ACLU's Open Salon Blog

A SHOC-king Disregard for the Constitution

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:09:49 -0400

By Daniel Bullard-Bates, Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief

A public school in South Carolina flagrantly violated the Constitution recently by holding a Christian rap concert for students on school property during school hours. While most people would go to great lengths to avoid being caught breaking the law, footage of the event, believed to be taken by the event's organizers, was posted online.

"Because of this, people in public schools are going to get to know who Jesus Christ is," Bryan Edmonds, also known as Christian rapper B-SHOC, declares in a YouTube video that evinces a series of truly shocking constitutional violations. B-SHOC explains in the video: "324 kids at this school have made a decision for Jesus Christ. I don't know if it gets any better than that. We are in a public school and we did a show for the sixth grade, the seventh grade, and then the eighth grade."

New Heights Middle School in Jefferson, South Carolina, featured the rapper during an assembly that took place earlier this month. B-SHOC's catalog of songs includes titles such as "Jesus Lean'," "Crazy Bout God," and "Christ-Like Cruisin."

A school-sponsored performance of this nature would be unconstitutional by itself, but the list of transgressions doesn't stop there. The video shows event organizers being instructed to pray with students before they return to classes. And as part of the assembly, a preacher, Christian Chapman, delivers a sermon to students. His message? "A relationship with Jesus is what you need, more important than anything else."

Chapman even admits to a group of parents that the event is legally problematic: "Your principal went to me today and I said, 'How are you getting away with this?' and he said, 'I'm not… I want these kids to know that eternal life is real, and I don't care what happens to me, they're going to hear it today.'"

The ACLU has learned that other schools in the Chesterfield County School District may be planning similar events with B-SHOC and is thus calling on the District to launch an immediate investigation into these allegations and ensure that school officials do not repeat their unlawful activities in the future. We also have submitted a public records request to the District seeking information about similar worship rallies and other religious events that may be planned for other District schools.

Public schools are not Sunday schools. School officials should not be promoting religious beliefs to students. They should be protecting students from this type of unconstitutional religious coercion. Instead, the school used its gym as a pulpit in a blatant attempt to convert students to Christianity. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the architects of the First Amendment who railed against governmental efforts to indoctrinate citizens, would B-SHOC-ked.

Schools should educate, not indoctrinate. Use our Facebook app to sign the pledge and share the petition and video with your friends, or take action in our action center.

12 Steps to End California's Addiction to Incarceration

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:08:49 -0400

By Allen Hopper, Police Practices Director, ACLU of Northern California

The Golden State has a problem. An addiction problem. California is addicted to incarceration. We've hit rock bottom, and it's time for an intervention. To help the state break the addiction, yesterday the ACLU of California sent a 12-step plan to every county in the state, as part of a larger ACLU comprehensive public safety realignment report. The report urges a fundamental shift in criminal justice policies toward smart on crime alternatives to incarceration.

California is facing unprecedented challenges. State and local governments continue to struggle to close record budget deficits, making deep cuts in core programs including public safety, education and social services. On top of that, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata ordered the state to immediately remedy its unconstitutionally overcrowded prison system, which is so overburdened that it is jeopardizing the health and safety of inmates and staff alike.

Gov. Jerry Brown's new public safety realignment legislation, A.B. 109, attempts to address the Plata decision by "realigning" public safety responsibilities from state prisons and parole officials to county governments. If California counties implement this legislation properly, the state is poised for a paradigm shift in how we deal with crime, punishment and sentencing. The legislative findings contained in A.B. 109 are remarkable in their acknowledgment of the utter failure of 30 years of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" mentality in California:

"Criminal justice policies that rely on building and operating more prisons to address community safety concerns are not sustainable, and will not result in improved public safety…California must reinvest its criminal justice resources to support community-based corrections programs and evidence-based practices that will achieve improved public safety returns..."

The state is counting on A.B. 109 realignment to reduce the prison population and bring it into compliance with the Plata mandate; most people sentenced after October 1 for low-level felonies will be subject to local jurisdiction rather than being sent to state prison. But instead of simply adding local jail capacity to handle this new population at the county level, A.B. 109 instructs counties to employ sanctions and services that have been demonstrated to reduce recidivism and increase public safety — and cost less than incarceration.

That's where the recommendations in the ACLU's report come in. Among other things, the report urges counties to adopt new programs to reduce costs and lower jail populations. These include pre-arrest diversion — which diverts appropriate low-level offenders into rehabilitation and treatment instead of booking them into jail and overburdened court systems — and revamping immigration enforcement policies, which have thus far left county jails responsible for housing too many federal immigration detainees.

A.B. 109 realignment is a step in the right direction, but even the state legislative analyst's office acknowledges realignment alone will not be enough to solve California's overincarceration problem. That's why the ACLU is also calling for meaningful statewide sentencing reform to reduce low-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and for a state sentencing commission to evaluate and reform California sentencing policies.

California counties are at a fork in the criminal justice road. It makes no sense to stay on the current path, cycling and recycling people through overcrowded and broken jail and prison systems that fail to address the underlying problems. It's time to admit we have a problem, and to take a new approach.

Surveillance Programs Must Not Be Kept Secret

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:06:15 -0400

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project

Technology moves so fast today that surveillance programs can now become routine before the public even learns of them. That is a problem because new surveillance programs can involve difficult value judgments and tradeoffs. How valuable are those programs in actually stopping criminals? How much privacy are we willing to give up for those benefits? What kinds of checks and balances do we think are necessary? In a democratic society, those are questions that should be answered not by law enforcement acting on their own as they install new technologies in the shadows — they should be decided by the people and their elected representatives after full democratic discussion and debate.

Know what a "hot watch" is? No? You're not alone. Until 2005, no one at any of the major civil liberties organizations did, either. That year, a government lawyer off-handedly mentioned that when the government orders a credit card company to disclose the time and location of a person's credit card purchases, it's called a hot watch. It's a way to track someone's location in real time — and as the lawyer explained, the government puts hot watches on people's credit cards routinely.

Hot watch is one example of a surveillance program that became routine before anyone knew it existed. Cell phone tracking is another. Law enforcement agents tracked the geographical location of suspects' cell phones for years without the public understanding they had this capability, let alone democratically debating how much power to grant law enforcement.

What other surveillance is going to become routine without any transparency or public debate? Today there are x-ray vans that can see through walls and clothing. We know little about which law enforcement agencies are purchasing these vans, or how they are being used. The same can be said about unmanned flying "drones" capable of aerial surveillance. While they have primarily been used by the military, they are so affordable now that even local law enforcement agencies have begun purchasing them with little or no public debate.

The lack of public information about surveillance is a problem because the United States is a democracy, and a core democratic value is that the people get to set the boundaries within which government operates. The rapid pace of technological change has made it difficult for people to understand, let alone make decisions about, the nature and extent of government surveillance.

Legislatures have an important role to play in exercising oversight of surveillance. In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement agents were free to obtain lists of the telephone numbers people dial, without any court involvement. Congress stepped in to protect privacy by passing a law requiring law enforcement agents to apply for a court order and assert the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Some may argue that secrecy is preferable because criminals will have a harder time evading surveillance they do not know exists. Eventually, however, word will get out and law enforcement's advantage over criminals will disappear. That temporary advantage is not enough to cast aside the democratic principle that new powers must only be given to the government with the consent of the governed.

Everyone recognizes that temporary and limited secrecy is sometimes necessary to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations. But when law enforcement adopts new surveillance technologies or techniques that impact personal privacy, the public should know about it, and should have a say in whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

What the Government Wants to Know About You

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:01:04 -0500

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project

Earlier this month, news broke that the government got a court order to force Twitter to reveal the private account information of some people associated with WikiLeaks. What is unusual about the situation is not that the government obtained such an order, but that we found out about it at all. Our government routinely gains access to Americans’ private online information through secret court orders. Worse yet, these proceedings are one-sided, with only the government presenting arguments. In a legal system based on openness and adversarial process, this has led to troubling results that threaten our privacy.

Many of us spend a great deal of time online and it should come as no surprise that law enforcement has followed. People type things into Google they wouldn’t tell their spouses and store years of their most intimate correspondence with Yahoo! Internet service providers complain that the volume of requests for their customers’ private online information is so huge that they now have entire departments dedicated to responding to court orders.

The public has been largely unaware of this trend, due to the secrecy of courts and the failure of corporations to put up much of a fight. When the government wants someone’s private online information, it files an application under seal asking the court for permission. The government presents its arguments, but there is no one on the other side — because the person whose information is at stake does not know it is happening and because corporations have little incentive to spend time and money objecting. Even worse, the government’s applications are sealed until someone requests they be unsealed, and since the person under surveillance typically never learns about it, these applications usually stay sealed forever. The net result is a system in which individuals’ electronic privacy is regularly put in jeopardy, with no chance to fight it, in a context vastly favorable to the government.

This is made more troubling by the fact that the law governing electronic surveillance is not clear. For example, the Fourth Amendment compels the government to obtain a warrant and show probable cause to access someone’s email. Unfortunately, the government disagrees, arguing that the Fourth Amendment does not cover email. That is a startling position that would mean Americans could no longer expect the privacy in our correspondence that we enjoyed in the past.

Regardless how one feels about the Fourth Amendment’s applicability to email, we should all agree that it’s problematic when controversial issues of law are routinely decided in secret, one-sided proceedings. The current system of secrecy works perfectly fine for the government, so it is especially important that companies and courts take initiative to combat excessive secrecy. Twitter is to be commended for taking the rare step of asking that a government surveillance request be made public. Other companies should follow suit. Courts have a role to play, too. Even if investigative details are rightly kept secret, in general the law of surveillance should not be a secret law. Courts should require the government to file its legal arguments in public, and should make their own decisions to grant or deny applications public as well.

Our online lives are increasingly our lives, and our online privacy rights are too important to be decided in secret, one-sided hearings.

Persecuting Muslims...From Sea to Shining Sea

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 16:09:09 -0400

By Heather Weaver, Staff Attorney, ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief

"While there was no large-scale communal violence against religious minorities during the reporting period, attacks on . . . Muslims and their places of worship continued, along with incidences of intolerance . . ."

Pop quiz! To which country does the above quotation refer: (a) India; (b) the United States; or (c) both India and the United States. Technically, the answer is "(a) India," which is now on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's watch list as a country in need of "close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the governments." Of course, in light of the rash of anti-Muslim sentiment and activities across the United States in recent months, no one would have faulted you had you chosen "b" or "c."

As Americans, we have long regarded our country as a bastion of religious freedom. The earliest colonial settlers arrived here seeking refuge from religious persecution, and by enshrining the principle of religious liberty in the Bill of Rights, the Founders hoped to save their future countrymen from similar torment. Priding ourselves on this history, we have held our country up as a paragon of religious diversity and tolerance, and indeed, via instruments like the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, declared ourselves a moral authority on the matter. Yet, a survey of the recent treatment of Muslims across the country suggests otherwise.

The Constitution's protection of religious exercise extends to people of all faiths, but with recent attacks on Muslims and the Islamic faith, it would be easy to surmise, mistakenly, that they are somehow excluded from this American promise of religious liberty. While the controversy over the planned Park 51 community center in New York City has played out on center stage in recent months, Muslims in no fewer than 12 states have faced similarly strident opposition to their efforts to build mosques and Islamic centers. And unlike in New York City, where both the local Landmarks Preservation Commission and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have rejected a baseless campaign to block construction of the proposed community center, government officials in some areas of the country have yielded to religious bigotry.

In Mayfield, Kentucky, for example, in response to community outcry, the town's Board of Zoning Adjustment reversed its initial approval of a permit to hold Muslim prayer services in a rented commercial space, citing purported parking concerns. Few, if any, opponents of the New York City community center, who claim that their objections are based solely on its proximity to Ground Zero, have spoken out against this kind of anti-Muslim effort in other states.

Of course, even where the local government stands strongly in support of constitutional protections for Muslims, America's promise of religious freedom for all can hardly be realized if Muslims continue to suffer persecution at the hands of private citizens, who seek to intimidate them into foregoing the exercise of those constitutional rights.

Opponents of a proposed mosque in Temecula, California, picketed local Muslim prayer services, bringing along dogs in a misguided effort to offend those worshippers who consider dogs to be ritually unclean. Some opponents of proposed mosques have gone so far as to say that they believe being a practicing Muslim in America today is no less than an act of treason. The American Family Association, an evangelical organization, declared recently: "Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: Each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government." Similarly, protestors at the Park 51 site brandished signs stating, "Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11," a common anti-Muslim sentiment in recent months, while a church in Gainesville, Florida is proposing a Koran-burning event on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks

Let's be clear, those protesting Park 51 and other proposed mosques are entitled to their opinions and we support their right to express them. However, no matter how loud the opposition gets, our government must stand firmly on the side of religious freedom and protect everyone's right to worship, or not, according to their beliefs.

What is not protected, however, are violence and criminal acts. Unfortunately, as anti-Muslim bigotry has intensified across the nation, so too has violence against Muslims and their houses of worship. Since the Rutherford County Commission approved plans to build an Islamic community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, local Muslims have been threatened, and two weekends ago, someone set fire to construction equipment at the site where the center will be built. In New York, a cab driver was stabbed because he identified himself as Muslim. And just last week, a group of teenagers in Carlton, New York, were arrested after they drove by a mosque hurling obscenities at worshipers during evening prayer, sideswiped a worshiper with their car, and fired a shotgun.

Criminal acts of religious intolerance only serve to distance us even further from the Founders' vision of America as a refuge for people of all faiths. If we are to reverse course and heal the injury inflicted on the Muslim community recently, we have to start in our own backyards. We must demand that our local governments respect and honor Muslims' constitutional rights to religious exercise. We must stand up to friends, family, and neighbors when they are tempted to succumb to fear and religious prejudice. Only then, will we restore our honor, truly realize America's promise of religious freedom for all, and serve as a shining example of religious tolerance and freedom to the rest of the world.