Guantanamo

ACLU Denies Lawbreaking In Case Of Photographed CIA Officers

Justin Elliott | March 23, 2010, 11:00AM

Detainees at Guantanamo and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald

In a case that has all the ingredients to explode into a national controversy, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed star prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether laws were broken after "paparazzi style" photographs of CIA officers were found in the cell of a Guantanamo inmate accused of financing the 9/11 attacks, Newsweek is reporting.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, the top official for the ACLU project that provided assistance for the defense of the detainee in question -- and hired private investigators to take the photos of CIA officers thought to be involved in torture -- said that no laws had been broken.

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Surveillance

How Easy Is It For The Police To Get GPS Data From Your Phone?

Justin Elliott | December 9, 2009, 2:13PM

Police can in some cases track cell phone location by merely telling a court that the information is relevant to an investigation, a legal expert tells TPM -- a fact that may partly explain how law enforcement racked up 8 million requests for GPS data from a single wireless carrier in a year.

An increasingly popular and easy-to-access surveillance tool for police, GPS data is not currently protected by the Fourth Amendment, and the standards for gaining access to the information are murky and highly variable. That's partly because one of the statutes that bears on the issue was passed in the mid-1980s, before many of the technologies involved were invented. And Congress hasn't done much to update the law since.

The issue at stake is the demise of so-called "locational privacy."

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Detainees

Supreme Court Throws Out Abused Detainee Photo Ruling

Rachel Slajda | November 30, 2009, 11:43AM

Detainees at Guantanamo Bay

The Supreme Court has thrown out a ruling ordering the release of photographs of detainees being abused by American captors, citing a change in federal law that allows the defense secretary to withhold such pictures.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which made the ruling, will have to take another look at a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Obama have said releasing the photographs could endanger U.S. troops by fomenting anti-American sentiment overseas.