Tom Whitehead reports: More than 2,500 citizens working for town halls and private security companies can hand out fines, take photographs of offenders and demand their names and addresses. They are not accountable to the police, unless they break the law, and include car park attendants and dog wardens. There are growing concerns among rank-and-file…
Category: Featured News
DHS monitoring of social media concerns civil liberties advocates
Ellen Nakashima reports: Civil liberties advocates are raising concerns that the Department of Homeland Security’s three-year-old practice of monitoring social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter could extend to tracking public reaction to news events and reports that “reflect adversely” on the U.S. government. The activists, who obtained DHS documents through a Freedom of…
Supreme Court will hear dog drug-sniffing case
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Florida v. Jardines, a case that presented two questions: 1. Whether a dog sniff at the front door of a suspected grow house by a trained narcotics detection dog is a Fourth Amendment search requiring probable cause? 2. Whether the officers’ conduct during the investigation of the grow house,…
MO: ACLU asks court to stop Missouri library from illegally censoring web sites
Usually libraries are the bastions of privacy and intellectual freedom. Or not. Here’s a press release from the ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri today filed a lawsuit charging the Salem Public Library and its board of trustees with unconstitutionally blocking access to websites discussing minority religions by improperly…