World Press Freedom Index 2011-2012 - "Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings - “This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news." “Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them."

Via CDT: "Earlier this week, Twitter announced that it will begin making certain Tweets inaccessible to users in countries where the content of those Tweets is illegal. In announcing its new policy, Twitter was acknowledging the challenge that all global social media sites face: governments ask tech companies to comply with local content laws and if these companies refuse to comply, they risk being blocked from the country entirely, further limiting information that citizens can access. If the company has employees on the ground, refusal also risks legal charges against employees. This, of course, raises a well-worn question: are human rights better served when a platform restricts some content in order to remain in a country, or when it resigns itself to a nationwide block of its service?"

"This 22nd annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide in 2011. It reflects extensive investigative work that Human Rights Watch staff has undertaken during the year, often in close partnership with domestic human rights activists. The introductory essay examines the Arab Spring, which has created an extraordinary opportunity for change. The global community has a responsibility to help the long suppressed people of the region seize control of their destiny from often-brutal authoritarian rulers. Standing firmly with people as they demand their legitimate rights is the best way to stop the bloodshed, while principled insistence on respect for rights is the best way to help these popular movements avoid intolerance, lawlessness, and summary revenge once in power."

The Global War Against Baby Girls, Nicholas Eberstadt

"Heritage and the Wall Street Journal released the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom on January 12, 2012, ranking 179 countries on 10 benchmarks that gauge their economic success. The Index covers 10 freedoms – from property rights to entrepreneurship – in 184 countries. This year Heritage introduced a new interactive feature that gives you the opportunity to create a comparative graph. This week’s chart shows how the United States stacks up against Canada and the United Kingdom. As recently as 2009, the United States led both countries in economic freedom. But after four years of decline, the United States is heading in the wrong direction. This year it fell to 10th in the Index of Economic Freedom. For the 18th straight year, Hong Kong and Singapore finished first and second in the rankings, followed this year by Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. North Korea was at the bottom of the rankings. All contents of the book are available online. A few notable developments in this year’s Index [download data here:

"As the result of EPIC v. DHS, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained nearly thee hundred pages of documents detailing a Department of Homeland Security's surveillance program. The documents include contracts and statements of work with General Dynamics for 24/7 media and social network monitoring and periodic reports to DHS. The documents reveal that the agency is tracking media stories that "reflect adversely" on DHS or the U.S. government. One tracking report -- "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" -- summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking cites, quoting commenters. EPIC sent a request for these documents in April 2004 and filed suit against the agency in December. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring."

"EPIC has filed a Freedom of information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to force disclosure of the details of the agency's social network monitoring program. In news reports and a Federal Register notice, the DHS has stated that it will routinely monitor the public postings of users on Twitter and Facebook. The agency plans to create fictitious user accounts and scan posts of users for key terms. User data will be stored for five years and shared with other government agencies.The legal authority for the DHS program remains unclear. EPIC filed the lawsuit after the DHS failed to reply to an April 2011 FOIA request. For more information, see EPIC: Social Networking Privacy."

As Deportations Rise to Record Levels Most Latinos Oppose Obama’s Policy, December 28, 2011

• Higher Education and Disability - Improved Federal Enforcement Needed to Better Protect Students' Rights to Testing Accommodations, GAO-12-40, November 29, 2011. "Federal enforcement of laws and regulations governing testing accommodations is largely complaint-driven and involves multiple agencies. While Justice has overall responsibility for enforcing compliance under the ADA, Education and HHS have enforcement responsibilities under the Rehabilitation Act for testing companies that receive federal financial assistance from them. Education and HHS officials said that they investigate each eligible complaint. Justice officials said they review each complaint at in-take, but they do not make a determination on every complaint because of the large volume of complaints it receives. Justice has clarified ADA requirements for testing accommodations primarily by revising its regulations, but it lacks a strategic approach to targeting enforcement."
• Commercial Spectrum - Plans and Actions to Meet Future Needs, Including Continued Use of Auctions, GAO-12-118, November 23, 2011
• Border Security - Additional Steps Needed to Ensure That Officers Are Fully Trained - GAO-12-269, December 22, 2011
• Hardrock Mining - BLM Needs to Revise Its Systems for Assessing the Adequacy of Financial Assurances, GAO-12-189R, December 12, 2011

Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict, September 2011. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict

Department of Defense Annual Report on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies Academic Program Year 2010-2011, Report to the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate and the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives, released December 27, 2011

Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 - Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010. Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, BJS Statisticians

Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests: "Ever since a man in Tunisia burned himself to death in December 2010 in protest at his treatment by police, pro-democracy rebellions have erupted across the Middle East. This interactive timeline [by Garry Blight, Sheila Pulham and Paul Torpey] traces key events."

The civic and community engagement of religiously active Americans - "Those who are active in church, religious, or spiritual organizations are often more deeply involved in their communities than those who are not members of such groups. And their tech use helps them tie to all kinds of groups" by Jim Jansen Senior Fellow, Pew Internet

Defending Privacy at the U.S. Border: A Guide for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices, by Seth Schoen, Marcia Hofmann and Rowan Reynolds, December 2011

CRS — Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law. Richard M. Thompson, Law Clerk. December 1, 2011

"[December 19, 2011], President Obama issued an executive order directing the implementation of the United States’ first-ever National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. The plan was developed with collaboration across the U.S. government, and with the help of NGOs and civil society groups that support women and girls every day. It is a historic step toward a future where all men and women can reach their full potential. The tangible commitments our government is making as part of the National Action Plan will weave perspectives of women and girls into the DNA of our foreign policy. These commitments include helping women engage in peace processes; providing assistance to NGOs focused on women’s participation; helping to integrate women into the security sectors of our partner nations; improving the UN’s capacity to combat sexual violence; holding development personnel and contractors to the highest standards for preventing human trafficking; and helping to ensure that humanitarian assistance is distributed equally to women as well as men."

Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, December 15, 2011. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Moral Science - Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research, Presidential Commission, for the Study of Bioethical Issues - December 2011

News release: "The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported today in Prisoners in 2010 that the number of offenders under adult correctional supervision in the U.S. declined 1.3 percent in 2010, the second consecutive year of decline since BJS began reporting on this population in 1980. At yearend 2010, about 7.1 million people, or 1 in 33 adults, were under the supervision of adult correctional authorities in the U.S. In addition, the total U.S. prison population fell to 1.6 million at yearend 2010, a decline of 0.6 percent during the year, the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades. This decline was due to a decrease of 10,881 in the number of state prisoners, which fell to just under 1.4 million persons and was the largest yearly decrease since 1977. The federal prison population grew by 0.8 percent (1,653 prisoners) to reach 209,771, the smallest percentage increase since 1980. Most offenders under correctional supervision (about 7 in 10 persons or nearly 4.9 million people) were supervised in the community on probation or parole at yearend 2010. About 3 in 10 (or nearly 2.3 million people) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails. The decline in the total correctional population during 2010 was mainly due to a decrease in the number of probationers during the year (down 69,500 persons) and a decrease in the number of inmates incarcerated in local jails (down 18,700 persons)."

The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): "On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, based on a survey conducted in 2010. Over the course of a year, that equals more than 12 million women and men. Those numbers only tell part of the story — more than 1 million women are raped in a year and over 6 million women and men are victims of stalking in a year. These findings emphasize that sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence are important and widespread public health problems in the United States."

The Protester, by Kurt Andersen: "It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. Two decades after the final failure and abandonment of communism, they believe they're experiencing the failure of hell-bent megascaled crony hypercapitalism and pine for some third way, a new social contract."

10 Years After Bonn, Human Rights Situation Remains Critical: "The Afghan government and its allies abroad have failed to make human rights a top priority in the decade since the fall of the Taliban government, leaving Afghans to face an uncertain future, Human Rights Watch said today. The Bonn Agreement, signed on December 5, 2001, created a transitional government under President Hamid Karzai and laid the groundwork for elections and a new Afghan constitution...“Human rights, and in particular women’s rights, were cited as a key benefit of the defeat of Taliban rule in 2001,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “But ten years later, many basic rights are still ignored or downplayed. While there have been improvements, the rights situation is still dominated by poor governance, lack of rule of law, impunity for militias and police, laws and policies that harm women, and conflict-related abuses.”

"A PBS Newshour special highlights the radiation risks and security flaws of airport body scanners. The program follows EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security. EPIC's suits forced disclosure of documents detailing the health risks and privacy hazards posed by the scanners as well as the proposed use of the scanners on public streets and in train stations ..."

UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council Seventeenth special session, Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, November 23, 2011.

Landmine Monitor 2011 - International Campaign to Ban Landmines [See also the searchable database]

2011 Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response, September 2011, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, presented in Manama, Bahrain, on 23 November 2011 [501 pages, PDF].."The Commission‘s mandate...is to report on the events in question on the basis of international human rights norms..occurring in Bahrain in February/March 2011, and any subsequent consequences arising out of the aforementioned events, and to make such recommendations as it may deem appropriate."

"Documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal open a rare window into a new global market for the off-the-shelf surveillance technology that has arisen in the decade since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The techniques described in the trove of 200-plus marketing documents include hacking tools that enable governments to break into people’s computers and cellphones, and "massive intercept" gear that can gather all Internet communications in a country. The documents—the highlights of which are cataloged and searchable here—were obtained from attendees of a secretive surveillance conference held near Washington, D.C., last month."

"The European Union has adopted strict new guidelines limiting the use of body scanners at EU airports. Under the new guidelines, European Union member states may only deploy airport body scanners if they comply with new regulations that protect health, privacy, and fundamental rights. The European Commission has also prohibited any devices that store, record, or transfer images of travelers as well as devices that display an image of the naked human body. As a result, backscatter x-ray devices are now effectively prohibited in airports in the European Union. The European Commission has also made clear that passengers may not be required to go through body scanners, following the conclusion reached by the federal appellate court in the United States in the EPIC v. DHS case, which held that passengers have a legal right to opt-out of body scanners. The body scanners have not done well during trials in Europe. Most recently a test in Germany found that the devices were ineffective. For more information, see EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of the Body Scanner Program)."

ABA Directory for Disability Rights: "This first of its kind directory helps lawyers find information regarding disability rights and disability law from state and local associations across the U.S."

• To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications, November 11, 2011 via European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) - "European Union (EU) agency which acts as a centre of expertise for the EU Member States and European institutions. It gives advice and recommendations on good practice, and acts as a “switchboard” for exchanging knowledge and information. The agency also facilitates contacts between the European institutions, the Member States, and private business and industry."
• "Recording aspects of one’s life, or life-logging, has a long established history in human society, but it is undergoing transformational change in terms of depth, volume and type of data. Before the 20th century, life-logging was restricted to recordings on paper media and involved written accounts, such as books, diaries, or collections of letters between people as well as person-constructed images such as drawings or paintings. By the 20th century, the media had broadened to include still photographic images, sound and moving images and most families kept at least an image life-log in the form of a photo album. By the end of the 20th century, most of these life-log data were digitally recorded with both the resolution and frequency of recording dramatically increasing year on year. Paper diaries and letters gave way to blogs, e-mail, and social networking status updates with the significant difference that the latter were potentially recorded forever and with a vastly more complete history than the episodic fragments of days gone by."
• Appendix I Scenario Building and Analysis Template, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications". File To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications [Appendix II]
• Appendix II Risk Assessment Spreadsheet, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications"

Atlantic Wire - Adam Clark Estes: "When a federal judge ruled that Twitter must reveal the private data of three WikiLeaks associates on Thursday, privacy advocates died a little inside. The two organizations that had defended the three users, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF), immediately filed mournful blog posts that respectively raised doubts about the United States government's secretive handling of the case and highlighted grave message the ruling sends about the future of privacy on the internet. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Valentine-DeVries sums up the implications of the case best with a leading question: "Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?" We now know that the federal court's answer is, "Yes."

"The 2011 edition of the Countries at the Crossroads report analyzes the performance of 35 countries, including six in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The countries’ scores cover the period from April 2007 through December 2010, and generally indicate grim and deteriorating conditions in the run-up to the Arab Spring. Overall country declines exceeded improvements in both number and degree in this year’s report, with widespread efforts by governments around the world to restrict freedom of expression—two out of every three countries with previous data declined in this subcategory. The free and fair electoral laws and elections subcategory was also hit hard, as 17 countries with previous data declined in this area. The report found that countries in the MENA region face grave challenges to successful democratic transition due to government institutions that have been seriously undermined under current and previous authoritarian regimes. It predicts that failure to institute thoroughgoing reforms in areas such as rule of law, accountability of the army and security services to civilian authorities, protection from state abuse, and official corruption could lead to the ascendance of forces hostile to freedom, and autocratic rule is likely to be maintained, or reasserted in the case of those countries that have seen uprisings."

Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, see the following

Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, the 2011 Guidelines Manual (effective November 1, 2011) is available in HTML and Adobe PDF formats (large file and broken into chapters), which can be viewed, downloaded or printed via the website. Individual Chapters 1-8 and Guidelines in HTML or PDF Format

• View the 2011 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual in HTML
  
• View the 2011 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual in PDF

News release: "A nationwide survey of the American people released today by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that anti-Semitic attitudes have risen slightly in America, demonstrating once again that "anti-Semitic beliefs continue to hold a vicegrip" on a small but not insubstantial segment of America. The ADL survey found that 15 percent of American's nearly 35 million adults hold deeply anti-Semitic views, an increase of 3 percent from a similar poll conducted in 2009, and matching the levels of anti-Semitic propensities recorded in the U.S. in 2005 and 2007. Over the last decade, the highest level of anti-Semitic attitudes was reported in 2002, when an ADL poll found 17 percent of Americans harbored anti-Jewish attitudes."

Google Transparency Report - Government Requests: "Like other technology and communications companies, Google regularly receives requests from government agencies and courts around the world to remove content from our services and hand over user data. Our Government Requests tool discloses the number of requests we receive from each government in six-month reporting periods with certain limitations. Governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by country, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction. We hope this tool will be helpful in discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests. These observations on content removal requests highlight some trends that we've seen in the data during each reporting period, and are by no means exhaustive."

The Costs of Reproduction: History and the Legal Construction of Sex Equality, Deborah Dinner, Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 46, 2011

"Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney."

International Violence Against Women: U.S. Response and Policy Issues, July 26, 2011

"Human trafficking is a truly global phenomenon and a crime which affects nearly every part of the world, whether as a source, transit or destination country. According to UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), victims from at least 127 countries have been detected and it is estimated that more than 2.4 million people are exploited by criminals at any given time. More than a decade after the adoption of the Trafficking in Persons Protocol, most countries have criminalized most forms of human trafficking in their legislation. However, the use of these laws to prosecute and convict traffickers remains limited. In the 2009 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, for instance, two out of every five countries covered in the report had never recorded a single conviction for trafficking offences."

Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody - United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan [UNAMA], UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. October 2011 Kabul, Afghanistan

Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability Publications, by Elizabeth Goitein and David M. Shapiro, October 5,2011

"Violence against women and children is a serious public health concern, with costs at multiple levels of society. Although violence is a threat to everyone, women and children are particularly susceptible to victimization because they often have fewer rights or lack appropriate means of protection. In some societies certain types of violence are deemed socially or legally acceptable, thereby contributing further to the risk to women and children. In the past decade research has documented the growing magnitude of such violence, but gaps in the data still remain. Victims of violence of any type fear stigmatization or societal condemnation and thus often hesitate to report crimes. The issue is compounded by the fact that for women and children the perpetrators are often people they know and because some countries lack laws or regulations protecting victims. Some of the data that have been collected suggest that rates of violence against women range from 15 to 71 percent in some countries and that rates of violence against children top 80 percent. These data demonstrate that violence poses a high burden on global health and that violence against women and children is common and universal. Preventing Violence Against Women and Children focuses on these elements of the cycle as they relate to interrupting this transmission of violence. Intervention strategies include preventing violence before it starts as well as preventing recurrence, preventing adverse effects (such as trauma or the consequences of trauma), and preventing the spread of violence to the next generation or social level. Successful strategies consider the context of the violence, such as family, school, community, national, or regional settings, in order to determine the best programs."

News release: "In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 35 ACLU affiliates are filing over 381 requests in 32 states across the country with local law enforcement agencies large and small that seek to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. The requests seek information from local law enforcement agencies, including:

• whether law enforcement agents demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant to access cell phone location data;
  
• statistics on how frequently law enforcement agencies obtain cell phone location data;
  
• how much money law enforcement agencies spend tracking cell phones and
  
• other policies and procedures used for acquiring location data.

Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention - A Summary. Nancy G. La Vigne, Samantha S. Lowry, Joshua Markman, Allison Dwyer. September 19, 2011

News release: "The official end today of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law reflects the American values that military members uphold, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today [in a briefing]. “Thanks to this change, I believe we move closer to achieving the goal at the foundation of the values that America's all about -- equality, equal opportunity and dignity for all Americans,” he told reporters during a Pentagon news briefing. Panetta reaffirmed his dedication to all who are serving and ensuring everyone who wishes to serve has the opportunity to do so regardless of sexual preference. “As secretary of defense, I am committed to removing all of the barriers that would prevent Americans from serving their country and from rising to the highest level of responsibility that their talents and capabilities warrant,” he said. “These are men and women who put their lives on the line in the defense of this country, and that's what should matter the most.” Panetta credited several groups for helping prepare the Defense Department for the implementation of the repeal. “I want to thank the repeal implementation team and the service secretaries, along with the service chiefs, for all of their efforts to ensure that DOD is ready to make this change, consistent with standards of military readiness, with military effectiveness, with unit cohesion, and with the recruiting and retention of the armed forces,” he said."

News release: "Gender equality matters in its own right but is also smart economics: Countries that create better opportunities and conditions for women and girls can raise productivity, improve outcomes for children, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for all, says a new World Bank flagship report. The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development details big strides in narrowing gender gaps but shows that disparities remain in many areas. The worst disparity is the rate at which girls and women die relative to men in developing countries: Globally, excess female mortality after birth and “missing” girls at birth account for an estimated 3.9 million women each year in low- and middle-income countries. About two-fifths are never born due to a preference for sons, a sixth die in early childhood, and over a third die in their reproductive years. These losses are growing in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in countries hard-hit by HIV/AIDS."

Life in Limbo - An Examination of Parole Release for Prisoners Serving Life Sentences with the Possibility of Parole in California, Robert Weisberg, Debbie A. Mukamal and Jordan D. Segall. September 2011. Stanford Criminal Justice Center

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - Rising Immigration Backlog At All-time High Yet Criminal, National Security, and Terrorism Cases Fall

July-December, 2010 International Religious Freedom Report

News release: 'Women's rights/Equal opportunities; Plenary sessions, September 13, 2011: "Women setting up and running small and medium-sized enterprises need better financial and educational support, says a resolution adopted on Tuesday. Parliament also calls on Member States to help women over 50 to stay in or return to the labour market. Only one in ten women in the EU is an entrepreneur, as opposed to one in four men. Parliament therefore calls on the Commission, Member States and regional and local authorities to do more to publicise and improve take-up of funding opportunities for female entrepreneurs such as special grants, venture capital, social security provisions and interest rate rebates. The European Progress Microfinance Facility, for example, provides micro-loans of up to €25,000 to micro-enterprises and to people who wish to start up their own business but who have no access to traditional banking services. "In spite of all the constraints and restrictions faced by women today, a growing number of women have proved to be more than capable of creating successful businesses. Put simply, in a time of economic uncertainty, Europe can no longer afford to leave such a vibrant source of potential untapped!", said rapporteur Marina Yannakoudakis (ECR, UK)."

The Library of Congress - THOMAS: "This site was begun in September 2001 as a way of keeping the public readily apprised of legislation related to the terrorist attack on the United States that month. The selection, made by hand, is necessarily subjective, as the September 11th attack had a ripple effect on legislation in the second session of the 107th Congress, making boundaries difficult to draw. The site will not be updated after the conclusion of the 107th. Not included here are appropriations and authorization bills, which may include provisions relevant to our response to terrorism, but included are some bills related to bio-terrorism and not September 11th."

News release: "Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today announced its findings that the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) has engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. The investigation, launched in July 2008, was conducted in accordance with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that a pattern and practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including: Use of excessive force; Use of unreasonable force and other misconduct designed to suppress the exercise of protected First Unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests."

"The Circuit Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Department of Justice must release information regarding government surveillance of cell phone location data. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information regarding current and past cases where the Department of Justice had accessed cell phone location data without a warrant. The agency sought to keep this information secret, claiming that releasing cell phone tracking data could implicate privacy of investigation subjects. The court, however, disagreed, stating, "The disclosure sought by the plaintiffs would inform this ongoing public policy discussion by shedding light on the scope and effectiveness of cell phone tracking as a law enforcement tool." For more information, see EPIC: Wiretapping and EPIC: Electronic Surveillance 1968-2010."

The Logic of Child Soldiering and Coercion, by Bernd Beber/New York University and Christopher Blattman/Yale University†, July 2011

"A Federal judge has ruled that law enforcement officers must have a warrant to access cell phone locational data. Courts are divided regarding whether or not this type of data should be protected by a warrant requirement. Judge Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York, found that "The fiction that the vast majority of the American population consents to warrantless government access to the records of a significant share of their movements by 'choosing' to carry a cell phone must be rejected…In light of drastic developments in technology, the Fourth Amendment doctrine must evolve to preserve cell-phone user's reasonable expectation of privacy in cumulative cell-site-location records." EPIC has filed amicus briefs in several related cases. For more information see: EPIC: Commonwealth v. Connolly, EPIC: US v. Jones, and EPIC: Locational Privacy."

"Country Reports on Terrorism 2010 is an annual Congressionally mandated report that provides an assessment of trends and events in international terrorism that transpired from January 1 to December 31, 2010. Besides filling a Congressional requirement, this publication aims to enhance the public’s understanding of the international terrorist threat. The report focuses on policy-related assessments, country-by-country breakdowns of foreign government counterterrorism cooperation, and contains chapters on WMD terrorism, State Sponsors of Terrorism, Terrorist Safe Havens, and Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The report also includes a statistical annex prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center. The statistics show more than 11,500 terrorist attacks occurred in 72 countries during 2010, resulting in more than 13,200 deaths. Although the number of attacks rose by almost 5 percent from the previous year, the number of deaths declined for a third consecutive year, dropping 12 percent from 2009. For the second consecutive year, the largest number of reported attacks occurred in South Asia and the Near East, with more than 75 percent of the world’s attacks and deaths occurring in these regions."

International Bloggers and Internet Control, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, August 2011

"Freedom House launched a special report, Promise and Reversal: The Post-Soviet Landscape Twenty Years On, to mark the 20th anniversary of the failed Soviet coup of August 19, 1991. A retrospective essay examining changes in the state of political rights and civil liberties in the former Soviet Union over the last two decades, as well as graphs and rankings that illustrate the region’s performance in the annual Freedom House publications Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press, highlight that there is a serious and disturbing failure to embrace democratic institutions in most of the post-Soviet region."

Benhabib, Seyla, Is There a Human Right to Democracy? Beyond Interventionism and Indifference (2011). APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.

Principles of Effective State Sentencing and Corrections Policy - A Report of the NCSL Sentencing and Corrections Work Group, August 2011

"This week, President Obama directed a comprehensive review to strengthen the United States’ ability to prevent mass atrocities. The President’s directive states plainly that: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” The directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies and partners to be responsive to early warning signs and prevent potential atrocities. The directive recognizes that preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share and that other countries must also be enlisted to respond to particular crises. Therefore, the directive calls for a strategy [see the Fact Sheet] for engaging key regional allies and partners so that they are prepared to accept greater responsibility for preventing and responding to crimes against humanity."

"The Berkman Center is pleased to release Online Security in the Middle East and North Africa: A Survey of Perceptions, Knowledge, and Practice. This report describes the results of a survey of 98 bloggers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) carried out in May 2011 in order to study bloggers’ perceptions of online risk and the actions they take to address digital communications security, including both Internet and cell phone use. Digital communication has become a more perilous activity, particularly for activists, political dissidents, and independent media. The recent surge in digital activism that has helped to shape the Arab spring has been met with stiff resistance by governments in the region intent on reducing the impact of digital organizing and independent media. No longer content with Internet filtering, many governments in the Middle East and around the world are using a variety of technological and offline strategies to go after online media and digital activists. The survey was implemented in the wake of the Arab spring and documents a proliferation of online security problems among the respondents. In the survey, we address the respondents’ perceptions of online risk, their knowledge of digital security practices, and their reported online security practices. The survey results indicate that there is much room for improving online security practices, even among this sample of respondents who are likely to have relatively high technical knowledge and experience."

In the line of fire - Somalia’s children under attack, Amnesty international, July 2011

Commentary: "Britain is now enmeshed in a gigantic scandal around privacy invasions by the press and police. It began with revelations about reporters for Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid newspaper News of the World hacking into the voicemail of a murdered young girl, and has expanded as other privacy invasions have come to light."

"As a result of a lawsuit brought by EPIC, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the TSA violated federal law when it installed body scanners in airports for primary screening across the country without first soliciting public comment. The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to provide notice and opportunity for comment when implementing a rule that affects the rights of the public. Writing for a unanimous court, Judge Ginsburg found there was "no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking," and said, "few if any regulatory procedures impose directly and significantly upon so many members of the public." EPIC's brief alleged that airport body scanners are "invasive, unlawful, and ineffective," and that the TSA's deployment of the devices for primary screening violated the U.S. Constitution and several federal statutes. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology."

Follow up to previous postings on whole body scanning at airports, via EPIC: The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that sets out strict safeguards for airport body scanners. The resolution requires that Member States only "deploy technology which is the least harmful for human health" and establish substantial privacy protection. The resolution prohibits the use of body scanners that use ionizing radiation. New guidelines also state that airport body scanners "must not have the capabilities to store or save data." EPIC currently is pursuing a lawsuit to suspend the use of body scanners in the United States, citing several federal laws and the US Constitution. EPIC has called the US airport body scanner program "invasive, ineffective, and unlawful." For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program) and EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology."

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court in Colorado today to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing in an amicus brief that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. A defendant in this case, Ramona Fricosu, is accused of fraudulent real estate transactions. During the investigation, the government seized an encrypted laptop from the home she shares with her family, and then asked the court to compel Fricosu to type the password into the computer or turn over a decrypted version of her data. But EFF told the court today that the demand is contrary to the Constitution, forcing Fricosu to become a witness against herself. "Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act -- revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court."

Progress of the World’s Women 2011–2012: In Pursuit of Justice

Via LLRX.com: Pretrial Detention, Bail and Due Process - Ken Strutin's guide comprises recent publications and other notable resources concerning the relationship between the administration of bail and the requirements of due process. Pretrial detention of suspects directly impacts the presumption of innocence. The cornerstone of the justice system is that no one will be punished without the benefit of due process. Incarceration before trial, when the outcome of the case is yet to be determined, cuts against this principle. The Founders were aware of the dangers inherent in indiscriminate imprisonment, which is one of the main reasons behind the inclusion of the Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, prohibiting excessive bail.

"Federal and state applications for orders authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications increased 34 percent in 2010, compared to the number reported in 2009. The interceptions are reported in the 2010 Wiretap Report, released today by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC). The current report covers intercepts concluded between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. A total of 3,194 intercept applications by federal and state courts were authorized in 2010, with 1,207 applications by federal authorities authorized and 1,987 applications by 25 states authorized. One application was denied. Installed intercepts totaled 2,311."

Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, this ews release: "The United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously today to give retroactive effect to its proposed permanent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that implements the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Retroactivity of the amendment will become effective on November 1, 2011 - the same day that the proposed permanent amendment would take effect; unless Congress acts to disapprove the amendment...Not every federal crack cocaine offender in federal prison will be eligible for a lower sentence as a result of this decision. The Commission estimates, based on Fiscal Year 2010 sentencing data, that approximately 12,000 offenders may be eligible to seek a sentence reduction. The average sentence reduction for eligible offenders will be approximately 37 months, and the overall impact on the eligible offender population will occur incrementally over decades. The average sentence for these offenders, even after reduction, will remain about 10 years. The Bureau of Prisons estimates that retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 amendment could result in a savings of over $200 million within the first five years after retroactivity takes effect."

OECD draft Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making, June 29, 2011

News release: "The authoritarian countries of the former Soviet Union have built governance systems that are resistant to reform and therefore increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable crises of the sort recently seen in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a new study released by Freedom House. Nations in Transit 2011, the latest edition of Freedom House’s annual assessment of democratic development in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, also finds that the ever-growing tenures of authoritarian leaders in the former Soviet Union have contributed to a number of looming governance problems, including the inability to develop law-based systems, tackle corruption, and—especially in the case of energy-dependent states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia—diversify their economies."

EPIC: "In a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, EPIC has just obtained documents concerning the radiation risks of TSA's airport body scanner program. The documents include agency emails, radiation studies, memoranda of agreement concerning radiation testing programs, and results of some radiation tests. One document set reveals that even after TSA employees identified cancer clusters possibly linked to radiation exposure, the agency failed to issue employees dosimeters - safety devices that could assess the level of radiation exposure. Another document indicates that the DHS mischaracterized the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, stating that NIST "affirmed the safety" of full body scanners. The documents obtained by EPIC reveal that NIST disputed that characterization and stated that the Institute did not, in fact, test the devices. Also, a Johns Hopkins University study revealed that radiation zones around body scanners could exceed the "General Public Dose Limit." For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security - Full Body Scanner Radiation Risks and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program)."

Book review: "More than 160 million females are “missing” from Asia’s population. That’s more than the entire female population of the United States. Gender imbalance—which is mainly the result of sex selective abortion—is no longer strictly an Asian problem. In Azerbaijan and Armenia, in Eastern Europe, and even among some groups in the United States, couples are making sure at least one of their children is a son. So many parents now select for boys that they have skewed the sex ratio at birth of the entire world. In her first book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, Mara Hvistendahl explores how this has occurred, asking why women and girls are becoming scarce in Asia and Eastern Europe as these regions develop, and what will happen when the world’s extra boys grow up. Drawing on extensive reporting in China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Albania, and other countries, Hvistendahl weaves together the story of the world’s “missing” women into a riveting narrative, casting everyone from prostitutes, mail-order brides, and militant nationalists to geneticists, activists, and AIDS researchers—along with the California fertility doctors hard at work selling the world’s parents on the latest form of sex selection. In this discussion, she delves into the implications for security, women's rights, governance, and economic development."

NYT: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention. The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity. The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing."

"EPIC and a coalition of privacy, consumer rights, and civil rights organizations filed a statement to the Department of Homeland Security in opposition to the proposed expansion of the employment verification system, "E-Verify." The agency announced plans to incorporate state driver license records that could significantly expand the use of the Homeland Security database. The groups said that the DHS proposal is unlawful and looks very similar to the REAL ID scheme that was previously defeated. EPIC has testified before Congress and published a Spotlight on Surveillance report about E-Verify. For more information, see EPIC: Employment Eligibility Verification System and EPIC: National ID."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "The House has approved the 2012 budget for the Transportation Security Administration, cutting $270 million from the amount originally requested by the Agency. The cuts include $76 million that had been designated for the purchase of 275 airport body scanners. Leading lawmakers and activists have called attention to the health risks associated with the scanners, as well as their invasiveness. Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) criticized the machines as “slow” and “ineffective.”

Belatedly but nevertheless, here is the Newsweek and The Daily Beast Honor 150 Extraordinary Women: "They are heads of state and heads of household, angry protesters in the city square and sly iconoclasts in remote villages. With a fiery new energy, women are building schools, starting businesses, fighting corruption, harnessing new technologies and breaking down old prejudices. Whenever a woman or girl gains control of her destiny, the local standard of living goes up and the values of human rights spread. So this year, and every year, Newsweek and The Daily Beast will honor local heroes, and the growing network of powerful women who support their efforts. Plus, read more about the Women in the World conference."

United Nations General Assembly: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, May 16, 2011

RollCall: "After two days of wrangling and last-minute deal-making in the Senate, Congress cleared a reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act on Thursday, and the Obama administration announced that the president signed the bill into law before provisions of the anti-terrorism act expired at midnight. A standoff over amendments in the Senate ate into the time needed to fly the enrolled bill to President Barack Obama, who is traveling in Europe. Instead of physically signing the bill, Obama planned to direct the use of an autopen to sign it, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said in an email shortly after the House cleared the bill. “Failure to sign this legislation poses a significant risk to U.S. national security,” Shapiro said in the email. Autopens generate a facsimile of an individual’s signature and are frequently used by Members of Congress for signing constituent correspondence and other letters. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel advised in 2005 that the president may sign a bill by autopen."

EPIC: "A draft agreement between the United States and the European Union will allow the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to store passenger data for up to 15 years. The passenger data includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card information, and even ethnic origin, political opinions, and details of health or sex life. The 15 year time period in the proposed agreement is three times that allowed under Europe's existing Passenger Name Record regime. See also EPIC: EU-US Airline Passenger Data Disclosure."

"Because we believe that Internet censorship is not only against the basic purpose of the Internet, which is to let people communicate what the want to with the people they want to communicate with, but also fundamentally against the universal right to freedom of opinion and expression [which] includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (UDHR, Article 19), we offer you here "How to bypass Internet Censorship". This book, How to bypass Internet Censorship. will not only help you find your way in the diversity of tools and techniques that allow you to defeat Internet censorship, but will also tell you more about how censorship works behind the curtains. You will also learn about the risks that may be linked to the use of such tools, and help you evaluate and mitigate them thanks to encryption or anonymization techniques."

"...the Administration has transmitted a cybersecurity legislative proposal to Capitol Hill in response to Congress’ call for assistance on how best to address the cybersecurity needs of our Nation. This is a milestone in our national effort to ensure secure and reliable networks for Americans, businesses, and government; fundamentally, this proposal strikes a critical balance between maintaining the government’s role and providing industry with the capacity to innovatively tackle threats to national cybersecurity. Just as importantly, it does so while providing a robust framework to protect civil liberties and privacy."

• Read the fact sheet
  
• Read about the Administration’s Cybersecurity Accomplishments
  
• Read the text of the legislative proposal.

FISA Annual Reports to Congress 2010 [via FAS]

Via LLRX.com - The Age of Innocence: Actual, Legal and Presumed: Ken Strutin reasons that any accounting of the justice system would put the presumption of innocence at the top of the ledger. The premise underlying this evidentiary rule is that no one should be found guilty of a crime unless the state has convinced a jury with proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The materials Ken has researched and documented for this guide focus on the drift from unitary innocence, which encompasses all possible claims to a wrongful conviction, to factual innocence rooted in exoneration jurisprudence. According to some scholars, factual exonerations may have confounded the wisdom behind the Blackstone Ratio and its overarching message, i.e., criminal law and procedure ought to be weighted in favor of innocence to avoid wrongful conviction, even if there is a chance that the guilty will benefit as well. In other words, a system of justice that is fair to all and seeks to protect the innocent from wrongful prosecutions must apply safeguards that will be over inclusive. The calculations of truth and fairness are rooted in a system of justice based on due process (or a presumption of due process). The scholarship collected here attempts to address questions of whether the concept of innocence is selective or categorical.

The Deciders: Facebook, Google, and the Future of Privacy and Free Speech, Jeffrey Rosen

Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Set to Expire, May 27, 2011

Cyrus Nemati, CDT: "If you've been following our Take Back Your Privacy campaign, you've seen our weekly privacy tips. Each week, we offer readers a new way to protect their privacy online through plug-ins, browser tricks, programs, and general privacy best practices. While each tip has merit in its own right, there are a few tips that give you a great amount of control over your online privacy. Without further ado, here are Take Back Your Privacy's Top Five Privacy Tips."

The Guantanamo Docket - Documents and research related to the 779 people who have been sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison since 2002.

• Related Coverage From the Times
  
• Overview
  
• Detainees
  
• Transfer Countries
  
• Citizenship
  
• Timeline
  
• About

"The Solicitor General filed a petition with the Supreme Court about the growing dispute in the federal courts over warrantless locational tracking. There is a split among the appellate court about GPS tracking by police agencies. The petition appeals a decision from the DC Circuit which held that the warrantless tracking of a motor vehicle violates the Constitutional right against unlawful searches. Earlier, EPIC filed an amicus brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case that also held that a warrant is required for the use of a GPS tracking device. For more information, see EPIC - Commonwealth v. Connolly and EPIC - Locational Privacy."

"On 15 April 2011, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted an opinion on the Commission's proposal aimed at revising the financial rules applicable to the annual budget of the European Union ("EU Financial Regulation"). The proposal covers several matters which involve the processing of personal data by the EU institutions and by entities at Member State level. One of the most significant new elements introduced by the proposal is the possibility to publish decisions on administrative and financial penalties. Such publication would entail the disclosure of information about the person concerned in an identifiable way. The EDPS believes that this provision does not meet the requirements of data protection law. To better comply with data protection rules, it should be improved by explicitly indicating the purpose for the disclosure and by ensuring the consistent application of the possibility of what is in fact naming and shaming of persons, with use of clear criteria to demonstrate the necessity of the disclosure."

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, Enhancing Online Choice, Efficiency, Security, and Privacy - April 2011

Famous poet's writings as a Federal employee shed new light on his life and work: "The National Archives today announced the identification of nearly 3,000 Walt Whitman documents written during his service as a Federal government employee. This trove of information--conclusively identified as Whitman's papers for the first time by University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) scholar Kenneth Price--sheds light on the legendary poet's post-war thinking, as well as Whitman's published reflections on the state of the nation that soon followed. Price discusses the significance of this discovery in the National Archives Inside the Vaults video short."

"Last week, in conjunction with the release of its annual Human Rights Report, the State Department officially launched HumanRights.gov, a new central portal for international human rights-related information generated by the United States Government. HumanRights.gov was designed in the letter and spirit of President Obama’s Open Government Directive issued in January 2009, requiring Federal agencies to take specific steps to achieve key milestones in transparency, participation, and collaboration. HumanRights.gov is primarily aimed at increasing the American public’s access to human rights-related information and understanding of our global engagement on these critical issues. We hope that it proves equally valuable to citizens of other nations seeking to promote accountability and change in their own societies."

2010 Human Rights Report, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, released April 8, 2011

"This short essay will be part of an issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter devoted to recommended action for the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The present essay calls attention to the relevance of therapeutic jurisprudence to the sentencing function. It looks at some legal rules and guidelines that do not effectively motivate convicted persons to focus on the future, and it also shows how judges need guidance not only on what sentences to impose but also on the manner and process of sentence imposition."

News release: "Today, Vice President Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan introduced comprehensive guidance to help schools, colleges and universities better understand their obligations under federal civil rights laws to prevent and respond to the problem of campus sexual assault. The new guidance, announced at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, makes clear the legal obligations under Title IX of any school, college or university receiving federal funds to respond promptly and effectively to sexual violence. The guidance also provides practical examples to aid educators in ensuring the safety of their students. Under Title IX – a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities – discrimination can include sexual violence, such as rape, sexual assault, sexual battery and sexual coercion. The guidance, the first specifically advising schools, colleges and universities that their responsibilities under Title IX include protecting students from sexual violence, also details enforcement strategies that schools and the Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) may use to end sexual violence, prevent its recurrence, and remedy its effects."

News release: "Countries which continue to use the death penalty are being left increasingly isolated following a decade of progress towards abolition, Amnesty International has said today in its new report Death Sentences and Executions in 2010. A total of 31 countries abolished the death penalty in law or in practice during the last 10 years but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen remain amongst the most frequent executioners, some in direct contradiction of international human rights law."

The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermarth of the Holocaust, by Judy Feigin, Edited by Mark M Richard, Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice Criminal Division, December 2008

• EEOC fact sheets about the law and new regulations: EEOC - The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008
• EEOC press release: EEOC Announces Final Bipartisan Regulations for the ADA Amendments Act
• Federal Register: Regulations To Implement the Equal Employment Provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act, as Amended

"EPIC asked a federal court in Washington, DC to reconsider its earlier decision allowing the Department of Homeland Security to keep secret 2,000 airport body scanner images in EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Court relied on a legal theory in its decision, "Exemption High b(2)," that was recently struck down by the Supreme Court in Navy v. Milner. In Milner, the Court held that FOIA exemption 2 only applies to records concerning employee relations and human resources issues. Milner overturns previous lower court decisions that applied the exemption to broader categories of records, allowing federal agencies to block disclosure of documents to the public. EPIC argues in its motion that the Department of Homeland Security is unlawfully withholding information about the airport scanners from the public. For more information, see EPIC-Milner v. Dept. of Navy and EPIC v. DHS - Body Scanners."

News release: "The Department of Defense today released the Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military. This year’s report also incorporates results from the quadrennial 2010 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members, an anonymous and voluntary survey conducted by the Defense Manpower Data Center, which measures gender issues among members of the armed forces. Over the last two years, the department has made significant efforts to prevent and respond to sexual assault. While it appears these efforts are beginning to payoff, there is still work to do to integrate and continue our efforts across the department and the services."

News release: "The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today is publishing its Report on Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process. The report contains the conclusions of an investigation the IACHR carried out to ascertain whether policies and practices on immigrant-related detention in the United States were compatible with the country's international obligations in the area of human rights. The report also includes recommendations for ensuring that detention policies fulfill those obligations. One of the Inter-American Commission's main concerns is the increasing use of detention based on a presumption of its necessity, when in fact detention should be the exception. The IACHR is convinced that detention is a disproportionate measure in many if not most cases, and that programs that provide for alternatives to detention would be a more balanced means to serve the State's legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with immigration laws. For those cases in which detention is strictly necessary, the Inter-American Commission is troubled by the lack of a genuinely civil detention system with general conditions that are commensurate with human dignity and humane treatment, as well as special conditions called for in cases of non-punitive detention. The IACHR is also disturbed by the fact that the management and personal care of immigration detainees is frequently outsourced to private contractors, yet insufficient information is available concerning the mechanisms in place to supervise the contractors."

EPIC: "In a hearing before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, EPIC urged Congress to suspend the use of airport body scanners for primary screening. EPIC said the devices were not effective and were not minimally intrusive, as courts have required for airport searches. EPIC cited TSA documents obtained in EPIC's FOIA lawsuit which showed that the machines are designed to store and transfer images, and not designed to detect powdered explosives. EPIC was joined on the panel by radiation expert Dr. David Brenner, who has frequently pointed out the radiation risks created by these machines. The TSA, which is a federal agency funded by taxpayer dollars and responsible for the body scanner program, originally refused to testify at hearing. Eventually they showed up. Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who had previously sponsored a bill regarding body scanners, grilled the TSA officials and said the hearing would continue with more questions. For more information see EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS."

Making Google Accessible - "As part of Google’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful, we’re committed to making accessibility a reality for all of our users, including those with disabilities."

Closing the Guantanamo Detention Center: Legal Issues, February 11, 2011

News release: "...the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics released the first in a series of data analysis tools that will enable the public to explore the recidivism patterns of persons involved with the criminal justice system. The new Prisoner Recidivism Analysis Tool allows users to conduct customized analyses of a large database describing the recidivism of prisoners released in 1994 and followed for a three-year period after release. In 2012, BJS plans to update the tool with new recidivism data on prisoners released in 2005. The public can use this online tool to analyze a large research database and verify statistics found in government publications, media reports or other sources that use these data. The tool allows users to move beyond the published statistics to explore in more detail the recidivism patterns of released prisoners. Users may examine the recidivism patterns of released prisoners based on one or more attributes, such as gender, age at release, race, commitment offense, sentence length, prior arrests and prior commitments."

News release: "For the first time, industry groups and civil liberties interests have come together to advocate a comprehensive, common approach to cybersecurity. That approach is reflected in today's release of a cybersecurity white paper that rejects government mandates and advocates for a stronger partnership between industry and government. The 20-page white paper is a joint release from CDT, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Software Alliance, TechAmerica, and the Internet Security Alliance."

Via the White House, Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being

Guardian UK: "This Tuesday, International Women's Day will focus our attention on the struggle that millions still face against injustice and discrimination. In an impassioned essay, Mariella Frostrup argues that the fight for women's rights is far from over."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security released a report finding that the agency's contract files did not "contain[] sufficient evidence of justification and approval, market research, and acquisition planning" for the $1.3 billion dollars in noncompetitive contracts the agency entered into in fiscal year 2010. The noncompetitive process raises doubts that the agency secured the "best possible value" for the goods and services and that the contracts were awarded to "eligible and qualified vendors." The IG recommended that the agency’s Chief Procurement Officer pursue corrective action plans. EPIC previously criticized the agency’s contracting practices regarding whole body scanners. For related information see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS: Body Scanners (Suspend the Program) and EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (FOIA)."

The Tea Party, Religion and Social Issues, by Scott Clement, Survey Research Aanalyst, and John C. Green, February 23, 2011

News release: "Senator Charles E. Schumer, joined by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, announced today the introduction of legislation that would provide greater reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for individuals with mental illness, domestic violence records, and drug abusers, by increasing the penalties for states that fail to adequately turn over records for those who are prohibited from owning a gun. The legislation will also require that all gun sales, including those by private sellers, be subject to a background check, effectively ending the gun show loophole. The legislation, based on a proposal put forward by the coalition of Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns is designed to help prevent the next mass shooting. The Senator made the announcement one week into the coalition’s Nationwide Drive to Fix Gun Checks, a campaign featuring a mobile billboard truck that tolls the tragic count of Americans that have been murdered with guns since the Tucson shooting."

Statement from the Department of Health and Human Services on the Regulation for the Enforcement of Federal Health Care Conscience Protections: "The administration strongly supports provider conscience laws that protect and support the rights of health care providers, and also recognizes and supports the rights of patients. Strong conscience laws make it clear that health care providers cannot be compelled to perform or assist in an abortion. Many of these strong conscience laws have been in existence for more than 30 years. The rule being issued today builds on these laws by providing a clear enforcement process. To underscore its support, HHS is beginning a new awareness initiative for our grantees through the HHS Office for Civil Rights, to ensure they understand the statutory conscience protections, and the enforcement process for those who believe their rights have been violated. The final conscience protection rule being issued today by HHS reaffirms the Department’s commitment to longstanding federal conscience statutes by maintaining and building upon provisions of the Bush administration rule that established an enforcement process for federal conscience laws, while rescinding the definitions and terms of the previous rule that caused confusion and could be taken as overly broad."

"EFF just received documents in response to a 2-year old FOIA request for information on the FBI’s "Going Dark" program, an initiative to increase the FBI's authority in response to problems the FBI says it's having implementing wiretap and pen register/trap and trace orders on new communications technologies. The documents detail a fully-formed and well-coordinated plan to expand existing surveillance laws and develop new ones. And although they represent only a small fraction of the documents we expect to receive in response to this and a more recent FOIA request, they were released just in time to provide important background information for the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing [February 17, 2011] on the Going Dark program."

Egyptians Find Their Power in Access to Information: "Make no mistake: Access to information, in a country with limited resources, served as the first catalyst for the Egyptian revolution that began January 25 and resulted 18 days later in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak after almost 30 years in office. The internet, along with Facebook and Twitter, was the Open University that facilitated learning about democracy for Egypt’s young people...But on the internet, the release of a single document spread like a ferocious fire in seconds, and millions had access to it. In a nation where only one in 700 citizens read the newspapers, young people with some European-language skills were able to translate and share news about the rest of the world with their fellow Egyptians. Those who did not read a foreign language saw the images, which they received through mobile technologies." by Sohair Wastawy - dean of university libraries at Illinois State University in Normal - who the first chief librarian of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, where she served for six years.

Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001 - 2008, A Report Prepared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 2011

Freedom in the World 2011: The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy, Washington, D.C, January 13, 2011: "Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region. A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world. Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.

"January 27 marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD), an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. Every member nation of the U.N. has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. The U.N. resolution that created IHRD rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity."

Via FAS: China: Student Informant System to Expand, Limiting School Autonomy, Free Expression (U//FOUO - "Unclassified // For Official Use Only")- 23 November 2010, CIA-DI-10-05021 [This report was prepared by the Open Source Works, which was charged by the Director for Intelligence with drawing on language trained analysts to mine open-source information for new or alternative insights on intelligence issues.]

Follow up to Justice Scalia's Comments on equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, via Slate - Who Does Justice Look Like? Her changing features — and skin color — over the centuries, by Dennis Curtis and Judith Resnik

Domestic Intelligence: New Powers, New Risks [released 01/18/11], by Emily Berman - Counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice

News release: "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced that private sector workplace discrimination charge filings with the federal agency nationwide hit an unprecedented level of 99,922 during fiscal year (FY) 2010, which ended Sept. 30, 2010. Despite the increase in overall charges filed with the EEOC last fiscal year, the Commission dramatically slowed the growth of the charge inventory. As a result, the federal agency ended FY 2010 with 86,338 pending charges - an increase of only 570 charges, or less than one percent. Between fiscal years 2008 and 2009, the EEOC's pending inventory increased 15.9 percent. The FY 2010 data show that the EEOC filed 250 lawsuits, resolved 285 lawsuits, and resolved 104,999 private sector charges. Through its combined enforcement, mediation and litigation programs, the EEOC secured more than $404 million in monetary benefits from employers -- the highest level of monetary relief ever obtained by the Commission through the administrative process -- to promote inclusive and discrimination-free workplaces. The FY 2010 enforcement and litigation statistics, which include trend data, are available online here."

News release: "Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region. A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world...Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators. Four countries received status declines, including Ukraine and Mexico, which both fell from Free to Partly Free. Mexico’s downgrade was a result of the government’s inability to stem the tide of violence by drug-trafficking groups, while Ukraine suffered from deteriorating levels of press freedom, instances of election fraud, and growing politicization of the judiciary. Djibouti and Ethiopia were downgraded from Partly Free to Not Free. Other countries showing declines included Bahrain, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, this News release: "A federal district court has granted the Department of Homeland Security's motion to conclude one of EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. EPIC was seeking more than 2,000 images generated by airport body scanners held by the TSA. The DHS objected to the disclosure and the court sided with the government. The court relied on a legal theory, "Exemption High (b)(2)" that is currently under review by the Supreme Court in Milner v. Dept. of Navy. As a result of this lawsuit, EPIC obtained many documents concerning the airport screening program, including Procurement Specifications, Operational Requirements, traveler complaints, and vendor contracts with L3 and Rapiscan, that were subsequently made available to the public. EPIC may appeal the district court's decision as to the release of the body scanner images. For more information see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Body Scanners."

News release: "...the FCC announced a challenge to researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness. The Open Internet Challenge is part of the FCC’s efforts to empower end users to help preserve Internet openness. Details of the challenge are posted at openinternet.gov/challenge. “This challenge is about using the open Internet to protect the open Internet,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Our goal is to foster user-developed applications that shine light on any practice that might be inconsistent with the free and open Internet. Empowering consumers with information about their own connections will promote a vibrant, innovative, world-leading broadband ecosystem.” The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with the open Internet. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content."

LMU Professor Presents Case for Dolphins as Nonhuman Persons at Science Conference: "Are dolphins nonhuman persons? Loyola Marymount University professor Thomas White insists they are, and presented his research this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego. White, the author of “In Defense of Dolphins: The New Frontier,” spoke on a panel on the Ethical Implications of Dolphin Intelligence: Dolphins as Nonhuman Persons. He and other experts discussed scientific research showing dolphins are highly intelligent, and, like humans, appear to be self-conscious, unique individuals with personalities, memories and a sense of self. They are vulnerable to pain and suffering and experience fear, dread and grief, the research suggests.

PEOPLE v. DIAZ, Criminal Appeal, Start Date: 09/09/2008. Opinion issued - Petition for review after the Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment of conviction of a criminal offense. This case presents the following issues: (1) Was defendant's cell phone an item "immediately associated with the person of the arrestee" within the meaning of United States v. Edwards (1974) 415 U.S. 800, and thus subject to search incident to his arrest? (2) Was the warrantless search of the cell phone an hour and a half after the arrest, while defendant was being interrogated, invalid under United States v. Chadwick (1977) 433 U.S. 1? The court ordered briefing deferred pending the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Arizona v. Gant, No. 07-542, cert. granted Feb. 25, 2008, __ U.S. __ [128 S.Ct. 1443, 170 L.Ed.2d 274], or further order of this court."

California Lawyer, January 2011 - Legally Speaking, The Originalist - Question: 'In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the release of a new paper, Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing, by Bruce Etling, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey."

Net Neutrality as Diplomacy, Jonathan Zittrain. Vol. 29, Yale Law & Policy Review, December 2010.

Washington Post: Auditors question TSA's use of and spending on technology: "The massive push to fix airport security in the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a gold rush in technology contracts for an industry that mushroomed almost overnight. Since it was founded in 2001, the TSA has spent roughly $14 billion in more than 20,900 transactions with dozens of contractors. In addition to beefing up the fleets of X-ray machines and traditional security systems at airports nationwide, about $8 billion also paid for ambitious new technologies. The agency has spent about $800 million on devices to screen bags and passenger items, including shoes, bottled liquids, casts and prostheses. For next year, it wants more than $1.3 billion for airport screening technologies. But lawmakers, auditors and national security experts question whether the government is too quick to embrace technology as a solution for basic security problems and whether the TSA has been too eager to write checks for unproven products."

• Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted, by Malcolm Gladwell: "he world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns...Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is..." [entire article available free online]
• The Political Power of Social Media Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change, by Clay Shirky: "Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide, involving many actors -- regular citizens, activists, nongovernmental organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, governments. This raises an obvious question for the U.S. government: How does the ubiquity of social media affect U.S. interests, and how should U.S. policy respond to it? As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action. In the political arena, as the protests in Manila demonstrated, these increased freedoms can help loosely coordinated publics demand change."[Access to this article is available for non-subscribers until 2/13/2011]

"The number of adults under correctional supervision in the United States declined by less than one percent during 2009, dropping to 7,225,800 (or 48,800 fewer offenders than at yearend 2008), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. This was the first measured decline in the total number of adults under correctional supervision since BJS began reporting these populations in 1980. One in 32 adults, or about 3.1 percent of U.S. adult residents, was under correctional supervision at yearend 2009, down slightly from the rate of supervision in 2008. Although comparatively small, decreases in the probation population (down by 40,079 offenders) and the parole population (down by 5,526 offenders) were the first observed decreases since BJS began annual data collections on these populations in 1980. At yearend 2009, 4,203,967 adults were on probation, and 819,308 were under parole or other post-custody supervision. During 2009, entries to probation declined by 2.4 percent, and entries to parole declined by 1.2 percent. At the same time, the number leaving probation increased by 0.3 percent and leaving parole supervision increased by 0.9 percent. The increased number of offenders leaving probation and parole was associated with increases in the rate of offenders completing their terms of supervision. During 2009, 65 percent of probationers completed their terms, either by serving their full-term sentence or by early discharge, up from 58 percent in 2006. Among parolees, 51 percent completed their terms of supervision during 2009, up from 45 percent in 2006. The failure rate of offenders under community supervision—defined as the incarceration of offenders at any time during the year—remained relatively stable or declined during 2009. For probationers, the percent incarcerated at some time during the year remained relatively stable from 2006 (6.1 percent) through 2009 (5.8 percent). Among parolees, the failure rate declined slightly from 15.4 percent in 2006 to 14.0 percent in 2009."

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new report, Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites by Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, Ryan McGrady, Jillian York, John Palfrey

NYT: "The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation. By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens...Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said as the debate opened. “If you love this country enough to risk your life for it, you shouldn’t have to hide who you are."

Organised crime and the efforts to combat it: A concern for public health, Lucy Reynolds & Martin McKee, Globalization and Health, Globalization and Health 2010, 6:21doi:10.1186/1744-8603-6-21

EPIC: December 10 marks the United Nation's annual International Human Rights Day, which celebrates the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration sets forth universal privacy rights in Article 12 and rights to freedom of expression in Article 19. The Declaration's importance and influence is recognized in the U.S. State Department's annual Human Rights Reports. In 2009, the Public Voice published the Madrid Privacy Declaration, which affirmed these international rights to privacy and free and open expression. You can find more information and resources through the U.N. Dag Hammarskjöld Library's Human Rights Day page."

EPIC: December 10 marks the United Nation's annual International Human Rights Day, which celebrates the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration sets forth universal privacy rights in Article 12 and rights to freedom of expression in Article 19. The Declaration's importance and influence is recognized in the U.S. State Department's annual Human Rights Reports. In 2009, the Public Voice published the Madrid Privacy Declaration, which affirmed these international rights to privacy and free and open expression. You can find more information and resources through the U.N. Dag Hammarskjöld Library's Human Rights Day page."

Changes in Airport Passenger Screening Technologies and Procedures: Frequently Asked Questions, Bart Elias, Specialist in Aviation Policy, November 23, 2010

US Courts: "A recently published study on federal death penalty cases offers updated findings on the cost, quality, and availability of defense representation. Among the findings: The median cost of a case in which the Attorney General authorized seeking the death penalty was nearly eight times greater than the cost of a case that was eligible for capital prosecution but in which the death penalty was not authorized. The report also shows that cases in which seeking the death penalty was authorized cost more than twice as much if they went to trial rather than being resolved through a plea agreement."

Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and the Human Rights Documentation Systems - "Established by the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights which came into force on 21 October 1986 after its adoption in Nairobi (Kenya) in 1981 by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (OAU.), the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights is charged with ensuring the promotion and protection of Human and Peoples' Rights throughout the African Continent."

Report of the Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Department of Defense, November 30, 2010

New York Review of Books, On the Death Sentence, John Paul Stevens' review of Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, by David Garland

LLRX.com - Actual Innocence and Freestanding Claims for Relief: Ken Strutin has written extensively for LLRX.com on criminal law issues. He argues that false confessions, bad eyewitness identifications, and faulty forensics, among other problems, have shown that seemingly iron clad adjudications can reach the wrong result. A 'guilty' verdict only indicates that the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed each and every element of the crime, and not that the defendant actually committed the crime. A freestanding claim of actual innocence is a potentially powerful tool to assail a verdict that points to the wrong person. Still, courts have made only small gains in recognizing actual innocence generally as a basis for contesting a wrongful conviction. This article collects selected scholarship on "actual innocence" and litigating post-conviction claims that go beyond the procedural metrics of the trial process.

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports via CNET, Your risks and rights with TSA's 'enhanced' screening (FAQ).

Google: "..we’re releasing a white paper, Enabling Trade in the Era of Information Technologies: Breaking Down Barriers to the Free Flow of Information, that explores the ways that governments impose limits on the free flow of information online. It’s pretty wonky stuff, but the premise is simple: In addition to infringing human rights, governments that block the free flow of information on the Internet are also blocking trade and economic growth. Over the last two decades, the Internet has delivered tremendous economic and trade benefits. It has driven record increases in productivity, spurred innovation, created new economies, and fueled international trade. In part this is because the Internet makes geographically distant markets easy to reach. But this engine of economic growth is increasingly coming under attack. According to one study, more than forty governments now engage in broad-scale restriction of online information. Governments are blocking online services, imposing non-transparent regulation, and seeking to incorporate surveillance tools into their Internet infrastructure. These are the trade barriers of the 21st century economy...we urge policymakers in the United States, European Union and elsewhere to take steps to break down barriers to free trade and Internet commerce. These issues present challenges, but also an opportunity for governments to align 21st century trade policy with the 21st century economy."

EPIC: "A new poll by Zogby International finds that 61% of Americans polled between Nov. 19 and Nov. 22 oppose the use of full body scans and TSA pat downs. Of those polled, 52% believe the enhanced security measures will not prevent terrorist activity, almost half (48%) say it is a violation of privacy rights, 33% say they should not have to go through enhanced security methods to get on an airplane, and 32% believe the full body scans and TSA pat downs to be sexual harassment. The Zogby Poll is the most recent survey of American opinion on the new airport screening procedures. Combined with earlier polls by USA Today and the Washington Post-ABC News, the Zogby Poll reflects declining support for the TSA program."

• News release: "U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a scientist and the Chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, Friday wrote the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), reiterating his concerns about the use of body imaging technology, notably about potential health effects and the effectiveness of the screening to detect the full range of explosive threats known or anticipated to be used by potential terrorists...the majority of the radiation from X-ray backscatter machines strikes the top of the head, which is where 85 percent of the 800,000 cases of basal cell carcinoma diagnosed in the United States each year develop."
  
• Airport body-scanner manufacturers armed for K Street battle: "...Companies like L-3 Communications, the defense contractor, are providing several of the scanners under a nearly $165 million TSA contract won earlier this year, are well-prepared for the fight."
  
• WaPo: Protesters' body scanner opt-out day could bring nationwide delays at airports

News release: "Today, the FBI released 2009 statistics which indicated that 6,604 criminal incidents involving 7,789 offenses were reported as a result of bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability. Hate Crime Statistics, 2009, published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, includes data from hate crime reports submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the nation."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, this news release: "The Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA), welcomed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announcement of expedited screening for airline pilots as important action to move the nation toward a threat-based strategy that focuses security resources where the risk is highest and away from a one-size-fits-all approach...ALPA proposed the creation of a highly secure and effective security screening system that would quickly and accurately verify the identity and employment status of active airline pilots. As a result, ALPA’s Crew Personnel Advanced Screening System (CrewPASS) program would identify individual pilots as trusted and, as a result, enhance the overall security of air travel and reduce passenger delays. In [the November 19, 2010] announcement, the TSA acknowledged ALPA for developing the CrewPASS concept and committed to phasing in CrewPASS nationally. The CrewPASS system is currently operating at Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International, Pittsburgh International, and Columbia Metropolitan airports."

"The International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via National Journal, "The Transportation Security Administration is working to create an alternative screening process for pilots, the agency's chief said this morning, amid mounting protests by airline pilots over new airport scanners criticized as invasive and hazardous to health due to radiation exposure."

Revisions to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's Rules of Procedure, effective November 1, 2010. [Government Attic]

H-2B Visa Program: Closed Civil Criminal Cases Illustrate Instances of H-2B Workers Being Targets of Fraud and Abuse, GAO-10-1053, September 30, 2010

Google Confronts China’s “Three Warfares”, by Timothy L. Thomas. Parameters, Summer 2010, Vol. 40, No. 2, U.S. Army War College.

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against three agencies of the Department of Justice (DOJ) today, demanding records about problems or limitations that hamper electronic surveillance and potentially justify or undermine the Administration's new calls for expanded surveillance powers. The issue has been in the headlines for more than a month, kicked off by a New York Times report that the government was seeking to require "back doors" in all communications systems -- from email and webmail to Skype, Facebook and even Xboxes -- to ease its ability to spy on Americans. The head of the FBI publicly claimed that these "back doors" are needed because advances in technology are eroding agents' ability to intercept information. EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the DOJ Criminal Division to see if that claim is backed up by specific incidents where these agencies encountered obstacles in conducting electronic surveillance."

Pay Equity Legislation, Jody Feder, Legislative Attorney, Linda Levine, Specialist in Labor Economics, September 20, 2010

News release: "In settling a lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the federal government [October 18, 2010] recognized the public’s right to take photographs and record videos in public spaces outside federal courthouses throughout the nation. The settlement comes after the NYCLU sued the federal government in April on behalf of a Libertarian activist who was unlawfully arrested by federal officers after exercising his First Amendment right to record digital video outside of a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan."

Opportunities for Community Development Finance in the Disability Market, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, September 2010.

Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997–2009, by Kathleen M. Ridolfi and Maurice Possley

"Incarceration reduces former inmates’ earnings by 40 percent and limits their future economic mobility, according to a new Pew report, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility. This is a growing challenge now that 1 in every 28 children in America has a parent behind bars, up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago."

News release: "The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in which it established for a period of three years a Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practise, and a decision in which it decided to hold a panel discussion on human rights in the context of action taken to address terrorist hostage-taking with a special focus on the primary responsibility of States...In a resolution (A/HRC/15/L.15) regarding the elimination of discrimination against women, adopted without a vote, the Council calls upon States to fulfill their obligations and commitments to revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex and remove gender bias in the administration of justice, taking into account the fact that those laws violate the human right of women to be protected against discrimination; recognizes that women’s inequality before the law has resulted in the lack of equal opportunities for women in education, access to health, economic participation, access to labour markets and disparities in salaries and compensation, public and political participation, access to decision-making processes, inheritance, ownership of land, financial services, including loans, and nationality and legal capacity, as well as increased vulnerability to discrimination and violence, and that all countries face challenges in these areas; emphasizes the significant role that women play in economic development and in the eradication of poverty, and stresses the need to promote equal pay for equal work or work of equal value and for promoting the recognition of the value of women’s unremunerated work, as well as for developing and promoting policies that facilitate the reconciliation of employment and family responsibilities; calls upon States to pay particular attention to discrimination against women in situations of vulnerability, such as women living in poverty, migrant women, women with disabilities, and women belonging to minorities..."

"Are gender pay gaps more prevalent in some industries than others? Are women in management paying a price for being mothers? Are families who depend on the wages of Management Moms being penalized? The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, held a hearing, titled New Evidence on the Gender Pay Gap for Women and Mothers in Management, on September 28, 2010, to explore these questions. At the hearing, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented their findings of a comprehensive industry-by-industry assessment of wage differences between men and women managers. This report also, for the first time, takes an in-depth look at the impact of motherhood on the wage gap among managers and its impact on family incomes." Related documents as follows:

• "In many countries of the world, traditions and social norms restrict women’s empowerment. The OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) offers a tool to measure these hidden instances of gender discrimination. Drawing on 12 innovative indicators, the index captures the underlying reasons for existing gender gaps. SIGI indicators are based on an in-depth assessment of the situation of women and men in 124 low- and middle income countries, 102 of which are ranked based on their performance in social institutions."
  
• Targeting Inequity: The Gender Gap in U.S. Corporate Leadership, President and Chief Executive Officer, Catalyst, Inc.

News release: "Taking another step in its commitment to end disability discrimination in employment, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the filing of three new disability discrimination cases today, charging employers in Georgia, Maryland and Michigan with violations of the recently amended Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The cases — all filed under the broader and simplified definition of disability set forth in the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) — allege discrimination against qualified individuals with diabetes, cancer and severe arthritis."

A Review of the FBI's Investigations of Certain Domestic Advocacy Groups, September 2010

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has set a briefing schedule for EPIC v. DHS, No. 10-1157, EPIC's challenge to the airport body scanner program. EPIC has alleged that that the Department of Homeland Security has violated three federal laws (the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) and that the body scanner search itself is unconstitutional, given what the courts have said about the permissible scope of airport screening procedures. EPIC's initial brief will be due November 1, 2010. Subsequent briefs from DHS and EPIC will be due by December 15, 2010. In earlier open government litigation against DHS, EPIC obtained evidence that the devices are designed to store and record images."

"Very timely Justice Department data show that Immigration Judges are declining substantially fewer requests for asylum. Denial rates have reached the lowest level in the last quarter of a century according to a new analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Twenty five years ago, in FY 1986, almost nine out of ten (89%) of the asylum requests in the Immigration Courts were denied. While the annual rates have gone up and down during the ensuing years, only half (50%) of the requests were denied during the first nine months of FY 2010 — a record low. One factor contributing to the improved success of the asylum seekers is that a higher proportion of the total are represented by counsel. It must be noted, however, that the number of those seeking asylum in court proceedings has fallen. These and many other findings have emerged in the fifth annual report of TRAC's monitoring series on Asylum Decisions in the Immigration Courts. The reports are based upon hundreds of thousands of case-by-case asylum records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The records cover asylum decisions for the last quarter century, and are current through June 21, 2010."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, "EPIC has filed an appeal with the Transportation Security Administration, challenging the agency's denial of expedited processing and fee waivers for an EPIC Freedom of Information Act request. EPIC's is seeking documents from the TSA concerning full body scanner radiation risks and testing. EPIC challenged the TSA's denial of expedited processing, arguing that by delaying to release of the records, the agency was risking the health of travelers and its own employees. EPIC also argued that the record request was particularly timely, as three US Senators recently wrote to the Department of Homeland Security about the safety of the airport body scanners and the risk to air travelers. Separately, EPIC has urged a federal court to suspend the program, pending an independent review of the health risks and privacy impact."

Women and the Economy 2010: 25 Years of Progress But Challenges Remain, August 2010
Report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee

"The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a new and unique human rights mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council aiming at improving the human rights situation on the ground of each of the 192 UN Member States. Under this mechanism, the human rights situation of all UN Member States is reviewed every 4 years (48 States are reviewed each year during 3 UPR sessions dedicated to 16 States each). The result of each review is reflected in an “outcome report” listing the recommendations made to the State under review (SuR) including those that it accepted."

News release: "Developed in association with the British Red Cross, the database is designed to be used as a legal reference in international and non-international armed conflicts, including by courts, tribunals and international organizations. As one of the principal sources of international humanitarian law, customary law enhances the legal protection of victims of armed conflict... Customary international humanitarian law is a set of unwritten rules derived from a general, or common, practice which is regarded as law. It is the basic standard of conduct in armed conflict accepted by the world community and is universally applicable. In contrast to treaty law, it is not necessary for a State to formally accept a rule of custom in order to be bound by it, as long as the overall State practice on which the rule is based is widespread, representative and virtually uniform."

Solitary Confinement: Ken Strutin's selected guide represents current research and thinking about the physical, psychological and legal implications of isolation as punishment, and the policy issues behind continuing this practice in the light of national and international standards and human rights declaration. Ken engages us to consider the ramifications of solitary confinement, the most extreme penalty in the hierarchy of incarcerative punishment. Depending on the institution, length of detention and purpose, this "prison within prison" has been described in many ways: administrative segregation, communications management unit, control unit, disciplinary housing unit, the hole, intensive management unit, lockdown, punitive isolation, segregation, SHU (special housing unit, special handling unit, segregated housing unit, security housing unit), and Supermax (Super-Maximum Security Confinement).

Follow up to previous postings on National Security Letters, this news release: "The FBI has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties Union client Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing to anyone that he received a national security letter (NSL) demanding private customer records. Merrill, who received the NSL as the president of an Internet service provider (ISP), can now reveal his identity and speak about his experience for the first time since receiving the NSL. The ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the NSL statute and the gag order on behalf of Merrill (then called John Doe) in April 2004, which resulted in numerous court rulings finding the NSL statute unconstitutional. Merrill was the first person ever to challenge an NSL in court...NSLs are secret record demands the FBI issues to obtain access to personal customer records from ISPs, libraries, financial institutions and credit reporting agencies without court approval or even suspicion of wrongdoing. Because the FBI can gag NSL recipients to prohibit them from disclosing anything about the record demands they receive, the FBI's use and potential abuse of the NSL power has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. While the NSL served on Merrill stated that he was prohibited from telling anyone about it, he decided to challenge the demand in court because he believed that the FBI was ordering him to turn over constitutionally protected information about one of his clients. Because of the FBI-imposed gag, Merrill was prohibited from talking about the NSL or revealing his identity and role in the lawsuit until today, even though the FBI abandoned its demand for records from Merrill more than three years ago."

News release: "Tactics of the Taliban and other Anti-Government Elements (AGEs) are behind a 31 per cent increase in conflict-related Afghan civilian casualties in the first six months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said today in releasing its 2010 Mid-Year Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. Among those killed or injured by the Taliban and other AGEs were 55 per cent more children than in 2009, along with six per cent more women. Casualties attributed to Pro-Government Forces (PGF) fell 30 per cent during the same period, driven by a 64 per cent decline in deaths and injuries caused by aerial attacks. “Afghan children and women are increasingly bearing the brunt of this conflict. They are being killed and injured in their homes and communities in greater numbers than ever before,” said Staffan de Mistura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General. From 1 January to 30 June 2010, UNAMA Human Rights Unit documented 3,268 civilian casualties including 1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries. AGEs were responsible for 2,477 casualties (76 per cent of all casualties, up 53 per cent from 2009) while 386 were attributed to PGF activities (12 per cent of all casualties, down 30 per cent from 2009)."

U.S. Department of Justice The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, A Report to Congress, August 2010

Defining Internet Freedom - eJournal - U.S. Department of State, July 2010

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) Immigration study: "Just released figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), however, show that during the first nine months of FY 2010, 279,035 non-U.S. citizens were removed* from the country as a result of ICE enforcement. This number is ten (10) percent more than the same period during FY 2008 — the last fiscal year of the Bush administration. This represents almost a doubling of the rate of removals that have taken place during the past five years. In addition to increases in alien removals under the Obama administration, the data also show that ICE — rather than simply trying to ramp up numbers — has also directed more of its attention to going after noncitizens who have committed crimes while in this country."

Rough justice in America - Too many laws, too many prisoners- Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little ,li>"Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed. The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them."

Annual Report on the Federal Work Force Fiscal Year 2009. From the Executive Summary:

• In FY 2009, there were almost 2.8 million women and men employed by the federal government across the country and around the world.
  
  1. 55.9% were men and 44.1% were women; after a slow but steady increase, the participation rate for women fell slightly from last year (44.13% to 44.06%).
     
  2. 7.9% were Hispanic or Latino, 65.6% were White, 18.0% were Black or African American, 5.8% were Asian, 0.3% were Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, 1.7% were American Indian/Alaska Native, and 0.7% were persons of Two or More Races.
  
  
• Between FY 2008 and FY 2009, Women, Hispanic or Latino men and women, men and women of Two or More Races, and White women remained below their overall availability in the national civilian labor force, as reported in the 2000 census (CLF).
  
• After a steady decline for the past ten years, the participation rate of employees with targeted disabilities in the federal work force held steady in FY 2009 at 0.88%. Despite a modest net gain of 236 employees in FY 2009 over FY 2008, Individuals with Targeted Disabilities still fell far short of the 2% goal set by EEOC’s LEAD Initiative.

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "On July 20, 2010, the Department of Homeland Security announced a substantial change in the deployment of body scanners in US airports. According to the DHS Secretary, the devices, which had once been part of a pilot program for secondary screening, will now be deployed in 28 additional airports. The devices are designed to capture and store photographic images of naked air travelers. EPIC has filed an emergency motion in federal court, urging the suspension of the program and citing violations of several federal statutes and the Fourth Amendment. Public opposition to the program is also growing."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, today, EPIC filed a reply in its case against the Department of Homeland Security, EPIC v. DHS,10-1157. EPIC had previously filed a petition and motion for emergency stay, asking the court to suspend the use of the machines. EPIC argued that the use of body scanners for primary screening in U.S. airports violates several federal laws and the Fourth Amendment. In its reply to the government's motion, EPIC also cited the growing public opposition to the program, the decision of major airports not to use body scanners, as well as the agency's failure to adequately address Constitutional concerns."

News release: "House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. D-Mich.) today released the transcript of the Committee’s interview of Judge Jay Bybee, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the administration of President George W. Bush and author of two of the Bush administration’s most infamous "torture memos." "This testimony reveals that many brutal techniques reportedly used in CIA interrogations were not authorized by the Justice Department – the author of these legal memos has now admitted this on the record," Conyers said. "These statements are highly relevant to the pending criminal investigation of detainee abuse and I have provided the Committee’s interview to the Justice Department and directed my staff to cooperate with any further requests for information."

Jay Bybee Interview Transcript and Related Materials

• Bybee Interview Transcript
  
• Bybee Interview Documents 1-4
  
• Bybee Interview Document 5
  
• Bybee Interview Documents 6-16
  
• Bybee Interview Documents 17-33

News release: "The Department of Justice challenged the state of Arizona’s recently passed immigration law, S.B. 1070, in federal court today. In a brief filed in the District of Arizona, the Department said S.B. 1070 unconstitutionally interferes with the federal government’s authority to set and enforce immigration policy, explaining that “the Constitution and federal law do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.” A patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement. Having enacted its own immigration policy that conflicts with federal immigration law, Arizona “crossed a constitutional line.” The Department’s brief said that S.B. 1070 will place significant burdens on federal agencies, diverting their resources away from high-priority targets, such as aliens implicated in terrorism, drug smuggling, and gang activity, and those with criminal records. The law’s mandates on Arizona law enforcement will also result in the harassment and detention of foreign visitors and legal immigrants, as well as U.S. citizens, who cannot readily prove their lawful status."

• The United States of America v. The State of Arizona; and Janice K. Brewer, Governor of the State of Arizona, in her official capacity.” – U.S. v Arizona and Jan Brewer — Complaint
  
• U.S. v Arizona and Jan Brewer – Plaintiff’s motion for preliminary injunction and memorandum of law

Gender Equality Universally Embraced, But Inequalities Acknowledged, released July 1, 2010

Prisoners at Yearend 2009 - Advance Counts, Heather C. West, June 23, 2010. NCJ 230189

• "Presents data on prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities on December 31, 2009, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics series. This report compares changes in the prison population during 2009 to changes from yearend 2000 through yearend 2008 and explores semi-annual growth trends in the prison population from yearend 2006 through yearend 2009.
• Highlights include the following: At yearend 2009, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,613,656 prisoners, an increase of 0.2% (3,897 prisoners) from yearend 2008 The number of prisoners under state jurisdiction declined by 2,941 prisoners (0.2%), the only decrease in the state prison population between 2000 and 2009; the federal prison population increased by 6,838 prisoners (3.4%) and accounted for all of the increase in the U.S. prison population. Twenty-four states reported decreases in their prison population during 2009, with a combined total decrease of 15,223 state prisoners; a total increase of 12,282 prisoners was reported in the remaining 26 states."

Follow up to previous posting sentencing guidelines, "U.S. Sentencing Commission has published the results of the first-ever survey of federal trial judges to elicit their views about federal sentencing under the advisory guidelines system in effect since 2005. The survey, among many other findings, indicates that 62 percent of the responding judges believe that mandatory minimum sentences for various federal crimes are too high. The survey, conducted from January through March 2010, drew responses from 639 of the 942 judges to whom it was sent, a 67.8 percent response rate. Based on an analysis, the 639 judges who responded sentenced 116,183 of the 146,511 individual federal criminal offenders sentenced in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 – 79 percent of the offenders sentenced in that two-year span."

News release: "A report released by UN Office on Drugs and Crime shows how organized crime has globalized and turned into one of the world's foremost economic and armed powers. The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment, released at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, looks at major trafficking flows of drugs (cocaine and heroin), firearms, counterfeit products, stolen natural resources and people (for sex and forced labour), as well as smuggled migrants. It also covers maritime piracy and cybercrime."

Rand - Security at what cost? Quantifying trade-offs across liberty, privacy and security, by Neil Robinson, Dimitris Potoglou, Chong Woo Kim, Peter Burge, Richard Warnes

News release: "The 10th annual Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2010, outlines the continuing challenges across the globe, including in the United States. The Report, for the first time, includes a ranking of the United States based on the same standards to which we hold other countries. The United States takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it."

For all of us who have been engaged in animal rights issues for many decades, this cover article, The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome, is a vivid and painful reminder how little has changed, and how much work we will always have before us.

News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union marks the 47th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act with a call for the Senate to pass S. 182, the Paycheck Fairness Act. President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law 47 years ago Thursday, prohibiting wage discrimination based on sex. However, since its passage, loopholes and weak remedies have watered down the Act’s effectiveness. Forty-seven years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, women still make, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide a much needed update to the Equal Pay Act, closing loopholes in the current law, strengthening weak remedies and taking steps to finally close the wage gap."

The Register: "The Chinese government has issued a white paper laying out current, and future, internet policy - and you might not recognise its view of internet use in that country...The paper warns: "Citizens are not allowed to infringe upon state, social and collective interests or the legitimate freedom and rights of other citizens. No organization or individual may utilize telecommunication networks to engage in activities that jeopardize state security, the public interest or the legitimate rights and interests of other people."..."China's 3G network covers the whole country. Of all internet users in China - 346 million use broadband and 233 million use mobile phones to access the net."

No Secrets, by Raffi Khatchadourian: "[Julian Paul] Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantánamo Bay, and the “Climategate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends—as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries."

News release: "Targeted killings pose a rapidly growing challenge to the international rule of law. They are increasingly used in circumstances which violate the relevant rules of international law. The international community needs to be more forceful in demanding accountability,” said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. Alston’s report to the Human Rights Council on legal issues raised by targeted killing was released by the United Nations today. “The most prolific user of targeted killings today is the United States, which primarily uses drones for attacks. Some 40 states already possess drone technology, and some already have, or are seeking, the capacity to fire missiles from them”, said the expert. “The result is that the rules being set today are going to govern the conduct of many States tomorrow. I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe. But this strongly asserted but ill-defined licence to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other States can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.” The report identifies two major problems: the excessively broad circumstances in which targeted killings are alleged to be legal, and the absence of essential accountability mechanisms in situations where they are used."

FT.com: "Google is phasing out the internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system because of security concerns, according to several Google employees. The directive to move to other operating systems began in earnest in January, after Google’s Chinese operations were hacked, and could effectively end the use of Windows at Google, which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally."

Final Report, Guantánamo Review Task Force, dated January 22, 2010 released by the Washington Post on May 29, 2010 (no registration required). "The report was completed in January but sent to select committees on Capitol Hill just this week." See also the paper's related graphic.

Unauthorized Aliens in the United States, April 27, 2010

"The key message of the contribution of the Special Rapporteur is the following: the right to food is not merely a slogan, and it is not only of symbolic value; it is a tool, with clear operational impacts, that can improve the impacts of interventions in a variety of domains, and make them more sustainable in the long-term. Because it improves targeting, it can act as a compass for tackling food insecurity. Because it promotes accountability, it can ensure that efforts are directed to those whose rights are violated."

News release: "New York State Senator Thomas P. Morahan, Chairman of the Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities today secured Senate passage of his landmark legislation (S.1823-B) which establishes a civil cause of action for employees who are subjected to an abusive work environment. Specifically, this legislation provides legal redress for employees who have been harmed psychologically, physically or economically by being deliberately subjected to abusive work environments; and it provides legal incentives for employers to prevent and respond to mistreatment of employees at work. Surveys and studies demonstrate that 16 to 21 percent of employees experience health-endangering workplace bullying, abuse and harassment, and that this behavior is 4 times more prevalent then sexual harassment. These studies have also documented the serious effects on these targeted employees. They include: shame, humiliation, stress, loss of sleep, severe anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, reduced immunity to infection, gastrointestinal disorders, hypertension and pathophysiologic changes that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease." [Stuart Basefsky]

ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law, Updated 8 March 2010, by Marci Hoffman

News release: "A total of 2,376 federal and state applications for orders authorizing the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications, known as wiretaps, was reported in 2009. The number of applications for orders by federal authorities was 663; the number of applications reported by state prosecuting officials was 1,713. No applications were denied. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 requires the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to report to Congress the number and nature of federal and state applications for wiretap orders. The 2009 Wiretap Report covers intercepts concluded between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009."

News release [includes database with links to data on individual countries, regions, and rank]

Generalized ‘satisfaction of search’: Adverse influences on dual-target search accuracy - Mathias S. Fleck, Ehsan Samei, and Stephen R. Mitroff, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Carl E. Ravin Advanced Imaging Laboratories, Department of Radiology, Duke University Medical Center

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, this news release: "EPIC and a broad coalition of organizations sent a formal petition to the Department of Homeland Security to demand that the agency suspend the airport body scanner program. The petition states that the "uniquely intrusive search" is unreasonable and violates the Constitution. The petition further states the program fails to comply with several federal laws, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Privacy Act of 1974, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The petitioners also argue that the machines are ineffective and that there are better, less costly security technology. The petitioners contend that the TSA has routinely misled the pubic about the ability of the devices to store and transmit detailed images of travelers' naked bodies. In a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has already obtained technical documents, vendor contracts, and hundreds of traveler complaints."

U.S. Initiatives to Promote Global Internet Freedom: Issues, Policy, and Technology. April 5, 2010

Follow up to Missing White House E-Mails Still Factor in Torture Memo Investigation, this CREW news release: "On Friday, April 16, CREW received an initial response to its Freedom of Information Act request of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) related to the failure of former OLC official John Yoo to preserve any of his emails. In response to CREW’s request for record keeping guidance issued to OLC staff, OLC produced two memos, both of which require OLC staff to retain all emails “that are important to understanding a decision of the Office.” There can be no question Mr. Yoo’s failure to preserve any emails directly contravenes OLC’s record keeping guidance. Click here to read CREW's FOIA request."

H. R. 3590, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [906 pages, PDF]
"OFFICE.—There is established within the Office of the Secretary, an Office on Women’s Health (referred to in this section as the ‘Office’). The Office shall be headed by a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women’s Health who may report to the Secretary.
"(b) DUTIES.—The Secretary, acting through the Office, with
respect to the health concerns of women, shall—
"(1) establish short-range and long-range goals and objectives within the Department of Health and Human Services and, as relevant and appropriate, coordinate with other appropriate offices on activities within the Department that relate to disease prevention, health promotion, service delivery, research, and public and health care professional education, for issues of particular concern to women throughout their lifespan;
"(2) provide expert advice and consultation to the Secretary concerning scientific, legal, ethical, and policy issues relating
to women’s health;
"(3) monitor the Department of Health and Human Services’ offices, agencies, and regional activities regarding women’s health and identify needs regarding the coordination of activities, including intramural and extramural multidisciplinary activities;
"(4) establish a Department of Health and Human Services Coordinating Committee on Women’s Health, which shall be chaired by the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women’s Health and composed of senior level representatives from each of the agencies and offices of the Department of Health and Human Services;
"(5) establish a National Women’s Health Information Center to—
"(A) facilitate the exchange of information regarding matters relating to health information, health promotion, preventive health services, research advances, and education in the appropriate use of health care;
"(B) facilitate access to such information;
"(C) assist in the analysis of issues and problems relating to the matters described in this paragraph; and
"(D) provide technical assistance with respect to the exchange of information (including facilitating the development of materials for such technical assistance)..."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, this news release: "Ninety-three percent of Americans said they are willing to sacrifice some level of privacy to increase safety when traveling by air, according to research conducted in January and February by Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS). Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) said they are willing to cooperate with full electronic body scans at the airport, and more than half (57%) would be willing to submit to identity checks using biometric data such as iris scans or fingerprints. Nearly three quarters of Americans (72%) said they are willing to provide personal data in advance of air travel to increase security. The findings, part of the latest bi-annual Unisys Security Index, illustrate that recent events such as the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing may have made security a priority for air travelers. A clear majority of citizens in nearly every country surveyed said they would be willing to forgo privacy to increase air travel security. For example, 90% of citizens in the United Kingdom and 70% of Australians said they would submit to electronic body scans."

"The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust and created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent living memorial to the victims. This year Holocaust Remembrance Day is Sunday, April 11. The Museum designated Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters as the theme for the 2010 observance. In accordance with its Congressional mandate, the Museum is responsible for leading the nation in commemorating the Days of Remembrance, and for encouraging and sponsoring appropriate observances throughout the United States. Observances and remembrance activities can occur during the week of Remembrance that runs from the Sunday before Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) through the following Sunday (view the Remembrance Day Calendar). Days of Remembrance are observed by state and local governments, military bases, workplaces, schools, churches, synagogues, and civic centers."

New York Times: "Nancy Paterson, an international war crimes prosecutor who played a leading role in building the case linking the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to massacres, mass rape and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s, died on March 27 at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 56."

News release: "Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today announced that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will begin implementing new enhanced security measures for all air carriers with international flights to the United States to strengthen the safety and security of all passengers—superseding the emergency measures put in place immediately following the attempted terrorist attack on Dec. 25, 2009...Secretary Napolitano also commended today’s release of the Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment as another important step in efforts to protect the nation’s traveling public from acts of terrorism—conducted by the Obama administration in its first year as a thorough review of the nation’s surface transportation security efforts, which cover mass transit, commuter and long-distance passenger rail, freight rail, commercial vehicles and pipelines."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "In response to a Congressional inquiry, led by Congressman Bennie Thompson, the Transportation Security Agency acknowledged that images on body scanner machines would be recorded for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The TSA also did not dispute that test mode could be activated in airports, but said this "would" not happen. As part of an ongoing lawsuit, EPIC had previously obtained TSA documents describing the machines' capabilities to store and transmit detailed images of travelers' naked bodies."

Follow up to previous postings on the Domestic Surveillance Program, via EFF, Kevin Bankston: "Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the federal district court in San Francisco found that the government illegally wiretapped an Islamic charity's phone calls in 2004, granting summary judgment for the plaintiffs in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama. The court held the government liable for violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Today's order is the first decision since ACLU v. NSA to hold that warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency was illegal. The decision in ACLU v. NSA was overturned on other grounds in 2007, and the focus of the government's litigation strategy since then has been to avoid having any court rule on the merits of the issue. The court's thorough decision is a strong rebuke to the government's argument that only the Executive Branch may determine if a case against the government can proceed in the courts, by invoking state secrets. The Obama Administration adopted this "state secrets privilege" theory from the Bush Administration's legal positions in this and other warrantless wiretapping cases."

News release: "A broad coalition of privacy groups, think tanks, technology companies and academics today issued principles for updating the key federal law that defines the rules for government access to email and private files stored in the Internet “cloud.” The coalition cited the need to preserve traditional privacy rights in the face of technological change while also ensuring that law enforcement agents can carry out investigations and that industry has the clarity needed to innovate. To set a consistent standard in line with the traditional rules for law enforcement access in the offline world, the group’s recommendations focus on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Passed in 1986 and not significantly updated since, it establishes standards for government access to email and other electronic communications in criminal investigations."

"This document, Death Sentences and Executions in 2009, summarizes Amnesty International's global research on the use of the death penalty in 2009. More than two-thirds of the countries of the world have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. While 58 countries retained the death penalty in 2009, most did not use it. Eighteen countries were known to have carried out executions, killing a total of 714 people; however, this figure does not include the thousands of executions that were likely to have taken place in China, which again refused to divulge figures on its use of the death penalty." An update to this document is available here.

News release: "Telework ExchangeSM, a public-private partnership
focused on expanding telework adoption, in partnership with the Federal Managers Association, today announced the results of the Unnecessary Barriers study, which explores agencies’ performance in hiring, retaining, and effectively managing employees with disabilities. The study reveals that 71 percent of Federal employees feel their agency is committed to hiring employees with disabilities, however, just half say their agency is equipped to make good on this commitment. Further, nearly half of Federal managers report they have not received adequate training to effectively manage employees with disabilities or to effectively retain employees with disabilities – 40 and 45 percent, respectively."

Violence Against Women Act: History and Federal Funding, Garrine P. Laney, Analyst in Social Policy, February 26, 2010

Follow up to Google Discontinues Censored Search in Mainland China and An Interview with David Drummond of Google about the company's new policies in China, additional perspective as follows:

• New York Times, Google Searches for a Foreign Policy:"When Google announced last week that it would shut its censored online search service in China, it was doing more than standing up to a repressive government: it was showing that, with the United States still struggling to develop a foreign policy for the digital age, Internet companies need to articulate their own foreign policies."
  
• Washington Post - On Leadership: Views on Google's refusal to continue censorship in China by Benjamin W. Heineman Jr., business ethics expert and senior fellow at Harvard University's schools of law and government.

EPIC: "Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham have proposed a new national identity card. The Senators would require that "all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs" obtain a "high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card" with a unique biometric identifier. The card, they say, would not contain private information, medical information, or tracking techniques, and the biometric identifiers would not be stored in a government database. EPIC has testified in Congress and commented to federal agencies on the privacy and security risks associated with national identification systems and biometric identifiers."

Follow up to Google Discontinues Censored Search in Mainland China,
via the Atlantic, An Interview with David Drummond of Google about the company's new policies in China by James Fallows: "Since the Beijing Olympics, our experience in China has gotten worse. Although we have gained market share, it has become more and more difficult for us to operate there. Particularly when it comes to censorship. We have had to censor more. More and more pressure has been put on us. It has gotten appreciably worse – and not just for us, for other internet companies too."

Official Google Blog: "On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn. So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk."

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Data and Trends—Update 2010, by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs and Donna Clifton

Testimony of James E. Felman on behalf of the American Bar Association before the United States Sentencing Commission UNITED for the hearing on Proposed Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Regarding Alternatives to Incarceration, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2010

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "In testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, EPIC President Marc Rotenberg urged Congress to halt the plan to deploy body scanners in the nation's airports. "Based on the documents we've obtained, the views of experts, the concerns of American, and the extraordinary cost, Congress should suspend the program," said Mr. Rotenberg. In a recent letter to President Obama, EPIC and Ralph Nader recommended an independent review to assess health impacts, privacy safeguards, and the actual effectiveness of the devices. Through FOIA litigation, EPIC has obtained technical specifications, vendor contracts, and hundreds of complaints from US air travelers about the body scanners. A recent report from the GAO has also raised questions about the effectiveness and cost of the devices."

2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, March 11, 2010

News release: "Amnesty International has called on US President Barack Obama to tackle soaring rates of maternal mortality and pregnancy-related complications that particularly affect minorities and those living in poverty. Amnesty International’s report, Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA, urges action to tackle a crisis that sees between two and three women die every day during pregnancy and childbirth in the USA. A total of 1.7 million women a year, one-third of all pregnant women in the country, suffer from pregnancy-related complications. The report also revealed that severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death -- known as "near misses" -- are rising at an alarming rate, increasing by 25 percent since 1998."

News release: "Currently, foreign-born people make up approximately 13 percent of the total U.S. population. As the immigrant population grows, understanding its disability status and employment characteristics becomes increasingly important. People, both native and foreign-born, with disabilities make important contributions to our society, and many individuals continue to work despite a wide range of impairments. A new study by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital focuses on disability and employment among working-age immigrants in the United States. According to the study, released online in advance of print as an early view by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, there were an estimated 24 million U.S. working-age adults with disabilities in 2007. Of these, 8.5 million (35 percent) were employed. The study revealed that for each type of disability, including sensory, physical, mental and emotional conditions, both foreign-born citizens with disabilities and non-citizens with disabilities were more likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to be employed...The two most common occupations for foreign-born people with disabilities were in production and cleaning/maintenance, while the two most common occupations for U.S.-born people with disabilities were in sales and office/administrative support."

2009 Progress Report on the Economic Well-Being of Working-Age People with Disabilities September 2009 [posted February 2010], Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Employment Policy for Persons with Disabilities at Cornell University

Satellite Surveillance: Domestic Issues, Richard A. Best Jr. Specialist in National Defense, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, February 1, 2010

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports - "In response to an EPIC Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) released more documents about body scanners in US airports. The documents include many complaints from travelers who went through the devices. Travelers reported that they were not told about the pat down alternative or that they were going to be subject to a body scan by TSA officials. Travelers also expressed concern about radiation risks to pregnant women and the image capture of young children without clothes. EPIC has previously obtained whole body imaging vendor contracts, operational requirements, and procurement specifications from TSA. EPIC and Ralph Nader have urged President Obama to suspend the program until an independent review is completed."

LLRX.com: DNA Identification Evidence in Criminal Prosecutions

Parity democracy – A far cry from reality - Comparative study on the results of the first and second rounds of monitoring of Council of Europe Recommendation Rec (2003) 3 on balanced participation of women and men in political and public decision-making: "concludes that in the last years no major progress has been achieved to increase the presence of women in political decision making bodies. The report calls for the creation of a new momentum in member states to implement the 2003 Council of Europe Committee of Ministers Recommendation which set a 40% minimum threshold in public decision making bodies for both men and women."

• News release: "Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland calls on states to do more to eradicate discrimination against women."
• Link to fact sheet on the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights
• Link to special file on International Women's Day

Factsheet on European Court of Human Rights and Gender Equality

The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative: "President Obama has identified cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter. Shortly after taking office, the President therefore ordered a thorough review of federal efforts to defend the U.S. information and communications infrastructure and the development of a comprehensive approach to securing America’s digital infrastructure In May 2009, the President accepted the recommendations of the resulting Cyberspace Policy Review, including the selection of an Executive Branch Cybersecurity Coordinator who will have regular access to the President. The Executive Branch was also directed to work closely with all key players in U.S. cybersecurity, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents; strengthen public/private partnerships to find technology solutions that ensure U.S. security and prosperity; invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery to meet the digital challenges of our time; and begin a campaign to promote cybersecurity awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and begin to build the digital workforce of the 21st century. Finally, the President directed that these activities be conducted in a way that is consistent with ensuring the privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution and cherished by all Americans."

"Secretary Clinton today announced the 10 winners of this year’s International Women of Courage (IWOC) award. On March 10, Secretary Clinton will present the awards to the honorees at the Department of State. The awardees are: Shukria Asil (Afghanistan), Col. Shafiqa Quraishi (Afghanistan), Androula Henriques (Cyprus), Sonia Pierre (Dominican Republic), Shadi Sadr (Iran), Ann Njogu (Kenya), Dr. Lee Ae-ran (Republic of Korea), Jansila Majeed (Sri Lanka), Sister Marie Claude Naddaf (Syria), and Jestina Mukoko (Zimbabwe)."

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, via EPIC: "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report regarding the deployment of body scanners. The GAO cited its 2009 recommendations to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA): that the TSA conduct operational tests to ensure that the whole body imaging machines are reliable, and the that TSA conduct an assessment of the whole body imaging machines' vulnerabilities. In its latest report, the GAO warned TSA of the importance of full operational tests, citing the puffer machine debacle as an example of the government waste that results from insufficient operational testing. The GAO also expressed concern over TSA's lack of complete risk assessments and inability to "provide documentation to show how they have addressed the concerns raised in the 2009 GAO report regarding the susceptibility of the technology to terrorist tactics." Because of this, the GAO concluded that it is unclear whether the body scanners or other technologies would have detected the weapon used in the December 25 attempted attack."

American Bar Association: Representing Juvenile Status Offenders

Related postings on Patriot Act and this recent CRS report: Government Collection of Private Information: Background and Issues Related to the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization to accompany the following news and documents:

Follow up to DOJ Report on Bush Administration Interrogation Memos and Related Documents, the New York Times reports: "Large batches of e-mail records from the Justice Department lawyers who worked on the 2002 legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation techniques are missing, and the Justice Department told lawmakers Friday that it would try to trace the disappearance. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the panel, angrily demanded to know what had happened to the e-mail files, and he noted that the destruction of government records, including official e-mail messages, was a criminal offense. He said the records gap called into question the completeness of the department’s internal reviews of the work done by the lawyers in the Bush years. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which spent more than four years investigating the handling of the legal opinions about interrogation policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, pushed to get access to a range of e-mail records and other internal documents from the Justice Department to aid in its investigation. But it discovered that many e-mail messages to and from John C. Yoo, who wrote the bulk of the legal opinions for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, were missing. The office disclosed the missing messages in a footnote to its final report, which was released last week."

• Aviation Safety: Preliminary Information on Aircraft Icing and Winter Operations, GAO-10-441T, February 24, 2010
• Military Personnel: DOD's and the Coast Guard's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Programs Need to Be Further Strengthened, GAO-10-405T, February 24, 2010
• Veterans' Disability Benefits: Opportunities Remain for Improving Accountability for and Access to Benefits Delivery at Discharge Program, GAO-10-450T, February 24, 2010
• Military Personnel: Additional Actions Are Needed to Strengthen DOD's and the Coast Guard's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Programs, GAO-10-215, February 03, 2010
• 2010 Census: Key Enumeration Activities Are Moving Forward, but Information Technology Systems Remain a Concern, GAO-10-430T, February 23, 2010
• Higher Education: Information on Incentive Compensation Violations Substantiated by the U.S. Department of Education, GAO-10-370R, February 23, 2010
• Postsecondary Education: College and University Endowments Have Shown Long-Term Growth, While Size, Restrictions, and Distributions Vary, GAO-10-393, February 23, 2010

Follow up to previous postings on the Bush Administration Torture Memos, significant new documents were made public by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr., who posted the following document library on February 19, 2010: DOJ Report on Bush Administration Interrogation Memos and Related Documents [note: several of these documents are redacted]

• Memorandum for the Attorney General, January 5, 2010
  
• OPR Final Report, July 29, 2009
  
• OPR 1st Draft Report, December 22, 2008
  
• OPR 2nd Draft Report
  
• John Yoo Response to OPR 2nd Draft, May 4, 2009
  
• John Yoo Response to OPR Final Draft, October 9, 2009
  
• Jay Bybee Response to OPR 2nd Draft, May 4, 2009
  
• Jay Bybee Response to OPR Final Draft, October 9, 2009
  
• See related commentary and documents on The Torture Report, "an initiative of the ACLU’s National Security Project, aims to give the full account of the Bush administration’s torture program. It will bring together everything we know from government documents, investigations, press reports, witness statements and other publications into a single narrative – one that is updated regularly and subject to critical review and improvement as it unfolds." and via The Recorder: Bybee, Yoo Got a Boost From Their Lawyers in Avoiding Ethics Charges
Permanent Link

WSJ: The Digital Dictatorship Evgeny Morozov on the myth of the techno-utopia. - "It's fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom...For example, while the American public is actively engaged in a rich and provocative debate about the Internet's impact on our own society—asking how new technologies affect our privacy or how they change the way we read and think—we gloss over such subtleties when talking about the Internet's role in authoritarian countries."

Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism Report Released by the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, U.S. Department of State: "In memory of Tom Lantos, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, a leader of moral force and a champion of human rights. As the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, he attested with uncommon eloquence to a truth based on unspeakable experience: promoting tolerance is essential to building a world of freedom and peace."

"A new TRAC study, Detention of Criminal Aliens: What Has Congress Bought?, based on the analysis of hundreds of thousands of records obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and an examination of its budget, explores the changes in ICE's enforcement record since the beginning of FY 2005, when Congress drastically increased the agency's funding for the apprehension and detention of criminal aliens. The record shows that while overall funding for ICE grew by 67 percent, appropriated dollars provided for the agency's office of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) more than doubled, increasing by 104 percent. The data further show that from FY 2005 to FY 2009 the overall number of detainees surged -- growing by 64 percent -- but the number of individuals categorized as criminal detainees barely budged."

News release: "Governments responsible for serious human rights violations have over the past year intensified attacks against human rights defenders and organizations that document abuse, Human Rights Watch said in issuing its World Report 2010. The 612-page report, the organization's 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide, reflecting the extensive investigative work carried out in 2009 by Human Rights Watch staff. The volume's introductory essay by Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the ability of the human rights movement to exert pressure on behalf of victims has grown enormously in recent years, and that this development has spawned a reaction from abusive governments that grew particularly intense in 2009."

News release: "Iceland (1) has claimed the top spot of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2009 from Norway (3) which slipped to third position behind Finland (2). Sweden (4) completed the Nordic countries’ continued dominance of the top four. The report’s Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities. South Africa and Lesotho made great strides in closing their gender gaps to enter the top 10, at sixth and 10th position respectively. The Philippines (9) lost ground for the first time in four years but remains the leading Asian country in the rankings."

News release: "More than three million girls’ genitals are forcibly cut every year and approximately 140 million women are living with mutilated genitals. Maternal mortality and infection are just two of the many health effects they suffer. This issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) was brought to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting by Julia Lalla-Maharajh who runs the campaign www.endfgmnow.org. Julia entered her cause into a competition run by the Forum and YouTube, The Davos Debates, to find a person with a cause worthy of the world's attention. Her FGM cause won the global vote."

National Corrections Reporting Program, Thomas P. Bonczar, January 21, 2010

Via DOJ Office of Special Counsel of the Civil Rights Division: "ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) instructors and immigrant advocates now have new workbooks at their disposal courtesy of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) education grant program. Through lessons titled: “Working in the United States” and “Discrimination in the Workplace,” the workbooks educate potential victims of employment discrimination about their rights under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). These ESOL workbooks are available to the public free of charge in instructor and student versions."

A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for Telephone Records, January 2010, Unclassified, Redacted.

UN Permanent Forum Origin and Development Report: State of the World's Indigenous Peoples, January 2010.

Official Google Blog:

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, news that EPIC has posted more than 250 pages of documents it obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning body scanners. The documents, released by the Department of Homeland Security, reveal that Whole Body Imaging machines can record, store, and transmit digital strip search images of Americans. This contradicts assurances made by the TSA. The documents include TSA Procurement Specifications, TSA Operational Requirements, TSA contract with L3, TSA contract with Rapiscan (1), and TSA contract with Rapiscan (2). The DHS has withheld other documents that EPIC is seeking."

Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Report on the Situation of Economic and Social Rights in Afghanistan - IV Qaws 1388 (November/December 2009)

Report of the Council to the Membership of The American Law Institute on the Matter of the Death Penalty: "On October 23, 2009, the ALI Council voted overwhelmingly, with some abstentions, to accept the resolution of the capital punishment matter as approved by the Institute’s membership at the 2009 Annual Meeting in May. The resolution adopted at the Annual Meeting and now accepted by the Council reads as follows:

For reasons stated in Part V of the Council’s report to the membership, the Institute withdraws Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Background and Policy Issues, Luisa Blanchfield, Specialist in International Relations, December 2, 2009

Privacy: An Overview of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping, December 3, 2009: "Depending on one’s perspective, wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping are either “dirty business,” essential law enforcement tools, or both. This is a very general overview of the federal statutes that proscribe wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping and of the procedures they establish for law enforcement and foreign intelligence gathering purposes. Although the specifics of state law are beyond the scope of this report, citations to related state statutory provisions have been appended. The text of pertinent federal statutes and a selected bibliography of legal materials appear as appendices as well."

• Biosurveillance: Developing a Collaboration Strategy Is Essential to Fostering Interagency Data and Resource Sharing, GAO-10-171, December 18, 2009
• Department of Veterans Affairs' Implementation of Information Security Education Assistance Program, GAO-10-170R, December 18, 2009
• DOD Civilian Personnel: Intelligence Personnel System Incorporates Safeguards, but Opportunities Exist for Improvement, GAO-10-134, December 17, 2009
• Overseas Contingency Operations: Funding and Cost Reporting for the Department of Defense, GAO-10-288R, December 18, 2009
• Softwood Lumber Act of 2008: Customs and Border Protection Established Required Procedures, but Agencies Report Little Benefit from New Requirements, GAO-10-220, December 18, 2009
• Juvenile Justice: DOJ Is Enhancing Information on Effective Programs, but Could Better Assess the Utility of This Information, GAO-10-125, December 17, 2009
• UN Office for Project Services: Management Reforms Proceeding but Effectiveness Not Assessed, and USAID's Oversight of Grants Has Weaknesses, GAO-10-168, November 19, 2009

Follow up to previous postings on government implementation of whole body scanning technology at airports, this news: On December 17, 2009, EPIC filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice concerning the use of devices that capture images of individuals stripped naked. The Transportation Security Administration has confirmed the Whole Body Imaging machines are being used in at least one Virginia federal court by the US Marshall Service. EPIC submitted a FOIA request for information about these devices including the contracts with the manufacturer of the machines, and information about technical specifications and training materials. The Marshall Service failed to respond adequately to the request. EPIC filed suit, said that the agency had not performed a sufficient search and should disclose the documents requested."

"The Death Penalty Information Center released the The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report on December 18, noting that the country is expected to finish 2009 with the fewest death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Eleven states considered abolishing the death penalty this year, a significant increase in legislative activity from previous years, as the high costs and lack of measurable benefits associated with this punishment troubled lawmakers."

New York Times, New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons: "A draft report by a New York state task force, Charting a New Course: A Blueprint for Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York, shines a harsh light on the problems in the state's prisons for juvenile offenders. The problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety, recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care."

• Prisoners in 2008: "Presents data on prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities on December 31, 2008, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics series. This annual report compares changes in the prison population during 2008 to changes from yearend 2000 through yearend 2007. These are the only comprehensive national-level data on prison admissions and releases. Findings cover data on decreasing growth in state and federal prisons through declining admissions and increasing releases; imprisonment rates for prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year by jurisdiction; the number of males and females in prison; age, race, and gender distributions; the number of inmates in custody in state and federal prison and local jails; and custody incarceration rates. The report also includes the count for inmates held within facilities operated by and for the military, U.S. territories, Indian country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and juvenile authorities."
• Probation and Parole in the United States, 2008: "Presents the number of adults under community supervision (probation or parole) at yearend 2008 and the growth rates in these populations during the year and since 2000. The report examines factors associated with changes in the probation and parole populations, such as the number of entries and exits, the rate at which probationers and parolees exit supervision, changes in the populations within jurisdictions, and compositional changes in both populations. The bulletin also provides 2008 detailed data in appendix tables by jurisdiction, including entries and exits by type, gender, race and Hispanic origin, type of offense, supervision status, offenders (including sex offenders) tracked through a Global Positioning System (GPS), and other information."

News release: "Statistics released today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that 7,783 criminal incidents involving 9,168 offenses were reported in 2008 as a result of bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability. Published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Hate Crime Statistics, 2008, includes data about hate crime incidents submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the nation."

"The UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) is committed to the long-term preservation of fragile and vulnerable records of human rights struggles worldwide, the promotion and secure usage of human rights archival materials, and the advancement of human rights research and advocacy around the world. The HRDI website highlights the following types of materials:

1. UT Collections: Primary source, archival materials related to human rights
   
2. Archived Web Resources: Websites, reports, audio, video, photographs on human rights struggles that are produced by individuals or small organizations who lack resources and opportunities for widespread distribution of their work
   
3. Audiovisual documentation (limited access): Fragile, born-digital, audiovisual documentation of human rights violations acquired through partnerships with human rights organizations worldwide (see About the HRDI, access to these materials is currently limited due to the sensitive nature of the information)

News release: "Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 22,295,000 Americans with disabilities are of working age; however, only 36.9 percent were employed, compared to the 79.7 percent of the non-disabled. Acknowledging this disparity, the American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disabilities hosted the “Second ABA National Conference on the Employment of Lawyers with Disabilities” in June and are now releasing a report, based on the conference, as a resource tool for legal employers and lawyers with disabilities. The report provides guidance as to the best practices for employment of lawyers with disabilities as well as mentoring, retaining and promoting lawyers with disabilities. Additionally, there is guidance and insight as to how lawyers and law students with disabilities can attain employment."

"Despite considerable progress in the past decades, societies continue to fail to meet the health care needs of women at key moments of their lives, particularly in their adolescent years and in older age. These are the key findings of the WHO report Women and health: today's evidence tomorrow's agenda. WHO calls for urgent action both within the health sector and beyond to improve the health and lives of girls and women around the world, from birth to older age. The report provides the latest and most comprehensive evidence available to date on women's specific needs and health challenges over their entire life-course. The report includes the latest global and regional figures on the health and leading causes of death in women from birth, through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, to older age."

"The Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in conjunction with the Cornell Law School is committed to helping the Rwanda Tribunal garner more attention world-wide. The lessons and legacy of ground-breaking legal matters related to the unspeakable events in Rwanda should not be forgotten. Humans, whether from rich or poor countries, must remain vigilant in curbing the motivations that lead individuals and groups to violent hatred and barbaric acts against a class of people. Consequently, items about this tribunal, which will end shortly after 2010, will appear from time to time on this news service. Last month, the IWS Colloquium Series, with cosponsorship of the Cornell Law School (represented by Prof. Claire Germain) hosted Sir Dennis Byron, President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), who spoke about the Role of the Courts in Protecting and Preserving Human Rights. It was a fascinating evening that touched on both legal and institutional issues, never flinching from some of the moral and social issues. Of particular note are the ground-breaking precedents of the ICTR in regard to sexual violence and the limits of freedom of speech. [Stuart Basefsky]

Follow up to previous postings on airport whole body imaging technology, "EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security's failure to make public details about the agency's Whole Body Imaging program. The devices capture detailed naked images of air travelers in the United States. After the agency announced that the body scanners would become the primary screening device in US airports, EPIC demanded that the agency disclose records that describe the scanners' capacity to save and transmit images. In June, EPIC sent a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano urging her to suspend the digital strip searches."

Strategy for gender mainstreaming in the Employment Sector for the implementation of the ILO Action Plan for Gender Equality 2008-09 / International Labour Office. - Geneva: ILO, 2009, 24 p. [Stuart Basefsky]

New York Times: "In September 2008, the Bush administration changed domestic intelligence-gathering rules. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's interpretation of those rules was recently made public when the bureau released a redacted copy of its "Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide" in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit. The new rules have given F.B.I. agents the most power in national security matters that they have had since the post-Watergate era."

"EPIC joined the Privacy Coalition letter sent to the House Committee on Homeland Security urging them to investigate the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Chief Privacy Office. DHS is unrivaled in its authority to develop and deploy new systems of surveillance. The letter cited DHS use of Fusion Center, Whole Body Imaging, funding of CCTV Surveillance, and Suspicionless Electronic Border Searches as examples of where the agency is eroding privacy protections."

News release: "A report released today by the Death Penalty Information Center concludes that states are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty, draining state budgets during the economic crisis and diverting funds from more effective anti-violence programs. A nationwide poll of police chiefs conducted by RT Strategies, released with the report, found that they ranked the death penalty last among their priorities for crime-fighting, do not believe the death penalty deters murder, and rate it as the least efficient use of limited taxpayer dollars."

• Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis - National Poll of Police Chiefs Puts Capital Punishment at Bottom of Law Enforcement Priorities. A Report from the Death Penalty Information Center, 10/17/2009
  
• New York Times: One Reporter’s Lonely Beat, Witnessing Executions - "Of all the consequences of shrinking newsrooms, one of the oddest is this: Fewer journalists are available to watch people die. But Michael Graczyk has witnessed more than 300 deaths, and many of those were people he had come to know. An Associated Press reporter based in Houston, Mr. Graczyk covers death penalty cases in Texas, the state that uses capital punishment far more than any other, and since the 1980s, he has attended nearly every execution the state has carried out — he has lost track of the precise count. Whenever possible, he has also interviewed the condemned killers and their victims’ families."
  
• Related postings on financial system

Follow up to previous postings on airport whole body imaging technology, this article from the Economist.com: "Much excitement in Manchester where trials have started of Britain’s first whole-body scanner. The machine takes X-ray photographs of passengers, and can reveal concealed threats without requiring the removal of clothing."

News release: "Increases in global contraceptive use have contributed to a decrease in the number of unintended pregnancies and, in turn, a decline in the number of abortions, which fell from an estimated 45.5 million procedures in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003. While both the developed and the developing world experienced these positive trends, developed regions saw the greatest progress. Within the developing world, improvement varied widely, with Africa lagging behind other regions, according to Abortion Worldwide: A Decade of Uneven Progress, a major new Guttmacher Institute report released today."

Crime Against People with Disabilities, 2007: "Presents the first findings about nonfatal violent and property crime experienced by persons with disabilities, based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The report includes data on nonfatal violent victimization (rape/sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault) and property crime (burglary, motor vehicle theft, theft) against persons with disabilities in 2007. It compares the victimization experience of persons with and without disabilities, using population estimates based on the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). Data are presented on victim and crime characteristics of persons with and without disabilities, including age, race and gender distribution; offender weapon use; victim injuries; and reporting to the police."

ACLU: "The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the USA PATRIOT Act Extension Act of 2009 [October 9, 2009], a bill which falls far short of restoring the necessary civil liberties protections lacking in the original Patriot Act. The bill, passed by the committee after two sessions of debate, makes only minor changes to the disastrous Patriot Act and was further watered down by amendments adopted during markup. The American Civil Liberties Union had endorsed the JUSTICE Act, an alternative bill that would heavily reform not only the Patriot Act but other overly broad surveillance laws."

News release: "The Department of Justice is releasing a new study today that measures the effects of youth violence in America, and the results are staggering. More than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence in the past year, either directly or indirectly. Nearly half of children and adolescents were assaulted at least once, and more than one in ten were injured as a result. Nearly one-quarter were the victim of a robbery, vandalism or theft, and one in sixteen were victimized sexually. Those numbers are astonishing, and they are unacceptable. We simply cannot stand for an epidemic of violence that robs our youth of their childhood and perpetuates a cycle in which today’s victims become tomorrow’s criminals."

Crime Against People with Disabilities, 2007, 10/1/09: "First national study on crime against persons with disabilities — Young and middle-age persons with disabilities experienced higher rates of violence than persons of similar ages without disabilities."

"The Doing Business Gender Law Library is a collection of national legal provisions impacting women's economic status in 183 economies. The database facilitates comparative analysis of legislation, serves as a resource for research, and contributes to reforms that can enhance women’s full economic participation. We update the collection regularly but do not guarantee that laws are the most recent version, nor is the library exhaustive. Translations are not official unless indicated...The Doing Business Gender Law Library is a joint initiative of the Doing Business Project and the World Bank Gender Action Plan, supported by Vital Voices Global Partnership."

World Bank - Gender Equality as Smart Economics Newsletter, October 2009

Statement of Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary concerning Reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act, September 23, 2009

EPIC: "...the Department of Justice announced a new policy that limits the government’s use of the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege is a rule of evidence intended to prevent genuine matters of national security from being disclosed in open court. However, recently it has been misused by both the Bush and Obama administrations in order to derail litigation completely. For instance, in 2007 EPIC filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in a warrantless wiretapping case, Hepting v. United States, in which the government argued that the case should be dismissed because it would reveal “state secrets.” Under the new policy, the privilege will be invoked only "to the extent necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm to national security." The Attorney General will also have to approve each determination. The State Secret Protection Act of 2009, legislation with a similar purpose, is now pending in Congress. For more information, see EPIC Open Government."

News release: "A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered the records be provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by October 9, 2009. The decision is part of EFF's long-running battle to gather information about telecommunications lobbying conducted as Congress considered granting immunity to companies that participated in illegal government electronic surveillance. Telecom immunity was eventually passed as part of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008, but a bill that would repeal the immunity -- called the JUSTICE Act -- was introduced in the Senate last week."

"A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show. Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks."

Follow up to August 23, 2009 posting - "Why Women's Rights Are The Cause of Our Time" - today's news release: "Millions of girls and women will have access to improved health care, better education, and increased economic opportunity because of commitments made today at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which brings together leaders from across sectors of society to identify solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. Women perform 66 percent of the world's work, and produce 50 percent of the food, yet earn only 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property," President Bill Clinton said. "Whether the issue is improving education in the developing world, or fighting global climate change, or addressing nearly any other challenge we face, empowering women is a critical part of the equation." Reports show that when women and girls are empowered, entire regions see measurable results. This is especially true for economic empowerment – for example, a woman is likely to reinvest about 90 percent of her earnings into her family's well-being, compared with 35 percent for a man. Increases in access to education among girls accounted for a decline of 43 percent in the malnutrition rates between 1970 and 1995. Investing in women's health, especially reproductive health, not only saves the lives of half a million mothers, but also unleashes an estimated $15 billion in productivity each year."

News release and Fact Sheet: "U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have introduced legislation to fix problems with surveillance laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens. The Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, while preserving the powers of our government to fight terrorism. The JUSTICE Act reforms include more effective checks on government searches of Americans’ personal records, the “sneak and peek” search provision of the PATRIOT Act, “John Doe” roving wiretaps and other overbroad authorities. The bill will also reform the FISA Amendments Act, passed last year, by repealing the retroactive immunity provision, preventing “bulk collection” of the contents of Americans’ international communications, and prohibiting “reverse targeting” of innocent Americans. And the bill enables better oversight of the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) after the Department of Justice Inspector General issued reports detailing the misuse and abuse of the NSLs. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 23rd, on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act."

"Banned Books Week (BBW): Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where the freedom to express oneself and the freedom to choose what opinions and viewpoints to consume are both met. As the Intellectual Freedom Manual (ALA, 7th edition) states:

Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.

AL-KIDD v. ASHCROFT, No. 06-36059 D.C. No. CV-05-00093-OPINION

OIG-09-64 - Role of the No Fly and Selectee Lists in Securing Commercial Aviation (PDF, 63 pages] Redacted, July 2009.

"Welcome to our new website! As the Executive Director of the Council [Valerie Jarrett], I’m very excited to launch this site as we commemorate Women’s Equality Day on August 26. On this day when we remember the bravery and struggles that won women the right to vote, we are very pleased to add this website to share with everyone the work of this Administration to address the issues of concern to women and girls. The mission of the White House Council on Women and Girls is to ensure that every part of the federal government takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies we draft, the programs we create, the legislation we support. Through this site you will be able to meet the member of the Council and the key staff in each agency who are charged with meeting this charge from the President."

• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
  
• History
  
• States parties
  
• Reservations
  
• Country Reports
  
• Other UN Conventions on Women
  
• Commentary: Celebrating Women’s Equality Day

New York Times: "Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew acclaim and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77."

News release: "Today, the National Security Archive posted a side-by-side comparison of two very different versions of a 2004 report on the CIA's "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities" by Agency Inspector General John Helgerson. Yesterday, the Obama administration released new portions of the report including considerably more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators than a version of the report declassified by the Bush administration in 2008. The report was first posted on the Web yesterday by the Washington Independent.

News release: "The [redacted] documents [below] were released through FOIA litigation by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International USA, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law seeking disclosure of information concerning “disappeared” detainees, including “ghost” and unregistered prisoners. The original FOIA requests were filed with several U.S. government agencies including the Departments of Justice and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency...CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last seven years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR represents current and former detainees who were tortured and abused at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and in the secret CIA detention program."

• 3 June 2005 - CIA Doc Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa'ida
  
• 13 July 2004 - CIA Khlaid Shaykh Muhammad - Preeminent Source on Al-Qa'ida
  
• Related postings on detention and torture

Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, 2008 - Statistical Tables

• "This web page describes background checks for firearm transfers conducted in 2008. The statistical tables below provide the number of firearm transaction applications checked by state points of contact and local agencies, the number of applications denied and the reasons for denial, and estimates of applications and denials conducted by each type of approval system. Data are also provided on appeals of denied applications and arrests for falsified applications. The Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS) prepared these tables under the supervision of Devon B. Adams, of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The tables were prepared under BJS cooperative agreement #2008-BJ-CX-K004. The BJSsponsored Firearm Inquiry Statistics (FIST) program collects information on firearm background checks conducted by state and local agencies, and combines this information with FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) transaction data."
  
• Summary findings: "From the inception of the Brady Act on March 1, 1994, through December 31, 2008, over 97 million applications for
  firearm transfers or permits were subject to background checks...Among all state agencies, denial rates for instant check systems ranged from nearly 5% to less than 1%."

EPIC: "Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) are drafting legislative reforms to revise the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act allows authorities to conduct surveillance without judicial review through the use of National Security Letters. The Senators asked the Attorney General and the Chairmen of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee to consider two previous bills that add protections to PATRIOT ACT. Pursuant to a EPIC lawsuit, a federal judge had ordered the Justice Department to provide for independent judicial inspection of documents relating to warrantless wiretapping. For more information, see EPIC USA PATRIOT Act, EPIC FISA, EPIC Wiretapping, and EPIC National Security Letters."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): "Assistant Secretary John Morton announced substantial steps, effective immediately, to overhaul the immigration detention system. These reforms will address the vast majority of complaints about our immigration detention, while allowing ICE to maintain a significant, robust detention capacity to carry out serious immigration enforcement. The present immigration detention system is sprawling and needs more direct federal oversight and management. While ICE has over 32,000 detention beds at any given time, the beds are spread out over as many as 350 different facilities largely designed for penal, not civil, detention. ICE employees do not run most of these. The facilities are either jails operated by county authorities or detention centers operated by private contractors. The Future Syste: With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present decentralized, jail-oriented approach to a system wholly designed for and based on ICE’s civil detention authorities. The system will no longer rely primarily on excess capacity in penal institutions. In the next three to five years, ICE will design facilities located and operated for immigration detention purposes. These same reforms will bring improved medical care, custodial conditions, fiscal prudence, and ICE oversight."

On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever, By Andrew J. Blumberg and Peter Eckersley, August 2009: "Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people's movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future...Locational privacy (also known as “location privacy”) is the ability of an individual to move in public space with the expectation that under normal circumstances their location will not be systematically and secretly recorded for later use. The systems discussed [in this report] have the potential to strip away locational privacy from individuals..."

Joel Zand, FindLaw: "A panel of three federal judges ordered the State of California to reduce its inmate population because of prison overcrowding, resulting in the release of approximately 43,000 prisoners during the next two years so that the state's prisons can operate at 137.5% of their design capacity. In a 184-page opinion, the panel ordered California to provide an inmate reduction plan within 45 days to carry out the court's directive "in no more than two years."

wkyc.com: "TSA has revealed it is testing scanning technology at Cleveland Hopkins Airport that allows screeners to see through clothing. Despite public concern over what's viewed by some as invasive imagery, TSA is moving ahead with the advanced imagery technology it claims will improve security by allowing screeners to quickly scan passengers for weapons without a need for physical contact. Once testing and training are complete, the new scanners will go into full-time use at Hopkins."

News release: "In conjunction with the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U.S. Department of Labor has re-named and re-launched DisabilityInfo.gov as Disability.gov. The site now offers comprehensive information about programs and services to better serve the more than 50 million Americans with disabilities, their family members, veterans, employers, educators, caregivers and anyone interested in disability-related information. The new Web site integrates content from 22 federal agencies and will be managed by the Labor Department. The former DisabilityInfo.gov site was revamped with social media tools to encourage interaction and feedback, and new ways to organize, share and receive information. Visitors can sign up for personalized news and updates, participate in online discussions and suggest resources for the site. New features include a Twitter feed, Really Simple Syndication feeds, a blog, social bookmarking and a user-friendly way to obtain answers to questions on such topics as finding employment and job accommodations. Additional tools will be added during the months ahead."

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which President Obama ....announce[d] that the US will sign, will be the first international human rights treaty signed by the United States in nearly a decade, Human Rights Watch said... "This treaty was created to make sure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else and are fully included in society," said Joe Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "This is a real victory for both that goal and for the disability rights advocates who have worked so hard for it." The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2006 and was signed by 82 countries when it opened for signature on March 30, 2007. Today 140 countries have signed, and 61 have ratified. It requires governments to prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities and support their dignity, autonomy, and full participation in society."

Overview of Statutory Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: "The Commission has identified at least 171 individual mandatory minimum provisions currently in the federal criminal statutes. In the Commission’s fiscal year 2008 datafile, there were 31,239 counts of conviction that carried a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.3 Because an offender may be sentenced for multiple counts of conviction that carry mandatory minimum penalties, these 31,239 counts of conviction exceed the total number of offenders (21,023 offenders, as reported below) who were convicted of statutes carrying such penalties. Of these 31,239 counts of conviction, the overwhelming majority (90.7%) were for drug offenses (24,789 counts of conviction, or 79.4%) and firearms offenses (3,527 counts of conviction, or 11.3%)."

News release: "The Department of Justice and Department of Defense today announced that the Detention Policy Task Force, which was created pursuant to Executive Order 13493, has issued a preliminary report on military commissions and a process for the determination of prosecution forum for trials of suspected terrorists. A copy of the report is attached. As authorized by the Executive Order, the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense have also decided to extend by six months the period in which the Task Force will conduct its work and submit a final report."

Seeking Bypass: What Will Ultimately End Confidence in the Necessity of Parental Involvement Laws? - Public interest law advocate Diana Philip's commentary focuses specifically on the multifaceted, complex and challenging issues that encompass the dichotomy between reproductive health care and rights available to adult pregnant women and pregnant minors. Diana's position includes references to seminal legal cases as well as to selected scholarly literature in the field of juvenile reproductive health.

New York Times: "Ms. Estemirova was an essential member of a tiny circle of the premier human rights investigators in the entire Caucasus — a woman of immeasurable courage, precision and calm. She was a researcher for Memorial, the human rights organization, in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital."

Secrecy News: "The new CRS report - "Gang of Four" Congressional Intelligence Notifications, July 14, 2009 - explains the role of the "Gang of Four," meaning the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, who are to be informed of particularly sensitive intelligence activities. (When the Bush Administration first notified Congress of its warrantless surveillance program, it limited the disclosure to the "Gang of Four.")"

2009 Trafficking in Persons Report: "The Department of State is required by law to submit each year to the U.S. Congress a report on foreign governments’ efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons. This is the ninth annual TIP Report; it seeks to increase global awareness of the human trafficking phenomenon by shedding new light on various facets of the problem and highlighting shared and individual efforts of the international community, and to encourage foreign governments to take effective action against all forms of trafficking in persons."

Refugees and Asylees: 2008 - Daniel C. Martin And Michael Hoefer

Brennan Center for Justice: Language Access in State Courts, Laura Abel