ACLU: If Americans Want Privacy & Net Neutrality, They Should Build Their Own Broadband Networks

from the breaking-the-logjam dept

More than 750 towns and cities across the United States have been forced to build their own networks if they want anything close to next-generation broadband. These towns and cities aren't doing this because it's fun, they're doing it as an organic response to market failure, and the growing cable monopoly that fuels high prices, poor coverage, and abysmal customer service. By and large the incumbent response to this shift hasn't been to offer better, cheaper service, but to literally write and buy protectionist laws in more than 21 states prohibiting locals from making their own decisions.

ISPs also like to demonize these efforts as automatic taxpayer boondoggles, which not only isn't true (municipal broadband, like any other business plan, can be well or poorly designed), but ignores the fact that these towns and cities wouldn't be getting into the broadband business if existing service wasn't so expensive and shitty across wide swaths of America.

Not too surprisingly, the Trump administration's decision to protect these disliked monopolies by killing net neutrality and broadband privacy protections is only driving more interest in such alternative solutions. For example, the ACLU has issued a new report stating that if cities want privacy and a neutral internet, they should join the trend of building their own networks:

"The internet has become a crucial utility, yet unlike water and electricity, quality broadband service in the U.S. is far from universal. Twenty-four million Americans don’t have access to high-speed internet at home, either because it’s not available or too expensive. Lack of access to decent broadband is especially bad in low-income or rural areas and communities of color. In general, there’s very little competition in this market, with most people having only one or two choices of an internet service provider. As a result, internet service in the United States is slow compared to many other countries.

Hundreds of cities, towns, and counties around the country have already turned to community broadband, often providing faster and cheaper service than for-profit telecoms. And, municipally-owned broadband providers can honor net neutrality and privacy values, regardless of what the FCC does or doesn’t do. With these public systems, communities can ensure that internet service is provided in an equitable way.

Except thanks to Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Charter and CenturyLink's lobbying stranglehold over our leaders, terrible state laws prohibit many locals from being able to even consider the option. This protectionism has been such a problem, companies like AT&T have even tried to sneak anti-community broadband language into unrelated traffic bills when nobody was looking. In some cases, these laws go so far as to ban towns and cities from even striking public/private partnerships with the likes of Google Fiber or Tucows' Ting.

The ACLU advises residents of states that have such restrictions (you can find a complete map here) should, first and foremost, fight to reverse such protectionist measures:

"Unfortunately, telecom lobbyists have convinced at least 21 state legislatures to enact restrictions or outright bans on the ability of municipalities in those states to create their own broadband service — thereby leaving people no choice but to utilize the commercial services that are often slow, unjustifiably expensive, and now poisoned by their lack of protections for privacy and network neutrality...Residents of those states should start by demanding that their state legislators reverse those laws.

Like net neutrality, ISP lobbyists have had great success framing municipal broadband as a "partisan" fight in order to sow dissent and prevent anybody from disrupting their cozy status quo. But wanting better broadband (or wanting a say over tax spending and infrastructure) isn't a partisan concept, and by and large municipal broadband networks are most commonly built in conservative areas. Our collective disdain of Comcast appears to be one of just a few things that easily bridges our deep partisan divides.

Still, after decades of disinformation on this front, ISPs have been very effective in getting people to believe that building your own broadband networks is a vile socialist cabal that always ends in wasted taxpayer money and tears. But again, these towns and cities wouldn't even be considering this if they were happy with incumbent broadband options. These attempts to demonize local broadband networks successfully obfuscate the fact that incumbent ISPs like Comcast are dictating both state and federal policies that are only making our broadband connectivity and competition problems worse.

With ISP lobbyists only making already frustrated towns and cities angrier with the net neutrality repeal and attack on consumer privacy laws, they've only guaranteed that more towns and cities than ever before will be pursuing the roll-your-own option when it comes to broadband. And it's only a matter of time before people catch on and these state-level bans start to be dismantled. If ISPs like Comcast and AT&T don't like it, they have an obvious solution: actually start competing and provide better, faster, cheaper service.

Filed Under: aclu, broadband, isp

More Drug Lab Misconduct Results In Massachusetts Court Tossing Nearly 12,000 Convictions

from the one-drug-habit;-exponential-damage dept

If everything keeps falling apart in Massachusetts, there won't be a drug conviction left in the state. The eventual fallout from the 2012 conviction of drug lab technician Annie Dookhan was the reversal of nearly 21,000 drug convictions. Dookhan was an efficient drug lab worker -- so efficient she often never performed the tests she was required to. The state moved much slower, dragging its feet notifying those possibly affected by Dookhan's lab misconduct until a judge told it to stop screwing around. There still could be more reversed convictions on the way as the state continues to make its way through a 40,000-case backlog.

Those numbers alone are breathtaking. But there are even more conviction dismissals on the way. Another drug lab technician convicted for stealing samples to feed her own drug habit has tainted thousands of additional drug prosecutions. A judicial order related to her questionable drug tests is erasing a whole bunch of prosecutorial wins.

The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) of Massachusetts said Thursday an estimated 11,162 convictions in 7,690 cases tainted by former state drug lab chemist Sonja Farak were ordered for dismissal by Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Frank Gaziano.

Farak apparently used whatever drugs she came across during her decade-plus with the Amherst, MA drug lab. This lab was inspected in 2012 by state police, shortly after the Boston lab was shut down following the discovery of Annie Dookhan's misconduct. This apparently cursory inspection turned up nothing, and the police who can smell drugs the moment they pull over a car apparently couldn't tell Farak had smoked crack just prior to her interview with state police inspectors. Her misconduct wasn't discovered until 2013 -- nearly eight years after Farak began using drug lab drugs regularly.

By 2010, Farak was snorting, smoking and swallowing not only the lab “standards” but also the police-submitted evidence, frequently siphoning from the powder cocaine. In one case in 2012, where police in Chicopee, Mass., had seized a kilo of cocaine, Farak “took approximately 100 grams from the same and used it to manufacture base cocaine” — crack — “at the Amherst Lab.” She also began seeking treatment for her addictions, the report states, creating another source of records about her drug use. Soon she began stealing from her co-workers’ samples as well, and manipulating the computer databases so that wasn’t noticed. Finally, a colleague looking for some of Farak’s lab samples found they had been tampered with, and she happened to get caught in January 2013.

Once this was uncovered, the state attorney general's office released a regrettable statement claiming Farak's eight years of drug use wouldn't "undermine any cases. Three years later, a full report showed Farak's abuse of her position affected nearly 8,000 cases. It also uncovered a complete lack of standards in the Amherst lab. According to the AG report [PDF], lab security was almost nonexistent. The running of "blanks" through testing equipment (to clear residue from previous drug tests) was supposed to happen after every test to avoid tainting new tests with previously-tested substances. In reality, this only happened "every 5 to 10" tests and was wholly at the tester's discretion.

The exposure of additional drug lab misconduct is more than concerning. It's terrifying. Based on results from labs subject to minimal standards, security precautions, and state oversight, people were being incarcerated. Drug sentences are notoriously harsh. Stealing from people is treated as a less severe violation than selling someone drugs they want to purchase. So is rape, assault, and a number of other crimes where no consensual transaction takes place. And yet, the evidence in these cases -- the ones capable of delivering 25-year-minimums and life sentence-equivalents -- is treated carelessly by the labs testing substances and the government overseeing them.

Filed Under: aclu, drug lab, massachusetts

The Body-Worn Camera As State's Witness: How Cops Control Recordings

from the the-unseeing-eye dept

"But for video," as they say. (Well, mainly Scott Greenfield…)

Abusive conduct by police officers -- up to and including killing someone for, say, holding a plastic bucket -- has always flown under the "your word against ours" radar. But now everyone has a camera, even the cops.

The push for body-worn cameras is still a good idea, but it has many, many flaws. It won't save the nation from police misconduct but it will put a dent in it. Back when the NYPD was ordered to begin a body camera pilot program, then-Mayor Bloomberg said the devices would become nothing more than another way to play "gotcha" with good cops.

A camera on the lapel or hat of a police officer... He didn't turn the right way. My god, he DELIBERATELY did it. It's a solution that's not a solution…

Bloomberg was prescient, but not in the way he imagined it. He felt cops would be accused of covering something up by failing to get the best angle when recording an arrest. But it looks like the limitations of the cameras themselves are capable of covering up bad behavior even without the active involvement of the officers wearing them.

The ACLU's Jay Stanley pointed this out last year in a post that echoes Bloomberg's complaint, but with the view that cops could use cameras to defeat transparency, rather than participate in it. We already know cameras operated by police officers seem to develop technical issues during controversial interactions. Some are switched off. Some produce video but no audio. Some develop intermittent problems that can't be replicated by tech support, but always seem to have captured everything but potentially damning footage.

Even when they're left on, they can still be used to control the narrative, as Stanley points out.

A stellar example of what I’m talking about can be found in the case of a man named Marcus Jeter, who was pulled over, beaten, and arrested by a Bloomfield, New Jersey officer in 2012. The officer who is beating Jeter can be heard on video yelling, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting! Why are you trying to take my fucking gun! Get off my gun!” In the officer’s dashcam video, it is unclear whether Jeter was, in fact, resisting and/or trying to take the officer’s gun, and Jeter was charged with a number of criminal counts including assault. Internal affairs cleared the involved officers of any wrongdoing and prosecutors offered Jeter a plea deal of 5 years in prison.

Fortunately for Jeter, a second video surfaced showing the incident from another angle. The video was from the dashcam on another patrol car that arrived at the scene as backup, and which prosecutors said was not initially provided to them by police. In the second video, it is clear that Jeter had his hands in the air from the beginning before being attacked by the officer. (The police officer was charged with aggravated assault, and he and another officer also faced charges including conspiracy and falsifying reports. A third officer pleaded guilty to tampering and retired. All charges against Jeter were dropped.)

By falsely shouting that Jeter was resisting and trying to take his gun, even as he beat the motorist, the officer was clearly acting for the cameras, aware that he was playing a role in a public drama where later interpretations of what took place would be contested. And his aggressive physical behavior was matched by an equally aggressive attempt to define how his own actions would be interpreted. He almost succeeded.

Officers are actors and directors in their own scenes. Even when performances are captured by bystanders and their cell phones, there's still plenty of "drama." Multiple cops swarm the same suspect, blocking the body from view. Officers shout "Stop resisting!" even when subjects are prone with hands behind their back and under the weight of four or five cops. This allows officers to deliver extra amounts of force, instantly justified by the repeated shouts about resistance.

This scenario has played out again. Footage captured by police body cameras appears to show a tough, physical struggle to subdue a suspect. Shouts of "stop resisting" continue throughout the recording. The up-close-and-personal body cam footage gives every appearance that officers are wrestling with a highly-combative suspect. But footage captured by another camera shows an entirely different scenario.


Here's Stanley's description of what actually happened, as captured by a security camera:

It’s hard to imagine what more a suspect could do to avoid being beaten by the police. Derrick Price not only puts his hands high in the air, he then proceeds to lie spread-eagle on the pavement before any of the Marion County sheriff’s deputies reach him. And yet the deputies beat him. What appears to be taking place in this video (as in many others, including the granddaddy of them all, the Rodney King video) is that police officers, angry at a suspect for fleeing (and perhaps disobeying previous orders to stop), have taken it upon themselves to punish the suspect for that disobedience.

Compare that to the "official" footage (which starts at 1:42 in the video above) captured by the officer's body camera. (There's a side-by-side comparison of the footage available here.)

[T]he difference between the two videos is… a result of intentional manipulation by the officers beating Price, who repeatedly yell “stop resisting!” as they kick and punch his unmoving body. And the body camera never properly captures the beating of Price, actually facing fully away from the action at some points. It is hard to tell how intentional this was on the part of the officer wearing the camera, but it’s easy to imagine that the officer knew that what his colleagues were doing was not acceptable, and intentionally sought to avoid videotaping them.

The devices that were supposed to result in better policing are becoming complicit in their abusive behavior. Stanley notes the camera was turned on far too late (after the officers had already swarmed the suspect) and turned off far too early (before the suspect was actually in custody). If this had been the only recording available, "our word against yours" would have been completely unassailable. After all, the police department had footage of a highly-physical struggle with a combative suspect. Without the footage captured by an impartial surveillance cam, everything about the arrest would have appeared justified.

Filed Under: aclu, law enforcement, nypd

Border Patrol Given New Deadly Force Guidelines After Report Shows Officers Created Dangerous Situations To Justify Opening Fire

from the bringing-a-gun-to-a-rock-fight dept

The US Border Patrol has handed down new guidelines for use of deadly force after its agents killed 19 people in 67 shooting incidents between 2010-2012.

The U.S. Border Patrol has restricted border agents' authority to shoot at moving vehicles or at people throwing rocks, changing a controversial policy that has contributed to at least 19 deaths since 2010…

The new rules would bring the Border Patrol's practices closer to those used routinely by the nation's major urban police departments. They are a response, in part, to widespread complaints from immigrant advocates that border agents have shot and killed people in some cases when deadly force was not necessary to protect the lives of agents or the public.

Why did the CBP open fire on so many people? Well, it's because agents feared for their safety. Why did they fear for their safety? Because they put themselves deliberately in that position, according to a report commissioned by the CBP and written by law enforcement experts.

House and Senate oversight committees requested copies last fall but received only a summary that omitted the most controversial findings — that some border agents stood in front of moving vehicles as a pretext to open fire and that agents could have moved away from rock throwers instead of shooting at them…

"It is suspected that in many vehicle shooting cases, the subject driver was attempting to flee from the agents who intentionally put themselves into the exit path of the vehicle, thereby exposing themselves to additional risk and creating justification for the use of deadly force," the report reads. In some cases, "passengers were struck by agents' gunfire."

Judging from this, one would almost believe certain CBP agents were just looking for excuses to shoot someone. And the CBP agents' response has been to claim that new guidelines -- telling them not to stand in front of escaping vehicles and to move away from rock-throwing individuals -- will somehow make the job more dangerous.

The response, marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," states that a ban on shooting at rock throwers "could create a more dangerous environment" because many agents operate "in rural or desolate areas, often alone, where concealment, cover and egress is not an option."

If drug smugglers knew border agents were not allowed to shoot at their vehicles, it argues, more drivers would try to run over agents.

The authors of the report had this to say in response to the CBP's speculative assertion (spearheaded by CBP union reps, who have stated that they will "oppose any restriction on CBP officers' use of force").

"It should be recognized that a half-ounce (200-grain) bullet is unlikely to stop a 4,000-pound moving vehicle, and if the driver … is disabled by a bullet, the vehicle will become a totally unguided threat," it says. "Obviously, shooting at a moving vehicle can pose a risk to bystanders including other agents."

So, while the new guidance lays out some common sense rules in hopes of decreasing the number of deadly shootings, some feel it still doesn't go far enough. The ACLU is recommending the use of body cameras to ensure each use of force is properly documented. Zoe Lofgren has called for more transparency from the agency itself, which has still refused to reveal how many officers (if any) received any sort of disciplinary action for inappropriate use of force.

The CBP obviously has transparency issues. Every effort was made to prevent this report from being made public, despite the CBP itself commissioning it. And, as we've covered earlier, the CBP has obscured the use of its drone "lending library" by failing to produce documents and heavily redacting those it did turn over in response to FOIA requests.

It's one thing for these agents to defend themselves against deadly force. It's quite another to put yourself in harm's way simply to justify the use of deadly force (the it's-coming-right-for-us loophole). If the agency is truly seeking to rid itself of its trigger-happy reputation, it needs to enforce these guidelines and open up its use of force track record to public scrutiny.

Filed Under: aclu, border patrol, cbp, zoe lofgren

How The Repo Industry Is Tracking You And Selling Data About You To, Well, Everyone

from the eye-spy dept

Recently, we've covered a series of stories centered around license plate scanners and the way such information is stored. Despite the protests of the ACLU, local law enforcement agencies have widely deployed the technology and there have also been requests from federal agencies to build a central database of information based on plate scans. If the latest reports are to be believed, however, these would simply be attempts to nationalize an endeavor that has already been undertaken by private industry.

According to the Boston Globe, the helpful groups building this database of license plate scans and providing it to banks, creditors, private investigators and law enforcement agencies are the repo industry and data brokers. And it's far worse than you might think.

While public debate about the license reading technology has centered on how police should use it, business has eagerly adopted the $10,000 to $17,000 scanners with remarkably few limits. At least 10 repossession companies in Massachusetts say they mount the scanners on spotter cars or tow trucks, and Digital Recognition Network of Fort Worth, Texas, claims to collect plate scans of 40 percent of all US vehicles annually.

And that's just one company. The article goes on to note that there are other groups in the data brokerage business that otherwise claim to collect a large majority of US vehicles every year. Those groups freely admit to providing those scan databases to a variety of third parties.

The main commercial use of license plate scanners ­remains the auto finance and auto repossession industries, two professions that work closely together to track down people who default on their loans. Digital Recognition lists Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., HSBC Holdings, and Citibank among its clients, while MVTRAC boasts that it serves 70 percent of the auto finance industry.

Digital Recognition already provides its entire data pool to more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, free of charge for most searches. The Massachusetts State Police is a registered subscriber, as are the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Quincy ­police departments. Even ­Boston College and Brandeis police have access to the firm’s entire scan database.

Now, in response to the privacy concerns raised by activists, what the data brokers and repo folks will tell you is that these scans typically occur in public places. That's not always true, since the repo trucks often will enter private property, such as the parking lot of an apartment or condo complex, but their point is that there is no expectation of privacy in an area that's in plain sight. They'll also tell you that these are just license plate scans, not detailed personal information about anyone in particular.

But that's bullshit, of course. It ignores the practical application of the scan database, as well as to whom that information is being sold. Banks, PIs, and creditors can all scrub this raw data against available DMV and governmental information, while law enforcement agencies both local and federal can build up a database that tracks the movement of any scanned vehicle and the citizens associated with it. If we could get Thomas Jefferson on the horn and ask him what he thought of all this, I'd argue that he'd be spending too much time picking his own jaw up off the floor to give us a proper response.

“Right now, it's the wild West in terms of how companies can collect, process, and sell this kind of data,” says Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. “The best legal minds, best public policy thinkers, and ordinary people whose lives are affected need to sit down and think of meaningful ways we can regulate it.”

Which is exactly what some legislators in Massachusetts are attempting to do with legislation, but it isn't the first time crafting this kind of law has been tried. All previous attempts have been torpedoed by the data broker industry, including one case in Utah, where Digital Recognition sued the state for its ban on plate scanners as a first amendment violation. That seems to stretch the definition a bit too far.

So, if you own a car, a private company that deals for free with law enforcement agencies knows who you are, where you've been, and where you spend most of your time. And, without additional legislation, they do so without the checks and balances that would be insisted upon were the LEOs doing the scanning themselves. This must be what they mean when they say that private industry will always outpace government.

Filed Under: aclu, data, license plate scanner, privacy, repo

ACLU Report On Metadata Details Law Enforcement Abuse, Shows There's No Clear Cutoff Between Content And Data

from the you-have-a-friend-request-from-GOVERNMENT dept

The ACLU of California has put together a thorough report on metadata, the information harvested daily by the NSA, as well as by several private contractors working in conjunction with law enforcement and investigative agencies.

Those involved in this harvesting often downplay the true impact of this information, which is often accessed without a warrant, claiming that what's gathered amounts to nothing more than tiny, abstract data points. This couldn't be farther from the truth, but pushing this narrative allows the Third Party Doctrine (information voluntarily given to third parties carries no expectation of privacy) to be invoked and the Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches) to be buried.

The report goes into great detail on just how much metadata can reveal about a person, something these agencies know but are in no hurry to admit to the public. The entire report is an eye-opening read -- the sort of thing that should be put in the hands (or eyes, I suppose) of anyone out there who's still buying into the deflection tactics deployed by the NSA and others.

The ACLU makes a very good point about how the delineation between metadata and content isn't nearly as clear as surveillance proponents make it out to be.

Although this distinction may appear clear, it quickly becomes blurry on closer examination. For example, technically speaking, a URL is very much a “delivery instruction;” it specifies the address of the web page that you are requesting. But it is also content: requesting a web page essentially means sending a message saying “please send me back the page found at this URL.” In addition, a single URL reveals exactly which page was sought, and thus exactly what content was received…

In addition, whether information is content or metadata can depend not only on the type of information but also on the context in which it is created or used. This means that exactly the same information can be content in one situation and metadata in another. For example:

Your location may or may not be content depending on context. If you call your friend and say “I am at Starbucks,” the words you speak are content. If you use your smartphone to “check in” with Foursquare, that check-in is also content. But many courts have held that your cell carrier’s record of the location of your phone at the exact same moment is not content. And what if you take a picture or post a Tweet that you tag (intentionally or unintentionally) with your current GPS coordinates?

The identity of your friends and contacts may or may not be content depending on context. If you write an email stating that “John is my friend,” that statement is content. But it is less clear whether the fact that John is on your Facebook friend list is also content, even though it conveys exactly the same message.

The agencies helping themselves to this data are wholly unconcerned that this data could also be considered content. The laws governing these "records" have declared it all fair game. As the report points out, even Mike Morrell, the former CIA official, has admitted there's no clear distinction.

“There’s not a sharp difference between metadata and content. . . . It’s more of a continuum.”

But the law says they can have it, and so they take it.

Further on in the report, the ACLU points out that this cavalier attitude towards metadata, coupled with the ease of access, greatly encourages abusive "fishing expeditions."

In 2010, Michigan police sought information about every single phone located near the site of a planned labor protest without a warrant.

A Tennessee sheriff requested the location of his daughter when she was out past her curfew.

A police chief in South Carolina obtained four “tower dumps” providing information about every cell phone within range of two separate cell towers after his personal vehicle was burglarized.

As the ACLU states, these incidents are only the tip of the iceberg. Many more abuses of collected data are happening, most of which won't be exposed until long after the abuse has taken place. This isn't an indictment of law enforcement specifically, but a cautionary statement of what will happen and continue to happen until better legal safeguards are put into place. Easy access combined with a wealth of information is abuse waiting to happen.

While the focus of the past several months has been the NSA's surveillance programs, the most frequent requests for data come from law enforcement agencies. This means that even if the NSA has no interest in your metadata, there are a ton of agencies that might find it more fascinating.

Just as certainly as Target can figure out you're pregnant by tracking your shopping habits in its stores, agencies can draw plenty of their own conclusions from the wealth of metadata that's only a subpoena away (at most). And with news surfacing more and more frequently that law enforcement and security agencies are equating dissent with terrorism, this non-stop collection of metadata has the potential to drag those that are simply unhappy with the status quo into their ever-widening surveillance nets -- and quite possibly into the gears of the criminal justice system itself.

There's no such thing as "just metadata." Given enough data points, anyone's life is an open book -- one that can be perused at will by a variety of government agencies. The fact that these agencies rely on outdated decisions and make clunky, dusty comparisons (no more expectation of privacy than the outside of an envelope!) clearly exposes the hypocrisy at play: they love the advantages technological advances give them (and the massive amount of metadata these generate) but they have no desire to update the laws governing these so-called "business records." "Just metadata" is a lie -- a lie that services the surveillance state and makes a mockery of the phrase "expectation of privacy."

Filed Under: aclu, metadata, nsa, privacy, surveillance

District Court Says DEA's Warrantless Access Of Oregon's Prescription Database Is Unconstitutional

from the the-War-on-Drugs-has-no-time-for-your-outdated-'rights' dept

Early last year, the news surfaced that the DEA was bypassing Oregon state law by using administrative subpoenas to get around the state's warrant requirement for drug prescription database access. "Administrative subpoenas" are yet another government tool that allows agencies to seek information that would normally require a warrant, but without the hassle of running it past a judge or even showing probable cause.

The DEA probably didn't expect to encounter much resistance to its subpoenas. After all, drugs are bad and the DEA is fighting the good fight. But the state of Oregon wasn't impressed with the DEA's warrantless tactics and filed suit with the assistance of the ACLU. The ACLU is now reporting that a federal judge has ruled in its (and Oregon's favor) and the DEA (along with other law enforcement entities) will no longer be able to skirt the state's warrant requirement.

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled that patients have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their drug prescription records, and that law enforcement must obtain a warrant in order to search such information…

“This is a victory for privacy and for the constitutional rights of anyone who ever gets drug prescriptions,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, who argued the case last month. “The ruling recognizes that confidential medical records are entitled to the full protection of the Fourth Amendment. The court rightly rejected the federal government’s extreme argument that patients give up their privacy rights by receiving medical treatment from doctors and pharmacists.”

As the ruling points out, citizens have long associated privacy with medical treatment, something that has gone hand-in-hand dating back to the 4th century B.C.E. and the origin of the Hippocratic Oath. It also points out the obvious: federal law itself (HIPAA) contains built-in privacy protections. (Hence the form you have to sign, the privacy info sheet you're handed on every visit, and signs everywhere telling you to stand behind them for the privacy of the patient in front of you.)

The judge's decision also notes that stripping away this expectation of privacy will have a chilling effect on those seeking medical care, something that could have very adverse effects on the health of people who might avoid seeking treatment because they fear their medical records will be exposed.

As the ACLU notes in its press release, it's not exactly happy the state of Oregon has chosen to create a centralized database of drug prescriptions, but, if it is going to do so, it has at least chosen to take the privacy of those contained in the database very seriously.

This decision strikes a small blow against the government's routine abuse of "exceptions" to warrant requirements as well as against its even more routine abuse of the "third party doctrine," which the DEA actually used to claim that talking to a doctor is no different than dialing a phone. The DEA knows there's a huge difference between these two "third parties" but applying that knowledge means showing probable cause and getting a judge to sign off on the warrant, two aspects it apparently feels only hampers its War on Drugs.

Filed Under: aclu, dea, hipaa, oregon, privacy, warrantless access

ACLU Calls For Ban On Nonlethal Weapons In Schools After Tased Student Ends Up In Coma

from the attacks-the-symptom-but-not-the-disease dept

The fallout continues to accumulate from an in-school altercation that left a student in a medically-induced coma after being tased by a school resource officer (read: sheriff's deputy). In addition to a lawsuit being filed against the school and sheriff's office by the student's parents, a collection of civil rights groups is now calling for a ban on the use of nonlethal weapons by school police officers.

The request to bar nonlethal weapons was made by the ACLU, the Texas Appleseed group, along with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Disability Rights Texas, Texans Care for Children, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and the National Alliance on Mental Illness Texas.

"Tragic incidents like this one demonstrate why the state should not grant police free rein to wield weapons in schools for the apparent purpose of maintaining order," said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. "Schools should be safe havens from this type of police use of force. I hope the commission will heed our call to end use of Tasers and pepper spray."

This attacks part of the problem. These weapons are often deployed carelessly because of their "nonlethal" descriptor. The indiscriminate use of Tasers has resulted in serious injuries and death over the past several years but banning these nonlethal weapons leaves officers employed by schools with few options when the use of force is necessary.

The use of Tasers and pepper spray was defended by Chief C.A. "Chuck" Brawner, of the Spring Branch Independent School District police force, who said nonlethal weapons are necessary so officers don't have to use firearms or nightsticks on unarmed students…

"When you take away the pepper spray and you take away the Taser, what do you have left?" Brawner said. "What if there are several people and you have one officer and they can't control them and they could get away and cause other problems, how do you stop them? When you start taking away other options other than a firearm or a nightstick, what else are you going to use?''

A ban of Tasers and pepper spray would arguably make things worse, leaving officers with the option of beating or shooting students when things get out of hand. This problem needs to be approached from a different direction if schools hope to prevent this sort of thing in the future.

More training is obviously key, and not just training officers on how to deploy nonlethal weapons more "safely," but training them how to resist the impulse to deploy nonlethal weapons when the situation doesn't warrant it. This is much trickier. Fights have occurred in schools for as long as schools have been around. For years, they were broken up by faculty with no training and no weapons, lethal or not. The prevailing belief that only a law enforcement officer can control fighting students is not only wrong, but it's led to on-campus officers handling a great deal of the intervention and discipline that administrators themselves used to handle, often with regrettable results.

This has the effect of turning a common schoolyard fight into a criminal activity, and the response tends to be tailored more towards stopping a street fight than breaking up an altercation between students. If the students aren't using weapons (and they shouldn't be, what with all the other policies in place), then the responding officer shouldn't feel a need to use a weapon either.

If the situation seems to be escalating dangerously, the on-campus officer should have several nonlethal options to deploy before turning the situation deadly. But even the deployment of tasers and pepper spray should be a last resort rather than something used to quickly nullify the perceived threat. The safety of the students should still be paramount. Deploying a Taser simply because someone isn't moving fast enough, being responsive enough or simply "looking threatening" is not the correct response.

I agree with the ACLU's assertion that schools should be a "safe haven" from the use of force, but a ban will have negative consequences, especially if the underlying issues (the use of police officers as a disciplinary tactic; the overuse of force by resource officers) aren't addressed. Instead of a tasing that leads to a coma, we'll have gunshots and blunt force trauma. There's a culture grown from zero tolerance policies and its attendant paranoia that infects administrators and the officers they employ. This needs to addressed before we can start removing nonlethal options.

Filed Under: aclu, nonlethal weapons, schools, tasers

ACLU Coordinating Ed Snowden's Defense

from the good-news dept

While much in the press is focusing on the supposed squabble between Ed Snowden, his father and his father's lawyer, Glenn Greenwald points out the actual important news hidden as a random aside in some of the news reports: the ACLU is now coordinating Ed Snowden's legal defense in the US. The Huffington Post article, notes:

The Wall Street Journal reported that the ACLU is helping coordinate Snowden’s legal defense in the U.S.

The full WSJ article is behind a paywall, but it states:

The elder Mr. Snowden participated in the chat from the Washington, D.C., office of his attorney, Bruce Fein, and was connected to his son with the help of Ben Wizner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who is involved in coordinating Mr. Snowden's legal defense in the U.S.

As Greenwald notes, that's very good news. It also suggests that the claims that Snowden's legal efforts are somehow in the hands of Julian Assange are also not true.

Filed Under: aclu, ed snowden