News & Commentary

The ACLU of Vermont has filed suit on behalf of a motorist who was stopped and had his car seized, leaving him stranded on the side of the road eight miles from his home in Rutland, because a state trooper said he smelled marijuana but otherwise had no evidence of a crime. At issue is not just an illegal traffic stop but whether police can continue to use a "sniff test" as evidence of a drug crime when possessing small quantities of the drug (marijuana) is no longer a crime.

Long waits at the border? Get finger-printed or iris-scanned and receive an easy-pass NEXUS card! Don't want your driver's license super-charged to a national identity REAL ID card? OK, but the Vermont DMV will take your Vermont driver's license and hand you back a Vermont Privilege Card! They say it's the same thing, but try using it to rent a car.

Significant strides were made this year in the legislature around a number of civil liberties issues. Check out our quick rundown of the high points (as well as some disappointments). Details for each bill can be found on our full legislative report.

With no fanfare and public notice, many Vermonters' personal medical records have already been put into electronic databases controlled by the state and soon to be accessible to physicians and others working in hospitals and medical offices. While your consent is necessary for your records to be viewed legally, there is no electronic "lock" preventing unauthorized access -- just the threat of what have, in the past, often been weak sanctions meekly administered.

Vermonters are living in a vastly different world than they did just a dozen years ago, speakers at the ACLU-VT surveillance conference said Wednesday, and the difference is the constant surveillance we are all subjected to.

Internationally known for his national security expertise, William Arkin said in a WDEV interview Tuesday that “We have created a (surveillance) system that is so gigantic that no one understands it completely and controls it.” Arkin will be speaking Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the ACLU-VT's "Security On The Northern Border" conference in Montpelier, which is free and open to t

"We are a nation living with two sets of laws, one public...guided by the Constitution and a second, invisible text that exists between the lines of that document." To William Arkin, an internationally known security and military expert and lead speaker in the ACLU-VT's Surveillance Conference Oct. 30, the first is the familiar "ABC" government. The second is the "XYZ" government, "the charter of another realm, one beyond the reach of Congress, the courts, and the people...."

A city and a school district decided this week that surveillance cameras are friend, not foe, and that we better get used to being watched.

On Wednesday night, the Harwood Union High School Board will take up the issue of whether students should be watched by video cameras as they attend school. This isn't just about after-hour break-ins at the school, which Harwood has recently experienced, though. It's about watching students as they go about the business of walking to class, heading for lunch in the cafeteria, or running outside for phys ed. It's surveillance, and it's the sort of thing that habituates us to the idea that we're becoming a surveillance society.