Constitutional Law

This Week In Civil Liberties

By Katie Smith, ACLU

Wow! What a week. The House failed to get enough votes to extend the Patriot Act, the court unsealed three motions from the Twitter Wikileaks case — plus we had a big win for privacy!

A Win On the Patriot Act

You did it! We told you that the House of Representatives would be voting on the Patriot Act. We asked you to get angry, to show Congress that you care about this nearly-10-year-old law, and to tell your representatives that you want the Patriot reformed so that the government can no longer use it to violate the rights of everyday people who have nothing to do with terrorism. Well, Congress heard you loud and clear. The House did not extend the Patriot Act until Dec. 8, 2011. See how your representative voted here.

TAKE ACTION: Use our Facebook application to end the Patriot Act!

Defending the Dignity of Migrant Workers

Tuesday marked the 146th Anniversary of National Freedom Day, the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the joint congressional resolution that outlawed slavery and became the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In remarks this week to the president's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that "modern slavery, often hidden and unrecognized, persists today on every continent and, most tragically, right here in the United States, despite being prohibited by both domestic legislation and international law." Learn more >>

Hearing Next Week in Twitter Wikileaks Case

Late this week, a court unsealed three motions filed by the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last month on behalf of Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Icelandic parliamentarian whose Twitter account records were targeted by the government in connection with its investigation related to WikiLeaks. Check out the Topic Hub page — http://www.aclu.org/twitter-wikileaks-court-order-news-and-background and TAKE ACTION: Thank Twitter for standing up for their customers' rights!

Victory! North Carolina Settles ACLU/Amazon Privacy Case [dotRights]

We're thrilled to announce a win for privacy! The North Carolina Department of Revenue (NCDOR) has agreed to stop asking for personally identifiable customer information in combination with details about customers' purchases from Internet retailers. The agreement came in the settlement of a lawsuit originally brought by Amazon.com to stop NCDOR from collecting such information. The ACLU and its affiliates in North Carolina and Washington state (where Amazon is headquartered) intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of several Amazon customers whose private information was at stake.

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Full post as published by Blog of Rights on February 12, 2011 (boomark / email).