What do you get when you add up the following? Lack of racial diversity among police intelligence employees. Failure to train police intelligence employees on federal and state law. Ignorance of Black cultural iconography. Fear of (Black) dissent. Inadequate oversight at police...
In his first public comments on the US drone campaign in Pakistan, President Obama described it as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American...
Far-right extremists (FRE) killed 245 people in the United States between the years 1990 and 2014, while ideological extremists affiliated with al-Qaida or associated movements (AQAM) killed 62 people in the country during the same time period. The figures, which exclude both...
The New York Times has filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security over access to department assessments of DHS-funded “fusion centers” written between 2009 and 2014. The centers—created by DHS after 9/11 in an attempt to facilitate information sharing about terrorism...
As the battle over digital security heats up, with the FBI and law enforcement on one side and security experts and even intelligence officials on the other, it’s more important than ever to shine a light on the government’s efforts to defeat...
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he has special access to classified information about United States intelligence operations. As I’ve written about before, Senator Wyden has repeatedly used that special access to warn the American people about gaps between...
The ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Justice, seeking information about the department’s efforts to compel technology companies to provide access to encrypted messages. The request was filed on April 5, 2016, the very same...
Yesterday, April 5, ACLU of Massachusetts legal director Matthew Segal argued an important mandatory minimums case, Commonwealth v. Laltaprasad, before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The case will decide whether state judges have flexibility to issue less than mandatory minimum sentences when appropriate. In order...
On Tuesday, April 5, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) hears oral argument in Commonwealth v. Laltaprasad, a case that will determine whether or not state judges have the power to use common sense discretion in drug sentencing, as both the plain...
People concerned about digital security can rest easy now that the FBI has backed away from its public fight with Apple over iPhone encryption, right? Not so fast. As many of us have said from the beginning, this case was not about...