Rachel Myers, ACLU
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Homepage: http://www.aclu.org/blog
Posts by Rachel Myers, ACLU
ACLU Video: "No Fly With Me"
originally posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
July 8, 2010 - 11:41 am
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
Ayman Latif is a disabled U.S. Marine veteran living in Egypt with his wife and two young children. Adama Bah is a 22-year-old caregiver living in New York with asylum status that protects her from the persecution she would face if she returned to h…
"No Fly" With Me
originally posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
July 1, 2010 - 1:38 pm
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
Ayman Latif is a U.S. citizen and disabled Marine veteran living in Egypt with no way to travel to the United States, where he was born and raised, to introduce his new baby daughter to the rest of his family who still reside in the states. He also …
Defendants 2 through 2,000
originally posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
June 8, 2010 - 8:10 am
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
Update! The judge in two movie industry lawsuits against BitTorrent users has ordered the plaintiffs to explain why they lumped thousands of users into only two lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the District of Columbia issued ord…
Megalawsuit Against BitTorrent Users Threatens Due Process
June 3, 2010 - 1:56 pm
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
Time Warner Cable recently asked a federal court to quash subpoenas it received seeking the identities of thousands of its customers. The subpoenas came as part of several lawsuits filed by members of the movie industry who allege the individuals downloaded certain movies using BitTorrent.
The lawsuits were all filed by the Washington, D.C., law firm "U.S. Copyright Group" (USCG). Six virtually identical lawsuits have been filed already in D.C. implicating thousands of individuals, and numerous subpoenas have been issued to Internet service providers (ISPs) seeking the names and addresses of users who allegedly downloaded certain movies. Several ISPs have complied, but Time Warner Cable moved to quash the three subpoenas it received.
In friend-of-the-court briefs we filed last night along with the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen in support of Time Warner, we argue that the lawsuits improperly join thousands of unrelated defendants into a single action and were filed in a jurisdiction where few, if any, of the defendants reside (in fact, it seems none of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits live in D.C. either).
We also argue that members of the movie industry cannot just demand information about anonymous individuals without showing sufficient reason to believe the individuals did anything wrong, and without giving them a chance to defend themselves.
Just as in the music industry lawsuits of several years ago, these movie industry lawsuits cut corners and undermine due process by lumping many users into one lawsuit.
As ACLU attorney Aden Fine said in a press release today:
Members of the movie industry have the right to challenge alleged copyright infringement, but they must do so in a way that upholds the law and individuals’ due process rights. Lumping thousands of unconnected individuals into a few cases in a court far from where they live, without providing them adequate notice and a real opportunity to challenge the subpoenas, is not that way.
Omar Khadr Is Not a Military Commissions Guinea Pig
May 24, 2010 - 1:18 pm
Posted in Close Gitmo, Omar Khadr | No comments
The New York Times ran an excellent editorial today underscoring the injustice of prosecuting alleged former child soldier Omar Khadr in the first military commissions trial since the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2009.
Despite improvements included in the 2009 MCA, the Guantánamo military commissions remain incapable of delivering outcomes we can trust and should be shut down altogether. It does nothing to help their image that the administration plans to test them out on a detainee who was taken into custody when he was only 15, held in clear violation of international standards on the treatment of children in custody, and subjected to sleep deprivation, threats of rape and other abuse. As the Times put it:
If the Obama administration wants to demonstrate that it is practical and just to try some terrorism suspects in military tribunals instead of federal courts, it is off to a very poor start.
ACLU Human Rights Researcher Jennifer Turner was at Guantánamo to observe the most recent proceedings in the Khadr trials. You can read her excellent commentary here.
The Times editorial also mentions the banning of four reporters from covering future military commissions proceedings for reporting the name of an interrogator who testified at Khadr’s pretrial hearings, even though his name was already available to the public. Banning the reporters for reporting information that has been public for years is not only absurd, but also raises more concern about the transparency and illegitimacy of the military commissions. We agree with the Times that the administration should restore the reporters’ credentials, and earlier this month joined Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the National Institute for Military Justice on a letter to DoD calling for just that.
ACLU Scholarship Winner Takes On Texas Textbook Takeover
April 23, 2010 - 8:00 am
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
Yesterday, we posted about the Texas Textbook Takeover and what you can do to stop it. We hope you’ll join us in taking action, and we wanted to tell you about a former ACLU scholarship winner who’s also getting involved!
Matthew LaClair has been standing up for religious freedom since high school, when he fought back against the promotion of creationism and other religious beliefs in the classroom and helped form the Student Education Assembly on Religious Freedom. This Sunday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. EDT on WBAI 99.5FM, Matthew will host a lively discussion with Dr. Don McLeroy, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, who is leading the board’s movement to rewrite history. Tune in here, or if you miss the show, here.
Matthew is no stranger to textbook controversy. In 2008, while a high school student in Kearny, New Jersey, he challenged misleading information contained in his textbook on U.S. government and enlisted the Center for Inquiry to issue a report on the book’s contents. As a result, some of the inaccuracies were corrected in the next edition of the book. Matthew wrote about his experience and why he decided to stand up for his rights here.
Matthew is currently the president of the Center for Inquiry’s student program and a board member of the Secular Student Alliance, where he is dedicated to protecting religious freedom, the rights of theists and nontheists alike and freedom of speech. He also helps host a radio show called Equal Time for Freethought, where he engages individuals in rigorous conversation about important issues of the day. Regarding his upcoming discussion with Dr. McLeroy, Matthew says:
I am sure that we will disagree on most points. But I truly believe that there is a possibility for some agreement and common ground, which I hope will convince him and other board members in Texas to change their minds regarding some of the amendments they are expected to pass.
Given Matthew’s advocacy and first hand experience, Sunday’s show should be well worth the listen. Don’t forget to tune in here.
Let the Sunshine In
originally posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
March 17, 2010 - 10:54 am
Posted in Uncategorized | No comments
The last signs of Snowpocalypse have long since disappeared, and the cherry blossoms are starting to peek through. Spring is making its triumphant return. But even though we’ve got an extra hour of daylight to look forward to, some folks in our nation’s capital seem determined to stay out of the sun.
Which is too bad — it is Sunshine Week, after all.
At best, you could say that President Obama’s promise of increased government transparency has had mixed results. On the one hand, the president took steps in the right direction when he issued a new government directive and an executive order to reduce secrecy. On the other hand, the government continues to withhold key information about everything from the prisoners at Bagram, to the use of predator drones to target and kill people, to deaths in immigration detention. And according to an Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reports filed by 17 government agencies, use of almost all of the FOIA’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public actually rose in fiscal year 2009.
And it just keeps coming. Just this week — Sunshine Week! — in response to a long-standing ACLU FOIA lawsuit for information related to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas, the CIA actually blacked out a letter that was already public. Michael Isikoff has images and commentary over at Newsweek.
The American people need to know the extent of abuses that have taken place in their name. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: we can’t sweep the abuses of the past under a rug. It’s time to do some spring cleaning, and bring the facts into the light.