Wednesday, June 5, 2002

Proposed Digital TV Restrictions Threaten Fair Use In preparation for the growth of Digital Television over the next several years (all television broadcasts are slated to be in digital format by 2006) the entertainment industry is recommending that all DTV equipment that would set rules on how a show can be played, locking the public into a system of few media sources and few ways to communicate about that media. NYTimes: Despite disagreement, television restriction plans are going forward. 6:50:12 PM

ACLU Challenges Ashcroft's Newest Immigration Harassment Addressing Ashcroft's Newest Round-Up: The ACLU has long opposed immigrant registration laws, saying that they treat immigrant populations as a separate and quasi-criminal element of society and that they create an easy avenue for surveillance of those who may hold unpopular beliefs. Also of concern is the improbability that the scheme will do anything to increase safety. Terrorists will simply find ways to circumvent the registration process either by simply not reporting to the INS or by entering the U.S. from a country outside the coverage of the tracking proposal, the ACLU said. 6:10:40 PM

New York Civil Liberties Union Challenges Testing Censorship "Out of twenty-six prose passages used in the exam over the past three years, twenty were surreptitiously censored to remove all references to race, religion, sexuality, or anything even mildly sensitive. Since 1999, public school students have been required to pass the exam in order to graduate high school." Diane Ravitch also addresses some of the questions of testing censorship in the NYT. 6:01:35 PM

Death Row Inmate Gets New Lawyer (First One Napped) "It is usually risky to interpret the Supreme Court's silence as a reflection on the merits of a case. But it was hard to avoid the sense that whatever danger the justices thought the appeals court's ruling might pose for the legal system, they had decided that it would be even more dangerous for the Supreme Court to suggest that for a lawyer to sleep through a trial was acceptable." 2:00:56 AM

For Atlanta Suspects, It's Sentence First, Trial Afterward "And they would have stayed in jail longer had the chief judge of the Fulton State Court, A. L. Thompson, not ordered them freed at the suggestion of a federal judge. Their release was a significant victory in a long, incremental battle in Georgia to provide lawyers for people who cannot afford them." "The United States Supreme Court held 30 years ago, in Argersinger v. Hamlin, that any person facing a loss of liberty was entitled to a lawyer. But in Atlanta lawyers are often not provided in minor cases until the defendant has spent more time in jail than the longest likely sentence for the offense." 1:54:15 AM

Officer Suspended for Article 'An Air Force colonel who wrote a letter to a newspaper calling President Bush a joke and accusing him of allowing the Sept. 11 attacks to happen because 'his presidency was going nowhere' has been suspended and could face a court-martial.' 1:46:51 AM

FBI Jailing Residents in Order to Find Some New Informants From the New York Times: "Her in-laws had ignored a court order to return to Afghanistan after their 1986 application for political asylum was denied. So, in keeping with its post-Sept. 11 focus on finding illegal immigrants from Muslim nations, the government was intent on executing that old deportation order on the parents and on Naim, now 27 and married to an American native who grew up in a Roman Catholic household on Long Island." "The I.N.S. says that since February, when the Justice Department ordered a roundup of people from Muslim countries who had remained in the United States despite court mandates to leave, agents have arrested 578 foreigners against whom deportation orders were outstanding." "The 'absconder apprehension initiative,' as the government called it, was meant to support the investigation of terrorism by providing a new pool of potential informers and suspects for the F.B.I. to interview." 1:41:28 AM

Immigration and Justice Continue to Target Middle Eastern Residents The Justice Department now wishes to require all Middle Eastern visitors or residents in the US to be fingerprinted on entry and register with the INS after thirty days. As always from the Ashcroft Justice department, this is a strictly ethnically-targeted requirement. And, of course, it doesn't actually achieve anything: "'What's the logic of this?' said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 'Anyone who's truly dangerous is not going to show up to be registered.'" 1:38:06 AM

Alfred Jail Visiting Hours May be TV-only 'The new York County Jail could become the first Maine lockup in which family and friends visit inmates electronically via video, rather than across a glass partition or by direct contact.' 1:26:09 AM

Antonin Scalia Addresses the Death Penalty [First Things] Antonin Scalia addresses the Death Penalty in the context of legality, history, and religion; and conveniently, finds it justified in the realm of all three. For information on the ACLU's committed position opposing the Death Penalty, including capital punishment's troubling unequal application, be sure to visit the Death Penalty Website. 1:19:24 AM

ACLU Files Suit on Airline Discrimination The ACLU is filing suit on American, Continental, Northwest and United Airlines for racial discrimination and unequal treatment of passengers. 'I was working in Manhattan on September 11 and I will never forget the horror of that day,' said Dasrath. 'But ejecting me from a flight to make a passenger feel better isn't going to make anyone any safer.' The ACLU notes that a memo from the Department of Transportation explicitly cautioned the airlines from discriminating against passengers based on race or national origin. 1:06:04 AM

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of this liberty;...

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