Is There Anything Left Of Vermont’s Public Records Law?

August 3rd, 2010

Violating Vermont’s public records law seems to be catching on. But this time it’s not police who are the offenders. It’s the state education commissioner.

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ACLU Sues In Public Records Case

August 2nd, 2010

The ACLU-VT is suing the town of Hartford for denying an investigative journalist access to public records involving the high-profile arrest of an African-American man in his own residence.

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Obama: Make It Easier For FBI To Get Internet Records

July 29th, 2010

Despite previous promises to protect Americans’ privacy, including Internet privacy, the Obama administration wants to give the FBI more power to access e-mail records, according to the Washington Post.

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Ethnic Mapping By FBI?

July 27th, 2010

The ACLU-VT has joined ACLU affiliates around the country in asking the FBI for records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities.

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Questions For Candidates

July 26th, 2010

Summer is here. And usually, that means politics takes a holiday. That’s not true in Vermont this year. Campaign races are heating up. Voters are in the driver’s seat. The politicians are listening to you. But what to ask? Check out civil liberties questions you can ask candidates.

No Hiding on the ‘Net

July 19th, 2010

If you wanted to erase your digital footprint, could you do it? Probably not, concludes a report earlier this month in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Police Academy Report Kept Secret

July 13th, 2010

It’s been six months since the Homeland Security coordinator at the Vermont Police Academy killed himself and the director resigned. Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell has announced the investigation into what happened at the academy is complete — but he’s not going to show the report to anybody.

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Closer Oversight Of Police Conduct Needed

July 12th, 2010

It sounds like a carbon copy of the Henry Louis Gates’ racial profiling case of last summer, only this time here in Vermont.

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Taser Happy In Barre

July 7th, 2010

Barre police again dipped into their arsenal of 21 Tasers to zap a hot, depressed man whom a judge subsequently found not much of a bother to anyone.

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Was There Racial Profiling?

July 2nd, 2010

A rare thing has happened in the Henry Louis Gates incident of last summer, when the African-American Harvard professor was arrested in his own home on suspicion of burglary. Through a yearlong investigation and report, an impartial review committee has shone a bright light on what occurred at the Cambridge, Mass., residence and whether police racial profiling took place.

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