News & Commentary

Although the 2022 legislative session is still several months away, there are ways that you can advance racial justice, privacy rights, criminal legal reform, and other civil rights and civil liberties issues right now.

Yesterday the Vermont House Committee on Transportation considered H. 237, a bill to implement roadside saliva testing for THC and lowering the permissible BAC limit from .08 to .05 for any person with “any detectable amount” of THC in his or her blood.

Vermont’s legislature is back in session, and when it comes to civil rights there’s a lot at stake this year. Working with legislators, allied organizations, and ACLU members and supporters, the ACLU of Vermont is pursuing an ambitious agenda to protect and advance the rights and liberties of all Vermonters.

The omnibus privacy bill (S. 155) the ACLU-VT has been pushing for three years crossed the finish line in the last 12 hours of the final day of the 2016 Vermont legislative session.

When news stories appeared in 2006 alleging phone companies were turning over customer call records to the NSA, the ACLU-VT decided to find out if this was happening in Vermont. Our inquiry before the state Public Service Board was stopped by the federal government -- on state secrets grounds. In 2013 Edward Snowden confirmed bulk collection of Americans' phone records was happening. Now it will stop. Pro-surveillance hawks caved this week during a late-night Senate session in the U.S. Capitol after realizing they didn't have the votes to keep the Patriot Act intact.

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A federal appeals court has unanimously ruled that the National Security Agency's phone-records surveillance program is unlawful. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York held that the statute the government is relying on to justify the bulk collection of phone records -- Section 215 of the Patriot Act -- does not permit the gathering of Americans' sensitive information on such a massive scale.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has initiated a massive national license plate reader program with major civil liberties concerns but disclosed very few details, according to new DEA documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act. The DEA is currently operating a National License Plate Recognition initiative that connects DEA license plate readers with those of other law enforcement agencies around the country.

It's been a long time since Edward Snowden revealed to the world the extent of electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency -- so long, in fact, that a movie, CitizenFour, has just been released detailing how and why Snowden did what he did. Congress is not a promising nominee for an award bestowed for quick redress of violations of Americans' basic rights. It has a chance to get in the running, though, for such an award (if not for "quick redress," then at least for "redress") if it takes up and passes the USA Freedom Act during the lame duck session now underway in Washington.