Category Archives: Constitution

05.26.13
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ACLU: Following Texas’s Lead on Location Tracking; Texas to Warrants To Track Cell Phones

Yesterday, the Texas House of Representatives passed the first bill in the nation that would require law enforcement to obtain a probable cause warrant before tracking individuals’ location by collecting their cell phone location data. As Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director for the ACLU of Texas put it, “By approving this amendment, our legislators would take a significant step to preserve the Fourth Amendment rights of Texas citizens, protecting them from potential unreasonable searches and seizures that could take place entirely outside judicial review.” They would also set a precedent that the rest of the country should be quick to follow.

We’ve been talking about location tracking for a long time now, because where you go says a lot about who you are—are you going to gay bars, a mosque, a fundamentalist church, a gun store, an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, a political protest, etc.? In August 2011, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones, and in April 2012, an additional affiliate filed 27 requests. What we learned is alarming: the laws and policies guiding cell phone location tracking across the country are in a state of chaos, with agencies in different towns following different rules — or in some cases, having no rules at all.

We believe that law enforcement agents should be obtaining location information in investigations only with safeguards—the probable cause standard and review by a judge—to ensure that while legitimate investigations can proceed, innocent Americans will be protected from unjustified invasions of their privacy. We’ve known that this standard is workable, because law enforcement agencies in every region of the country—from Denver, Colo. to Hawaii County to Wichita, Kan. to Lexington, Ky.—already obtain a probable cause warrant to track location and still do effective law enforcement. And, in the Jones Supreme Court case, a majority of the justices (in two concurrences) recognized that long term monitoring of an individual’s travels, no matter what technology is used, impinges on that individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Nonetheless, Texas could soon be the first state to actually legislate on this issue.

It’s been a long slog to get to this point. Despite having over 100 co-sponsors in Texas’s 150-member House, the original cell phone location tracking bill, HB 1608, was not brought up for a vote before Texas’ deadline for moving legislation through its first chamber. But, not to be deterred, the amazing bill sponsors, Rep. Hughes and Sen. Hinojosa, the ACLU of Texas, and the rock star Texas Electronic Privacy Coalition got the legislation added as a House amendment to a Senate bill, SB 1052, that requires a warrant for access to electronic communications content. (Congress, are you taking notes? Texas is about to show you how to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the outdated federal law that governs access to communications content and is, as of yet, silent on location tracking.) The Texas bill still has to go back to the Senate to approve the House amendments before making it to the governor’s desk.

If you’re from Texas, you can help your state make history by reaching out to your senator and ask him/her to support the House amendments to SB 1052. (You can find your senator’s contact info here.)

If you’re not in Texas, you can ask Congress to update ECPA, and if you happen to be from Maine, your legislature is poised to vote on this issue also, so please tell them to follow the Texas’ House’s lead and pass warrant protections for location tracking.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/following-texass-lead-location-tracking

05.25.13
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Reason.com: ACLU Calls Bullshit on Obama’s Drone ‘Due Process’ Promises

As Ed Krayewski noted yesterday, not everybody was impressed by President Obama’s national security speech, in which he vowed to make himself be extra specially careful when raining death from the sky on suspected terrorists (and collaterally damaged civilians), including American citizens, with drones. Sen. Rand Paul may have been the pithiest, when he remarked, “I still have concerns over whether flash cards and PowerPoint presentations represent due process.” At greater length, the American Civil Liberties Union also expresses some doubts that “Presidential Policy Guidance,” whatever in hell that is, is the same as due process.

Says, in part, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU:

To the extent the speech signals an end to signature strikes, recognizes the need for congressional oversight, and restricts the use of drones to threats against the American people, the developments on targeted killings are promising. Yet the president still claims broad authority to carry out targeted killings far from any battlefield, and there is still insufficient transparency. We continue to disagree fundamentally with the idea that due process requirements can be satisfied without any form of judicial oversight by regular federal courts.

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Click below to read the full article.

http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/24/aclu-calls-bullshit-on-obamas-drone-spee

05.24.13
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CNN: Obama: U.S. will keep deploying drones — when they are only option

Watch this video

Drone strikes are a necessary evil, but one that must be used with more temperance as the United States’ security situation evolves, President Barack Obama said Thursday.

America prefers to capture, interrogate and prosecute terrorists, but there are times when this isn’t possible, Obama said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. Terrorists intentionally hide in hard-to-reach locales and putting boots on the ground is often out of the question, he said.

Thus, when the United States is faced with a threat from terrorists in a country where the government has only tenuous or no influence, drones strikes are the only option — and they’re legal because America “is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and their associated forces,” Obama said.

He added, however, “To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance. For the same progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power — or risk abusing it.”

Increased oversight is important, but not easy, Obama said. While he has considered a special court or independent oversight board, those options are problematic, so he plans to talk with Congress to determine how best to handle the deployment of drones, he said.

 The nation’s image was a theme throughout the speech, as Obama emphasized some actions in recent years — drone strikes and Guantanamo Bay key among them — risk creating more threats. The nature of threats against the United States have changed since he took office — they’ve become more localized — and so, too, must efforts to combat them, he said.

“From our use of drones to the detention of terror suspects, the decisions that we are making now will define the type of nation and world that we leave to our children,” he said.

Today, al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan worry more about protecting their own skin than attacking America, he said, but the threat is more diffuse, extending into places such as Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and North Africa. And al Qaeda’s ideology helped fuel attacks like the ones at the Boston Marathon and U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

Obama said the use of lethal force extends to U.S. citizens as well.

On Wednesday, his administration disclosed for the first time that four Americans had been killed in counterterrorist drone strikes overseas, including one person who was targeted by the United States.

“When a U.S. citizen goes abroad to wage war against America — and is actively plotting to kill U.S. citizens; and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot — his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team,” Obama said.

To stop terrorists from gaining a foothold, drones will be deployed, Obama said, but only when there is an imminent threat; no hope of capturing the targeted terrorist; “near certainty” that civilians won’t be harmed; and “there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat.” Never will a strike be punitive, he said.

Those who die as collateral damage “will haunt us for as long as we live,” the president said, but he emphasized that the targeted individuals aim to exact indiscriminate violence, “and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes.”

It’s not always feasible to send in Special Forces, as in the Osama bin Laden raid, to stamp out terrorism, and even if it were, the introduction of troops could mean more deaths on both sides, Obama said.

“The result would be more U.S. deaths, more Blackhawks down, more confrontations with local populations and an inevitable mission creep in support of such raids that could easily escalate into new wars,” he said.

The American public is split on where and how drones should be used, according to a March poll by Gallup.

Although 65% of respondents said drones should be used against suspected terrorists abroad, only 41% said drones should be used against American citizens who are suspected terrorists in foreign countries.

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What do you think?  Should American Citizens be targeted and killed on American or Foreign soil without due process of law?  Click below for the full article.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/23/politics/obama-terror-speech/index.html?hpt=po_c1

05.20.13
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The Washington Post: Senate panel approves immigration changes requiring fingerprint system at 30 U.S. airports

Every immigrant leaving the United States through one of the 30 biggest airports would have to be fingerprinted by federal authorities under an immigration reform measure that won early committee approval in the Senate on Monday.

The plan approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee is a concession to Republicans and some Democrats who support establishing a nationwide biometric tracking system at all U.S. air, sea and land ports of entry, a key recommendation made by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to track potential terrorists entering or leaving the country.

The committee rejected a similar GOP proposal last week that would have forced the Department of Homeland Security to establish a biometric immigration tracking system at every U.S. air, sea and land port of entry. The committee’s Democrats and the four members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” who wrote the immigration bill and sit on the panel said such a plan would be too expensive.

But bipartisan negotiators sought a compromise after Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — a key GOP member of the “Gang of Eight” — said he supports the concept of a nationwide biometric system and would fight for the proposal once the immigration bill reaches the full Senate.

Under the new agreement sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), DHS would need to establish a fingerprint tracking system at the nation’s 10 largest international airports within two years of the bill’s approval. The program would expand to the next 20 largest international airports within six years.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-panel-approves-immigration-changes-requiring-fingerprint-system-at-30-us-airports/2013/05/20/2ac2299e-c169-11e2-bfdb-3886a561c1ff_story.html

05.20.13
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Reason.com: Justin Amash, Jared Polis Introduce Bill Requiring a Court Order for Telephone Records

While the White House very lamely attempted to do damage control on the Department of Justice’s grotesque Associated Press surveillance dragnet by unconvincingly re-animating a push for a federal shield law exempting the professional press from most non-national-security-related federal fishing expeditions, some actual civil libertarians in Washington have introduced a bill that would increase protections for all Americans against unchecked federal snooping.

Via InstaPundit, here’s your press release:

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), joined by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), today introduced legislation to prevent federal agencies from seizing Americans’ telephone records without a court order.

H.R. 2014, the Telephone Records Protection Act, requires court approval when the government demands telephone records from service providers. Current law allows the government to subpoena such records unilaterally, without any judicial review. The Department of Justice likely used its administrative subpoena authority to seize the Associated Press’s telephone records in its recent investigation of a CIA leak.

“The Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records—likely without the sign-off of a single judge—raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns. Regardless of whether DOJ violates the legitimate privacy expectations of reporters or ordinary Americans, we deserve to know that the federal government can’t seize our records without judicial review,” said Amash.

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The Liberty Report Take: It is refreshing these days to find elected officials committed to upholding the constitution, civil liberties, and actually RESTRAINING the power of the government.

05.19.13
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The Washington Times: AP CEO calls Justice Department’s records seizure unconstitutional

The president and chief executive  officer of The Associated Press on Sunday  called the government’s secret  seizure of two months of reporters’ phone  records “unconstitutional”  and said the news cooperative had not ruled out  legal action against the  Justice  Department.

Gary Pruitt, in his first television   interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone   records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a  chilling  effect on journalism. Mr. Pruitt said the  seizure has made sources  less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the  long term, could  limit Americans’ information from all news outlets.

Mr. Pruitt told CBS‘ “Face the  Nation” that the government has no business monitoring the AP’s  newsgathering activities.

“And  if they restrict that apparatus … the people of the United States  will  only know what the government wants them to know, and that’s not  what the  framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the  First Amendment,” he said.

In a separate interview with the AP, Mr.  Pruitt said the news cooperative had not decided  its next move but had  not ruled out legal action against the government.

“It’s too early  to know if we’ll take legal action, but I can tell you we  are positively  displeased and we do feel that our constitutional rights have  been  violated,” he said.

“They’ve been secretive; they’ve been  overbroad and abusive — so much so  that taken together, they are  unconstitutional because they violate our First  Amendment rights,” he  added.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch  McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the government needs to stop leaks by  whatever means necessary.

“This  is an investigation that needs to happen because national security   leaks, of course, can get our agents overseas killed,” he said.

Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and a  member of the Judiciary Committee,  said the  government should focus on those who leak sensitive national security   matters and not on journalists who report on them. Mr.  Cornyn  said his committee should hold hearings on how the Justice  Department  obtained phone records from AP reporters and editors.

“What  confuses me is the focus on the press, who have a constitutional right  here, and we depend on the press to get to the bottom of so many issues  that  we, as individuals, cannot,” Mr. Cornyn  said.

Mr. Cornyn said the  Justice  Department’s actions were part of a pattern for President Obama’s  administration to quiet its critics.

“It’s a culture of cover-ups and intimidation that is giving the administration  so much trouble,” Mr. Cornyn said.

He  also renewed his call for Attorney General Eric  H. Holder Jr. to resign,  citing the contempt citation the House  of Representatives voted against  him last year for refusing to turn over  documents in a failed government  gun-smuggling sting.

White House senior adviser Dan  Pfeiffer said  the president “has complete faith in Attorney General Holder.” He also  insisted the White  House was not involved in the decision to seek AP  phone records.

“A cardinal rule is we don’t get involved in independent investigations — and  this is one of those,” Mr. Pfeiffer  said.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/19/ap-ceo-calls-justice-departments-records-seizure-u/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

 

05.16.13
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The Daily Beast: Is Obama Worse For Press Freedom Than Nixon?

Is Obama Worse Than Nixon?

President Barack H. Obama’s outrageous seizure of the Associated Press’s phone records, allegedly to discover sources of leaks, should surprise no one. Obama has relentlessly pursued leakers ever since he became president. He is fast becoming the worst national security press president ever, and it may not get any better.

It is believed that Obama’s Justice Department sought AP’s records to find the source of a leak that informed an AP story about a failed terrorist attack. What makes this action particularly egregious is that Justice didn’t tell AP what it was doing until two months after it obtained the records. This not only violates Justice Department guidelines for subpoenas of this sort, but also common sense, decency, and the First Amendment.

 

Under the guidelines, subpoenas concerning the press cannot be issued without the express approval of the Attorney General. Further, before a subpoena is issued, the government is honor bound to negotiate with the party to which it is directed.

 

While Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. may have approved the subpoena, he apparently never told AP about it. In the meantime, the Justice Department for two months has had all the details of AP’s newsgathering. AP could bring a lawsuit to declare its First Amendment rights have been violated and seek a return of its records. Gary Pruitt, President of AP, has already made a demand for them.

 

While this legal action by AP is possible, the government has picked the one federal jurisdiction most favorable to it for obtaining the source of leaks, namely, the federal court in the District of Columbia. Its subpoenas were directed to telephone companies located in D.C.

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The Liberty Report Take:  While Neocons, GOP Establishment, and general Conservative folks would all probably say Obama is the worst President not just for Freedom but overall, he probably has a ways to go before reaching the level of his predecessor W. or Richard Nixon.  After all, Nixon was the man who enhanced a Big Brother Government, got us off the gold standard, and started the unconstitutional war on drugs.

Click below for the full article.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/14/is-obama-worse-for-press-freedom-than-nixon.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29