue reading ACLU releases license plate scanning docs, says you are being tracked
ACLU releases license plate scanning docs, says you are being tracked originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Jul 2013 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
<h6 style="clear: both;padding: 8px 0 0 0;height: 2px;font-size: …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Autoblog
The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a motion to intervene on behalf of a group of Indiana churches being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for a proposed display of crosses on public property. …read more
Source: The Christian Post
On April 16 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission asking for injunctive relief for the major wireless carriers not bothering to issue “regular, prompt security updates” to wireless phones using ‘s Android operating system.
Smartphones with custom versions of Android offered by large mobile operators in the U.S. are not getting security updates as regularly as phones from Google, or smartphones from other vendors like Microsoft, according to a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Federal Trade Commission.
“Android smartphones that do not receive regular, prompt security updates are defective and unreasonably dangerous,” ACLU said in the complaint on Tuesday.
The complaint against AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA states that “all of the major wireless carriers have failed to deliver regular, prompt updates to Android phones which they have sold to their customers,” citing results from a survey in December last year by technology news site Ars Technica.
The sale of mobile computing devices such as smartphones and the software updates to the devices are not part of common carrier activities, and are hence subject to FTC authority, according to the complaint, a copy of which is on the ACLU website.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internal Revenue Service has taken the position it does not need a search warrant to gather email in criminal investigations, despite opposition from lawmakers and privacy advocates and a ruling by a federal appellate court.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained 247 pages of IRS records in an attempt to find out whether the agency had ever used only a subpoena to obtain emails. Unlike a warrant, a subpoena does not require law enforcement to show “probable cause” in front of a judge. Probable cause refers to having enough evidence to show that a crime has likely been committed.
Though inconclusive in what the ACLU was looking for, the records show that the IRS has taken the position at least since October 2011 that only a subpoena is needed to obtain emails more than 180 days old, as described in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. That position was outlined in a memo written by William Spatz, a senior counsel of the IRS. It is also written in the agency’s current manual of policies and procedures.
“Through their documents, [the IRS seems] to take the position that the Fourth Amendment has nothing to say about their access to people’s emails,” Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney for the ACLU in Washington, D.C., said on Thursday.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Filed under: Taxes, Audits, IRS, Spending
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try{document.getElementById(“fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-194432″).style.display=”none”;}catch(e){}If you’ve been swapping emails with your crooked accountant about the best way to avoid paying taxes, be aware: The IRS says it has the right to go into your account and read them.
ArsTechnica flags a report from the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out whether the IRS is reading your emails without a warrant.
The tax-collection agency did not explicitly answer the question of whether its investigative arm always gets a warrant before opening suspects’ emails. But the ACLU says that its review of the documents indicate that it does not.
A bit of background is necessary here. When it comes to getting a warrant to read your email, the relevant law is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was enacted way back in 1986. As you might expect, the law is a bit dated: According to the law, a government agency can read your email without a warrant as long as the email has been opened, or if it’s been sitting in your inbox for more than 180 days. Only unopened email that’s been on the server for less than 180 days requires a warrant.
It’s exactly the kind of arbitrary distinction you might expect from a law written before email was widely used and understood. And accordingly, a Sixth Circuit appeals court ruled in 2010 that in fact, agencies needed to get a warrant before reading any emails, not just those that were new and unopened.
Before that decision, the IRS was certainly opening emails without warrants — in fact, the ACLU got hold of an internal handbook claiming that the “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage.”
The question, then, is whether those practices changed after the Sixth Circuit decision.
The ACLU‘s investigation suggest they did not: A 2011 update to its internal policies maintains the standard that “Investigators can obtain everything in an account except for unopened e-mail or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less” without a warrant.
The IRS has lots of ways to investigate you if it thinks you’ve been hiding something. In addition to searching your email and voicemail, it may also search your social media accounts for incriminating information (though it denies that it may audit you based on something it finds on one of those accounts, insisting that audits are based strictly on your filed return.)
The ACLU is calling on the IRS to amend its procedures to bring them in line with the Fourth Amendment. In the meantime, just be aware that the taxman might sift through your inbox if he thinks you’re holding something back.
Matt Brownell is the consumer and retail reporter for DailyFinance. You can reach him at Matt.Brownell@teamaol.com, and follow him on Twitter
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By The Huffington Post News Editors
By Suzi Parker
LITTLE ROCK, Ark, April 8 (Reuters) – The Republican-led Arkansas state Senate approved a measure on Monday that would require random drug testing of Arkansas residents who receive state unemployment benefits – a plan that the state’s Democratic governor said could violate federal law.
The bill, which passed on a 25-5 vote and now goes to a House committee, could affect about 85,000 Arkansas residents currently receiving unemployment benefits.
If the measure becomes law, those seeking unemployment benefits would have to sign a waiver and allow for random drug testing. Those who refuse to sign or who test positive for drugs would not be entitled to benefits.
Some other states have adopted measures making a person discharged from work for failing an employer’s drug test on the job ineligible to collect employment benefits, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In Texas, Governor Rick Perry has a proposal in that state’s legislature that would require drug tests for both unemployment and welfare recipients. But it has not yet passed a chamber.
The Arkansas bill’s sponsor, Republican state Senator Jeremy Hutchinson, said that his measure was “more of an enforcement mechanism than anything else.”
“Arkansas law states that you have to be adequately seeking employment, and by that you have to pass a drug test since so many employers require drug tests,” Hutchinson said.
He said that 80 percent of the state’s employers require a drug test. The unemployment testing, Hutchinson said, would cost the state less than $30,000 a year to administer.
Rita Sklar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said the group plans to fight the measure if it becomes law. Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, also has issues with the bill.
“We have concerns about whether the bill will put us in violation of the federal unemployment laws administered by the U.S. Department of Labor,” said Matt DeCample, Beebe’s spokesman. “There are also continued concerns …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Your online life may not seem worth tracking as you browse websites, store content in the cloud, and post updates to social networking sites. But the data you generate is a rich trove of information that says more about you than you realize—and it’s a tempting treasure for marketers and law enforcement officials alike.
Battles have long raged over how third parties can access and use your data. This year, your online privacy faces new threats, as a result of emerging technologies and new regulatory efforts that could affect how your Web-based life is protected… or exposed.
The nature of online activity compounds the privacy problems we already experience in the material world. Every move we make on our PCs, smartphones, and tablets turns into a data point that trackers can easily collect and share. And you effectively agree to such collecting and sharing whenever you sign up for an online service and accept its privacy policy.
“There’s a pretty big disparity between what folks think their privacy rights are online and what they actually are online,” says legislative counsel Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union. “They mistake a privacy policy for meaning that they have privacy. That policy is frequently a way to describe the rights you don’t have.”
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By The Huffington Post News Editors
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Several courts in Ohio are illegally jailing people because they are too poor to pay their debts and often deny defendants a hearing to determine if they’re financially capable of paying what they owe, according to an investigation released Thursday by the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU likens the problem to modern-day debtors’ prisons. Jailing people for debt pushes poor defendants farther into poverty and costs counties more than the actual debt because of the cost of arresting and incarcerating individuals, the report said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Businesses and privacy advocates are squaring off over a proposed law that would make California the first state in the nation to give people the right to see all the information companies have on them and to find out who the data is shared with.
Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union say California Assembly bill AB 1291 would help consumers decide whether they wanted to continue doing business with a company, based on the way it handled their personal information.
To opponents such as the California Chamber of Commerce and TechAmerica, the bill is too broad in defining the information covered and would open businesses up to frivolous lawsuits.
On Monday, lawmakers amended the bill, introduced in February by Democratic Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, to increase its chances of getting through the Legislature. To opponents, the changes were not enough.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
A portrait of Jesus that had adorned a southern Ohio public school district building since 1947 has been taken down after officials decided they could not risk losing a lawsuit to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The superintendent of Jackson City Schools told The Associated Press that the decision was made after the district’s insurance company declined to cover litigation expenses. Phil Howard said a student club that the school says owns the portrait took it down Wednesday morning at his direction.
“At the end of the day, we just couldn’t roll the dice with taxpayer money,” Howard said. “When you get into these kinds of legal battles, you’re not talking about money you can raise with bake sales and car washes. It’s not fair to take those resources from our kids’ education.”
The ACLU and the Freedom from Religion Foundation had sued on behalf of a student and two parents, calling the portrait an unconstitutional promotion of religion in a public school. An ACLU spokesman says the lawsuit remains in effect, but will be dropped if the portrait stays down.
The “Head of Christ,” a popular depiction of Jesus, had been in an entranceway’s “Hall of Honor” in a middle school building that was formerly a high school. It was near portraits of dozens of prominent alumni and people with local roots such as the late four-term Ohio Gov. James Rhodes. The portrait was moved recently by a Christian-based service club to the current high school building.
A complaint that triggered the February lawsuit put the 2,500-student district in the midst of the ongoing national debate over what religious-themed displays are permissible.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By hnn
Raleigh, N.C. — A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.
The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.
Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian….
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University
By hnn
Raleigh, N.C. — A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.
The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.
Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian….
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University
Boston College is getting support from prominent Catholic universities in its efforts to stop a student group from giving away condoms on campus.
According to the Boston Globe, officials at Catholic colleges and universities – including Notre Dame, Georgetown and Catholic University – say their policies are similar to that of Boston College, which threatened disciplinary action against students distributing condoms on school grounds.
“One of the teachings of our faith is that contraception is morally unacceptable,” Victor Nakas, a spokesman for Catholic University, told the paper. “Since condoms are a form of contraception, we do not permit their distribution on campus.”
A letter sent by Boston College telling on-campus groups they could face disciplinary action for a condom giveaway provoked angry reactions from students, and the American Civil Liberties Union said it might pursue legal action.
“BC is saying that they’re a private university, so we can do what we want,” said Sarah Wunsch, staff lawyer at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “But that’s actually not true.”
According to the Globe, Wunsch cited the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act of 1979, which prohibits interference with civil rights by private as well as public entities. She cited a court case lost by Boston University in the 1980s after the institution attempted to force students to remove an antiapartheid poster from their dorm windows. In that case, the judge ruled that the state Civil Rights Act protected the free speech rights of the students, even though they attended a private school.
Most Catholic universities agree when it comes to distributing contraception on campus, said Michael Galligan-Stierle, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.
Galligan-Stierle said Catholic educational institutions follow John Paul II’s “Ex Corde Ecclesiae,” a document he issued on church principles in 1990. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a US-specific interpretation of John Paul‘s document in 2001.
“There are certain ways of living that we, Catholics, believe lead to a healthier and holier life,” Galligan-Stierle said, according to the Globe. “This falls into one of many of those ways.”
You don’t mess with Texas. At least, that’s precisely what State Rep. Lyle Larson is saying with HB 149.
HB 149 is designed to counter the indefinite detention provisions, sections 1021 and 1022, of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. These sections authorize the indefinite military detention, without charge or trial, of anyone who commits a “belligerent act” or is suspected of terrorism and violate over 13 provisions of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The law has also been condemned by retired members of the Armed Forces, a current U.S. Congressman, Federal Judge Katherine B. Forrest, conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rep. Larson’s bill, once amended, will protect the people of Texas from indefinite military detention and extrajudicial assassination without charge or trial. However, we have to get it through Committee first.
It’s time to bring the pressure. One call, and taking 30 seconds to tell your legislator what you think, can make all the difference.
Contact members of the Texas House Federalism and Fiscal Responsibility NOW and tell them, politely but firmly, you will accept nothing less than a YES on HB 149. (Out-of-staters are encouraged to call as well.)
Rep. Brandon Creighton:
(512) 463-0726
Rep. Cindy Burkett:
(512) 463-0464
Rep. Eddie Lucio III
(512) 463-0606
Rep. Scott Turner
(512) 463-0484
Rep. Armando Walle
(512) 463-0924
If you are in Texas, join PANDA, the Tenth Amendment Center, the Libertarian Party, and other groups at the Committee Hearing!
12:00 PM CDT
Hearing Room E2036
Capitol Building
Austin, TX 78701
Let’s show the Federal government “you don’t mess with Texas.”
P.S. What kind of responses are you getting? We want to know. Post the reply you get in the comments section of this post so other people know what to expect.
By The Huffington Post News Editors
COLUMBIA, Mo. — A federal judge on Friday again blocked efforts by a central Missouri technical college to drug-test its students, a policy challenged as unconstitutional by the American Civil Liberties Union.
U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey in Jefferson City granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily prevents Linn State Technical College from screening all first-year students and some returning students for cocaine, methamphetamines, oxycodone and eight other drugs.
A Massachusetts mother says her five-year-old son was given a half-day suspension for bringing a toy gun to his kindergarten class on Wednesday.
Christine Stone tells MyFoxBoston.com that her son, Jonah, was punished by administrators at Center School in Hopkinton after he showed the plastic gun to another student.
The Boston Globe reports that Stone plans to appeal the suspension. She says the school’s handbook makes no mention of toy weapons.
“I think they are going a little overboard. He really wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Stone tells the Globe. “He had no intent of hurting anyone and he was even sharing.”
Stone says when she and her son met with an administrator and a school police officer, the Newtown shooting was discussed, forcing her to later explain the tragedy to her son, according to the Globe.
She plans to contact the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts if her effort to appeal the suspension is unsuccessful, the Globe reported.
School administrators declined a request for comment from MyFoxBoston.com, citing confidentiality reasons.
Click here for more from MyFoxBoston.com.
