Got tickets for the big game? While you’re watching the game, people will be watching you. USA Today reports:
Authorities at Super Bowl XLIII will be looking for more than just drunken fans. They’ll be watching spectators’ body language, facial expressions and demeanor to find suspicious people.
For the first time Sunday, federal behavior-detection officers will team with local police to use a controversial technique on people heading to a major event, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says. The officers usually work in airports.
Sunday might not be a good day to fly, incidentally — airport security could be a little short-staffed with all those TSA officers at the game. Here’s what we think (from the article):
The American Civil Liberties Union says that the technique is unproven and that its use at a stadium sets an alarming precedent for police inquiries.
"Police shouldn’t be stopping and questioning people unless they have some credible reason to suspect them. Behavior detection is just too vague," ACLU analyst Barry Steinhardt said.
The article notes that TSA officers will use the time-tested, obvious signs of badness such as "nervousness or other behavioral flags, such as sweating, avoiding eye contact or talking evasively." (I’m just glad my boyfriend isn’t going to the game, because he does all of these things on a regular basis.)
We think that TSA should stay in the airports and let stadium security and local police do their job and monitor the crowd as they always have. Real life is not like a spy thriller where operatives with amazing intuitions are always able to magically pick out the people with something to hide. This is likely to slide into a thinly veiled version of racial profiling.
Besides, in today’s airports and other high-profile environments, who isn’t a little crazed and stressed out?
The ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch wrote to President Obama today requesting full access to the Guantánamo Bay detention camps to independently examine and report on conditions of confinement there. Our four organizations were granted observer status in August 2004 in order to observe the military commissions, but our persistent requests for full access to the detention camps have been repeatedly denied by the Bush administration, which only offered us the VIP tour of sanitized areas approved by their public relations experts.
Section 6 of President Obama’s January 22, 2009 executive order orders Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Department of Defense (DoD) to immediately review the conditions of detention at Guantánamo and ensure compliance with the Geneva Conventions. If full access is granted, our organizations would independently review and report on the conditions of confinement at Guantánamo and make concrete recommendations for change, assisting the DoD with their current review. The independent outside assessment would also be reported publicly to the world and contribute to a renewed effort to bring the U.S. into compliance with international human rights obligations.
The ACLU and other organizations continue to struggle for information regarding the present conditions of confinement of detainees in Guantánamo. The information that we have managed to piece together has been disturbing and worrisome; many detainees have attempted suicide, others are on hunger strike to protest conditions of confinement, and many detainees continue to be held in inhumanely isolated confinement for months and years on end.
President Obama has pledged that his administration will usher in a new era of openness and transparency. Allowing four independent civil liberties and human rights organizations to independently examine the Guantánamo detention camps would signal a significant break from the Bush administration’s policy of secrecy regarding conditions of confinement at Guantánamo. By doing so, President Obama would help restore American legitimacy and standing in the world, and place pressure on other governments to open their detention centers for independent inspections.
In light of the important changes that President Obama has initiated in his first days in office, we trust that he will act quickly to uphold transparency at Guantánamo.
To learn more about the ACLU’s efforts around Guantánamo, visit www.closegitmo.com.
(Originally posted on DailyKos.)
Just hours ago, I shared an incredible moment with Lilly Ledbetter — who stood in the White House and watched President Obama sign a piece of legislation bearing her name. One can only imagine what that feels like.
But, we know this much: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act struck a powerful blow for justice not just for her, but for anyone who has been victimized by wage discrimination.
Today the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became law and overturned the Supreme Court decision in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case, in which employees lost their right to their day in court for ongoing pay discrimination.
And it became the first major bill that President Obama signed.
With the stoke of a pen — actually several pens, President Obama made today a good day for all employees, who — regardless of gender, race, national origin, age or disability — are illegally receiving smaller paychecks than their colleagues.
Before signing the bill, President Obama made clear that this bill is not just about Lilly Ledbetter or his two daughters or the countless women who are still facing unlawful pay disparities; it is also about the families who have to make ends meet with less because of wage discrimination:
Equal pay is by no means just a women’s issue — it’s a family issue. It’s about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition and child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves; that’s the difference between affording the mortgage — or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor bills — or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple and plain discrimination.
But even more, by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, with the stroke of his pen President Obama sent a clear message about our values as Americans. Today, we all took a step closer to ending workplace discrimination. Today, our commitment to equality and equal access to the American dream gleamed a little brighter. Today, we all got a little closer to building an America we can be proud of, once again.
But there is more to be done. The next stop for the fair pay fight: the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restored rights lost in the civil rights rollback of recent years. The next step is to amend the Equal Pay Act — to close, for once and for all, the pay gap between men and women and allow employees to finally bring home every dollar they rightfully earn.
This state legislative session has seen a flurry of activity regarding capital punishment. There has been plenty of reason for hope, but also some disappointment for death penalty opponents.
We’ll start with the bad news: Alaska has proposed to reinstate its death penalty, which it abolished in 1958. Anti-death penalty groups are rightly stating that the risks of an innocent person being sentenced to death are high, as is the cost for the capital punishment system.
In sillier pro-death penalty news, a New Hampshire legislator proposed to bring the firing squad back as a method of execution. The politician claims that this method of execution will deter murder.
Now for the good news! Maryland is poised to abolish its death penalty. The governor is a fervent opponent of the death penalty and has proposed the repeal bill. According to the Washington Post, it appears that legislators are also ready to move forward with abolition. A committee may forward the bill to the full senate without having a hearing, which gives it a better opportunity to pass.
New Mexico will once again have a bill that would abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment is a costly sentence and one which New Mexico rarely uses; four people have been exonerated from New Mexico’s death row, and only two people currently sit on the state’s death row. The bill would repeal the death penalty and sentence murderers to life without parole and keep the state just as safe.
There is also sensible bill in New Hampshire that would create a study commission to investigate whether capital punishment is worthwhile for the state to continue.
Nebraska has not had a functioning death penalty since the electric chair was ruled unconstitutional. Some legislators are proposing abolition of capital punishment. Nebraska came close to repeal in 2007, so abolition is not an unrealistic goal for the Cornhusker State. (The bad news is that other legislators are trying to pass lethal injection legislation.)
Colorado is also taking a hard look at capital punishment. An article in the Denver Post discusses a bill that would repeal the death penalty and use the money that is wasted on that process for investigations of cold cases.
The country seems to have atmosphere of hope, and the anti-death penalty movement is moving into that space as well.
The night of President Obama’s inauguration — while he and First Lady Michelle Obama were hitting the inaugural ball circuit — an executive order arrived at Guantanamo ordering government prosecutors to request a 120-day stay on all proceedings there. Nearly all of the judges presiding over these cases granted the stay, but today we learned that one judge, Lt. Col. James Pohl, has denied the continuance, and arraignment is still scheduled for February 9 in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who’s accused of planning the 2000 U.S.S. Cole attack. The BBC reports:
Judge James Pohl said the request to halt the trial to allow a review by the new administration was "unpersuasive".
Judge Pohl said that the trial of Mr Nashiri would go ahead.
Al-Nashiri is being represented by a team of military and civilian lawyers, including Nancy Hollander of the ACLU’s John Adams Project and Lt. Cmdr. Steven Reyes.
Stay tuned.
An impressive array of respected military and civilian leaders filed friend-of-the-court briefs today asking the Supreme Court to reject the president’s authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. The ACLU represents Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2003.
Here’s some background: Mr. al-Marri was first arrested in December 2001 at his home in Peoria, Illinois, where he was living with his wife and children. His case was scheduled for trial in June 2003, but was cancelled the day before it was set to begin when President Bush took the extraordinary step of designating al-Marri an “enemy combatant” and transferring him to a military brig in South Carolina. At the brig, al-Marri was detained incommunicado for 16 months and subjected to torture and other abuse. The government continues to hold al-Marri indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” based upon uncorroborated accounts that he has ties to al-Qaeda, although no evidence has been presented to sustain these allegations. He is the only remaining person detained as an “enemy combatant” in the United States.
The Supreme Court has the opportunity to definitively end the Bush era by repudiating the counterproductive anti-terrorism policies of the last eight years. But don’t just take it from us — the widespread support from leaders across the political spectrum speaks volumes to the urgency of turning the page on a lawless era. Among the individuals and groups signing on to friend-of-the-court briefs are: former U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions, former senior diplomats, former judges, leading legal scholars and experts, nonprofit religious groups, as well as the Cato Institute, Constitution Project and Rutherford Institute.
As Jonathan Hafetz, al-Marri’s lead counsel, said: “The outpouring of such widespread support among the nation’s top civilian and military leaders shows that the tide has turned against the Bush administration’s claim of a boundless and endless ‘war on terror’ — a claim that has served neither America’s security nor its commitment to justice.”
Indeed. Nothing less than the restoration of the rule of law is at stake in the outcome of al-Marri’s case. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will get it right.
(Originally posted on DailyKos.)
The New York Times today reported the latest death of a person in immigrant detention. Guido R. Newbrough, 48, was a construction worker born in Germany but who lived in the United States for the last 42 years while sporting a "Raised American" tattoo on his shoulder. Newbrough died Nov. 27 in a Virginia hospital after being detained for 11 months at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. According to the Times, he died of endocarditis, caused by a virulent staph infection that is typically cured by antibiotics. But as Times reporter Nina Bernstein writes, his infection went untreated "despite his mounting pleas for medical care in the 10 days before his death." His pain was so bad in the days leading up to his death, the Times reported, "that he began sobbing through the night" and took to banging on doors and screaming for help. Rather than respond to his obvious medical needs, the paper reported, prison guards threw him to the floor, dragged him away, and locked him in an isolated cell.
Newbrough’s death and the treatment he reportedly received at Piedmont are tragic in their own right. But what makes this story even worse is that another immigration detainee died at that very same facility two years earlier. And while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were able to conclude then that "[d]etainee health care is in jeopardy" at the facility, it is unclear what steps—if any—were taken to fix the dangerous health care deficiencies.
The ICE report (PDF) that is so critical of health care at the Piedmont facility was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request (PDF) by ACLU National Prison Project lawyer Tom Jawetz. That report was produced in the aftermath of the Dec. 2006 death of Abdoulai Sall, 50, a Guinea native who died while in detention after his liver failed over the course of several weeks. Sall’s death prompted a review of medical care at Piedmont by ICE, which concluded that "This facility has failed on multiple levels to perform basic supervision and provide for the safety and welfare of ICE detainees. The medical health care unit does not meet minimum ICE standards." But ICE never made that report public, and it likely would never have seen the light of day had the ACLU not sought out the report. Instead, ICE officials told its public affairs staff to formulate a public response (PDF) that made it appear as though ICE officials did everything they could to care for and revive Sall is the final moments of his life.
What the documents show is that ICE officials were well aware of the horrendous medical conditions at Piedmont and the facility’s inability to adequately care for detainees with serious medical needs. Despite this knowledge, it does not appear that immigration officials did much of substance to ensure that future detainees were protected from a facility where their health care would be "in jeopardy" — and Newbrough bore the fatal brunt of this failure.
In a lawsuit we filed yesterday in Illinois, two transgender women asked the Cook County Circuit Court to order the state to issue them new birth certificates that reflect their appropriate gender following gender confirmation surgery (sometimes called sex reassignment surgery). The Illinois Department of Vital Records has refused to change the gender marker on their birth certificates because their reassignment surgery was performed outside the United States. Illinois is the only state to bar the option to change one’s gender on their birth certificate if the gender confirmation surgery is not performed by a United States-licensed physician.
After carefully weighing their medical options, Victoria Kirk and Karissa Rothkopf, the two plaintiffs in today’s suit, both decided it was best to have their gender confirmation surgery in Thailand. “After making the difficult decision – with the advice and support of my physician and a therapist – to have surgery to conform to this identity, it was disheartening to learn that the state of Illinois would not issue a new birth certificate that recognizes me as a woman simply because I elected to have surgery overseas,” Karissa said.
Kirk v. Arnold argues a birth certificate is a fundamental document for any individual, and it is critical that it accurately reflects one’s gender. Denying these women the ability to secure an accurate birth certificate is in opposition to the advice of medical experts who recommend that persons who transition their gender identity ensure that all aspects of their lives reflect that gender identity. “There’s this piece of paper that is wrong, it says I’m someone I’m not,” said Victoria.
In addition, refusing to provide an accurate birth certificate poses everyday challenges that are unnecessary and dangerous. Having a corrected gender marker is important when a birth certificate is required to start a new job, get a driver’s license, enter a federal building or board an airplane.
To learn more about this case, watch our video of Karissa Rothkopf and Victoria Kirk explaining how this legislation has impacted their lives and their gender confirmation surgery.
(Originally posted at West Virginia Blue.)
Yesterday, I received a call regarding a legislative proposal that would subject all recipients of welfare based services to random and suspicionless drug testing.
Needless to say, the ACLU of WV is opposed and for good reasons far beyond the outrageous constitutional violations involved.
First of all, there are in fact a great deal of people in West Virginia living on public assistance (specific numbers to come at a later date.) As the economy works its way through the current rut, odds are that more people will be turning to unemployment to weather the storm.
Handing a coal miner, or a paper plant worker, or a Greenbrier resort employee, or an aluminum plant worker a cup to pee in with their pink slip is as offensive as it is unconstitutional.
Secondly, from a fiscal standpoint, this idea would almost certainly be counter productive. The cost of instituting a random and suspicionless drug testing program would be substantial, bordering on exorbitant. The state would dole out more in testing than they would come close to saving by removing substance abusers from the rolls.
Third, this is a backwards approach to West Virginia’s drug problem. Those with substance abuse problems need access to treatment, not the removal of their food supply.
And while we are talking about that, it is worth mentioning that the people who will truly suffer from this unconstitutional policy will not be substance abusers. No, it will be the poorest of West Virignia children who rely on Welfare based services for daily hot meals that will bear the brunt.
Let’s make it clear, singling out the poor for denial of government services is not compatible with 14th Amendment principles concerning equal protection under the law.
Stuff like this is proof that bad ideas never go away.
That’s alright, though, neither will the ACLU and our commitment to defeat them.
Today, we sent a letter to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) asking them to release still-secret memos that provided the legal basis for many of the Bush administration’s controversial national security policies.
The OLC — a component of the Justice Department — was created to provide objective legal advice to the Attorney General and to resolve legal disputes among federal agencies. But under the Bush administration, the OLC became a facilitator for illegal government conduct including unlawful interrogation and detention practices, rendition and warrantless wiretapping.
Although some of these memos (PDF) are public — both through leaks to the press and the ongoing torture and surveillance FOIA litigation by the ACLU and other organizations — a majority of them still remain secret. As McClatchy Newspapers points out, "The collections of memos…are viewed as the missing puzzle pieces that could help explain the Bush administration’s antiterrorism policies."
Our National Security Project Director Jameel Jaffer explains why the release of these memos is so crucial in a new ACLU video.
You can learn more about the memos and the men behind the memos, over at ProPublica — they have posted an interactive list of these crucial records — missing and known. ProPublica’s web feature is based in part on information obtained and compiled by the ACLU.
As President Obama has made clear in his January 21, 2009 Executive Order about FOIA, "democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency." We think the American public has a right to see the memos that supplied the basis for the Bush administration’s illegal national security policies
We’re hoping that the new leadership of the OLC agrees.
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