Massachusetts legislature advances key electronic privacy proposal

Private contractors on trial: Abu Ghraib torture and Nisour Square massacre victims still seeking justice

Black ASU professor bodyslammed by campus police

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Supreme Court ruling on cell phone warrant may have implications for Stingray spying

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What you need to know about this week’s big civil liberties items

Regional SWAT squad claims it is a private organization, not subject to public records law

Worcester sheriff brings iris scanning program to public school, hundreds of kids line up

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Police in Massachusetts are luring children to get them to hand over their biometric information in exchange for...I'm not sure what. Officials imply that putting children's biometric identifiers in the "missing persons" database is a good thing to do. For the life of me I really cannot figure out why.

Redacted kill memo reveals shocking abuse of power, raises more questions

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Yesterday the Department of Justice released a redacted version of the legal memo authorizing the extrajudicial killing of US citizen Anwar al Awlaki.

The House thinks you have a right to privacy in your email. Now tell the Senate to follow suit.

The House of Representatives did something representative of their constituents' interest! In forwarding a bipartisan amendment to the military budget, the House voted overwhelmingly to bring the security state's surveillance programs more in line with the Fourth Amendment.

I like Andrew Rosenthal's take on the amendment, published at the New York Times:

Literally riding dirty might keep you out of a license plate tracking database

An Oakland Police Department internal training guide informs us that license plate readers don't always work. If your license plate is "extremely dirty", the machines might not catch it. Interesting!

h/t @cfarivar