AWARE-LA
Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
This Week in Civil Liberties (1/27/2012)
010 hours ago
Which search engine forces you to share your personal data with almost all of its products and sites?
A school district in which state will stop illegally promoting religion to public school students after a settlement with ACLU plaintiffs?
Which amendment did the government violate when it placed a GPS tracking device on Antoine Jones’s car?
Of which band is Billy McCarthy, who talks about solitary confinement in a new Prison Voices podcast, the singer and songwriter?
ACLU Lens: Google’s New Privacy Policy
This week, Google announced a new privacy policy effective March 1. The new policy is consistent across the vast majority of Google products, and it’s in English; you don’t have to speak legalese to understand it. But, the new privacy policy makes clear that Google will, for the first time, combine the personal data you share with any one of its products or sites across almost all of its products and sites (everything but Google Chrome, Google Books, and Google Wallet) in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of you. And there’s no opting out.
Don’t B-SHOCked: Settlement Shows Public Schools Can’t Proselytize
A federal judge signed and entered a consent decree and order this week in the ACLU’s case challenging widespread and pervasive religious practices in South Carolina’s Chesterfield County School District. The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of a local father, Jonathan Anderson, and his son, who is a student at New Heights Middle School. Both are non-believers. The school district’s unlawful practices promoting religion garnered national attention after a video was posted online documenting a school-day assembly that featured a Christian rapper who calls himself “B-SHOC”. The assembly also included a sermon delivered by an evangelical youth minister, and students were asked to sign cards pledging themselves to Jesus. Students who did not want to attend the assembly were told that they could instead spend the afternoon in in-school suspension.
Supreme Court Rules Government Violated Privacy Rights in GPS Tracking Case
In a major victory for privacy, this week in U.S. v. Jones the Supreme Court unanimously held that, “The Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.” The Court found that the government violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches, when it placed a GPS device on Antoine Jones’s car and tracked his movements continuously for a month.
It is a fantastic privacy decision from the court, and we’re hoping it also leads to some fantastic privacy decisions by Congress. The law must catch up with new technology; ask Congress to support the GPS Act now!
Podcast: Billy McCarthy of We Are Augustines talks about Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness
Billy McCarthy is the singer and songwriter for the band We Are Augustines. Many of the songs on the band’s critically acclaimed album Rise Ye Sunken Ships were inspired by McCarthy’s brother James, who suffered from mental illness and took his own life after spending five years in solitary confinement in a California prison.
In this new podcast, McCarthy talks about what it’s like to have a family member confined to solitary and the tragic outcome.
This is your week in civil liberties. Let us know if this is useful or if you’d like to see changes. Share your thoughts: ideas@aclu.org
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Civil Liberties in the Digital Age: Weekly Highlights (1/27/2012)
010 hours ago
In the digital age that we live in today, we are constantly exposing our personal information online. From using cell phones and GPS devices to online shopping and sending e-mail, the things we do and say online leave behind ever-growing trails of personal information. The ACLU believes that Americans shouldn’t have to choose between using new technology and keeping control of your private information. Each week, we feature some of the most interesting news related to technology and civil liberties that we’ve spotted from the previous week.
Revealed: The FBI Wants to Monitor Social Media [Mashable]
“The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations.”
Twitter may censor tweets in individual countries [SF Gate]
“Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.”
ACLU Lens: Google’s New Privacy Policy [ACLU Blog of Rights]
… The new privacy policy makes clear that Google will, for the first time, combine the personal data you share with any one of its products or sites across almost all of its products and sites (everything but Google Chrome, Google Books, and Google Wallet) in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of you. And there’s no opting out.
See also: If Google’s New Privacy Rules Have You Ready To Flee, Here’s How To Close Your Account
New Google privacy policy won’t affect Apps for business, government
Supreme Court Decision on GPS Tracking: A Spur to Action for Congress [ACLU Blog of Rights]
As we told you earlier, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in U.S. v Jones that the government violated the Fourth Amendment when it used a GPS device to track a suspect’s location for 28 days without a valid warrant. It is fantastic privacy decision from the Court, and we’re hoping it also leads to some fantastic privacy decisions by Congress. The law must catch up with new technology; ask Congress to support the GPS Act now!
See also: What Does the Supreme Court GPS Ruling Mean for Privacy?
Supreme Court’s GPS Ruling Has Broad Implications On Tech
Why the Jones Supreme Court Ruling on GPS Tracking Is Worse Than It Sounds
Facebook Timeline Now Pushed To Everyone, Users Get A Week To Clean Up Profiles [Tech Crunch]
“You can run, but you can’t hide. Facebook’s biggest user interface overhaul since the Wall, the Facebook Timeline, is now becoming mandatory for all users.”
Learn more about dotRights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights
010 hours ago
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers
This week, the Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit of the Vera Institute of Justice released an enlightening report, breaking down the costs of state prisons to taxpayers. Their research looks beyond publicized state corrections budgets, proving that that number alone can’t fully encompass the costs of incarceration.
Should Teens Be Jailed for Sex Offenses? A Growing Parental Rebellion Says No
A surprising group of advocates has formed across the country – parents who argue that sex offender laws have needlessly criminalized their children. This profile of one such advocate illustrates the harmful impact these laws can have on some teens, by categorically identifying them as if they were violent sexual predators or pedophiles.
Florida primary: where the Republican candidates stand on drugs
As the presidential battle heats up, Republican candidates at the podium are slinging opinions left and right. This article provides a helpful breakdown of their respective stances on our country’s controversial war on drugs.
Alaska lawmakers seek to cut crime, costs
As Alaska’s prison population booms, lawmakers are forced to consider alternatives to relentlessly long sentences. A summit met this week to discuss other options, including an emphasis on lowering recidivism rates and investing in early childhood education to prevent crime.
Georgia: Chief Justice Calls for Sentencing Reforms
Georgia’s Chief Justice Carol Hunstein addressed lawmakers this week, urging them to make smart, rather than tough, sentencing reforms to divert nonviolent offenders out of the prison system. Hunstein pointed to problem-solving courts, alternatives to incarceration and sentencing reform for juveniles as places to start.
Learn more about overincarceration: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s Mixed Grades on Civil Liberties
011 hours ago
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has multiple personalities: the national political figure and the one at home. His record on civil liberties is as complex as he is, as the ACLU-NJ showed this week in its midterm report card of his administration.
His peculiar role gives him two opposing concerns: maintaining the adulation of his party’s most vocal factions, which have identified him as a rising star, and satisfying the will of the people as the moderate Republican governor of a state with strong liberal leanings. To boot, the reasons for his national rise in prominence mainly involve issues unrelated to civil liberties.
No issue tells the story of Christie’s dueling political personas better than this week’s gambit on the freedom to marry. A vocal supporter of the LGBT community in principle (earning him a B- in our report card), he often comes out swinging in the defense of LGBT rights. However, his fear of making enemies seems to stop him just short of supporting marriage. This week, he suggested an alternative to a bill allowing marriage, which just passed the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee for a vote in the chamber: punting it to the voters themselves, letting Christie off the hook for either signing (and angering his party) or rejecting (and angering the majority of New Jerseyans) a bill giving gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry.
Individual freedoms should not rely on the majority’s approval of them, and, in a situation where he will have to alienate someone, he should make the decision that in his heart he knows is right: extending equal rights.
Christie wouldn’t get very far in the densest, most diverse state in the union if he governed from a place of prejudice. His cool head brought him national attention twice in the past few years, when he insisted on a return to common sense on anti-Muslim bigotry (giving him a B in religious freedom — his support for vouchers, which uses taxpayer dollars to fund private, religious and parochial schools, took him down a notch). First, in 2010, when plans to build an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero sparked outrage, Christie emphasized the key role American Muslims play in civic life. He urged reason again a year later, in August 2011, when he stamped out a witch hunt that rose up against his decision to appoint Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim, as a Superior Court judge. He blamed the irrational hatred of Muslims on “ignorance,” plainly and simply.
When misplaced, Christie’s strong opinions of those he disagrees with, backed by the authority of the chief executive, ran afoul of others’ First Amendment rights (he got an F in this category). He said he had “no problem” when New Jersey Transit fired employee Derek Fenton for political speech during his personal time. The courts, however, did have a problem, and the ACLU-NJ won Fenton’s job back. And in 2011, Christie said he understood Occupy Wall Street demonstrators would take their message to the streets, but he stood on the sidelines when the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs trampled on the rights of Occupy Trenton just blocks away from his office.
His actions on women’s health have been markedly deplorable, turning the lives of women into a political football (and earning him an F in this area as well). He cut all funding for women’s health care from the state budget, reducing basic access medical treatment for women and children in need, and he withdrew a pending application for federal family planning funding.
New Jersey is lucky to have a governor who genuinely speaks his mind, and occasionally one who chooses to break with his party in order to do the right thing. In this midterm evaluation, we ask him to commit to stepping in others’ shoes more often, appreciating the view from the perspective of the people his actions affect.
Most of all, we want to keep Christie on his toes. The whole state is watching. We’re ready to call him out when he acts inappropriately or abuses his authority.
We’re just as ready to pile on the praise when he does the right thing — especially in situations where the noble decision may not be the most popular one, especially when he has so many groups to please. We’ll give him cover, but only when he deserves it by standing up for everyone in his state, not just those who agree with him.
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Celebration and Struggle: Pregnant and Parenting Teens Honor Title IX Anniversary and Demand Equal Treatment
011 hours ago
“I’m proving everyone wrong by graduating this May, by going to college, by getting my degree AND taking care of my daughter.”
That’s what Brianna Miranda, an 18-year-old high school senior from Las Cruces, NM, stood up and said in the New Mexico State Capitol last Tuesday. Brianna, the mother of a two-year-old daughter, faces the same struggle thousands of other pregnant and parenting teens face in New Mexico: graduating from high school.
This week, the ACLU of New Mexico, Young Women United and the Southwest Women’s Law Center brought together Brianna and nearly 50 other young parents and parents-to-be from all over the state at the New Mexico State Capitol. There, they stood up to demand respect, recognition and elimination of educational barriers for pregnant and parenting teens.
40 years ago, Title IX was enacted to ensure that young women and girls would be given equal access to education. Pregnant and parenting teens, however, are a group who are often denied the benefits of Title IX. Only 38 percent of teen mothers nationwide who give birth under the age of 18 earn a high school diploma by age 22. In a state like New Mexico, which has the second highest teen birth rate in the nation, this leaves thousands of young mothers with higher rates of unemployment, lower earning potential and decreased access to health care every year.
But what’s preventing teen parents from graduating?
Pregnant and parenting teens face many barriers to completing their education, including lack of childcare, financial challenges, school attendance policies that penalize teens struggling to take care of their own and their children’s health, and inflexible academic policies that prohibit them from making up missed classwork.
Many schools simply do not take into account or ignore the unique needs of pregnant and parenting teens. In New Mexico, young parents and parents-to-be are demanding that their government give them the respect and support they need to earn their high school diploma while doing the challenging and important work of raising a child.
In conjunction with the rally, the ACLU of New Mexico introduced a memorial bill in the state legislature that would create a government task force to study the educational barriers pregnant and parenting teens face.
This bill fits into the ACLU of New Mexico’s wider campaign to ensure that pregnant and parenting teens are treated fairly in our schools. All Americans deserve a quality education, and we must ensure that we don’t shortchange young parents out of their futures.
Learn more about Title IX: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
Gov. Brewer and Her Wagging Finger: Your Best Captions
011 hours ago
That famous picture of President Barack Obama being welcomed “intensely” by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer earlier this week made big headlines. And we knew Colorlines.com’s clever readers would have some good caption suggestions.
About 35 of you sent in submissions and below are some of the highlights. Thanks for participating!
“That better be a birth certificate in your hand or I’m calling Sherriff Joe to arrest you for criminal trespass!”
“Petrificus Totalus!” (Spell in Harry Potter that renders a victim completely immobile)
“Put the finger down and step slowly away from the President. Keep your racist hands where I can see them.”
“Don’t be taking cues on how to interact with Black people from Gangsta rap…”
”now you lesson here Boy”…..
“Does this smell funny to you?”
Get Ready for Big Freedia To Shake the U.S. with New Orleans Bounce [Video]
012 hours ago
On Wednesday night Big Freedia brought bounce to national television with a performance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live late-night talk show. Freedia performed two recent songs, “Excuse” (above) and “Na Who Mad” (below). You can watch the full episode on JimmyKimmelLive.com.
At a performance in Los Angeles Thursday night, Big Freedia said her phone has not stopped ringing since her television debut.
And to read more about Freedia read the NY Times 2010 profile on her.
Let People Vote
012 hours ago
Voting. It’s the key to the most basic American value, the one that makes the others real: self-government. Democracy. It’s why we fought the Revolutionary War. It’s what has made America a glowing aspiration for people around the world. The right to vote is what makes a country a true democracy. Limit the right to only some of the people and you don’t really have self-government anymore.
But that is exactly what is happening across America today: states are making it harder and harder for people to vote, virtually guaranteeing that many people won’t really have the right at all.
States are passing laws on registering voters so technical and with such harsh penalties that people are afraid to help get new voters on the rolls. In Florida, the League of Women Voters was so intimidated, it stopped registering voters. Listen to what people who registered folks for years as volunteers have to say about the new law.
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Please note that by playing this clip You Tube and Google will place a long-term cookie on your computer. Please see You Tube’s privacy statement on their website and Google’s privacy statement on theirs to learn more. To view the ACLU’s privacy statement, click here.
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States are cutting back on early voting on weekends, which is so important for people with two jobs or kids. States are passing voter identification laws that sound like no big deal — everybody has a driver’s license, right — that turn out to that make it difficult or impossible to get an I.D. That means people who’ve had the right all their lives will lose it. And not just a few people — thousands and thousands and thousands.
Democracy was new when the United States was founded and it took us a long time to become a real democracy. It wasn’t until 1856 that all the states agreed that white men could vote even if they didn’t own property. It wasn’t all steady progress. We amended the Constitution to give African-Americans the right to vote in 1870, and then let some states take it away for nearly a century with poll taxes and literacy tests.
Slowly but surely though, we moved ever closer to real self-government.
1920: Women get the vote.
1924: Native Americans get the right to vote in federal elections.
1964: We amend the Constitution to outlaw poll taxes.
1965: Congress passes the Voting Rights Act, designed to get rid of all the devices that keep African-Americans from voting.
1990: The Americans with Disabilities Act says polling places should be accessible.
But now we’re reversing course. All these new schemes are justified in the name of preventing fraud. But vote fraud, it turns out, isn’t much of a problem in America these days. An abundance of “caution” may be OK in some circumstances. But it isn’t when the consequence is taking self-government away from thousands of Americans.
Every single person who loses the right to vote takes us one more step away from being the kind of nation we’ve spent 200 years making ourselves into: a nation of free people who rule themselves. We can’t let that happen. We’ve got to get back on track, to expand the right to vote by making it easy and accessible, so that we truly become a complete democracy. We need to Let People Vote.
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Joe Biden Mocks Indian Accents During Outsourcing Speech
013 hours ago
During a speech in New Hampshire on Thursday, vice president Joe Biden slipped into an “Indian” accent when talking about “hundreds of thousands” of call center jobs going overseas.
At the 00:11 second mark you see Biden catch himself and stop the accent.
The New York Times ‘India Ink’ blog provides a bit more context:
The accent was so badly done that some commentators immediately speculated that it was supposed to be Russian – but still it brought to mind Mr. Biden’s 2006 Indian-American gaffe,
when he was caught on microphone saying: “In Delaware, the largest
growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot
go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian
accent. I’m not joking.”
Biden is no stranger to sticking his foot in his mouth. In 2007, an LA Times columnist said Biden had “uncontrollable verbosity” and called him a gaffe machine.
Utah Republican AG Derides ‘Help’ From Nativist Organization
013 hours ago
by Mark Potok
in Nativist Extremist
It’s long been something of a mystery how conservative Republicans can expect to keep winning elections when so many of them spend their time dissing Latinos, a critical and rapidly growing portion of the electorate. Indeed, many Latino rights organizations argue persuasively that it was Latino voters who took Barack Obama over the top in [...]