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Sen. Isakson vs. ACLU of Georgia on NSA Spying | |
Senator Isakson Defends Government Survelliance Program
U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) is defending the government surveillance program revealed to be gathering call logs from millions of Verizon phone subscribers.
Speaking after a conference in downtown Atlanta, Iskason said it's been an important tool in preventing terrorist attacks.
"I can't talk about some of the things that I know with regard to what our security procedures are, but I am satisfied that there's no violation of the civil rights of an American citizen in there."
The National Security Agency and others in the intelligence community are authorized to collect the call logs under 2001's Patriot Act. Congress maintains oversight and federal judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court must approve all data requests. In 2011, Congress renewed the Patriot Act for an additional four years.
Isakson stressed the intelligence agencies are checking only phone numbers and locations. He said no calls are being listened to.
"The purpose for that is to get the bad guys, if you will, and that's one way - you can track communication. Not the content, but the location."
He said the surveillance program strikes the necessary balance between privacy rights and the need for information post-9/11.
"I'll be the first person to tell you that is a threading of the needle that is very difficult and you have to be very careful with. And there may be time to time a mistake is made but you're better off to try and find that sweet spot to protect the American people then have us vulnerable every singe day to attacks like what happened on 9/11."
But Azadeh Shahshahani of the Georgia ACLU says the government has gone too far. She believes innocent Americans are being spied on without probable cause.
"Using this data the government could build a complete profile of everyone that every American has ever talked to. The government could find out about your religious associations, your instabilities, your medical conditions, and more and so I think that should pose a concern to every American who cares about their privacy."
The ACLU has challenged in court several sections of the Patriot Act.
Short of being struck down in court, Shahshahani believes the law should be allowed to expire in 2015.
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Abortion Fight Is Unique To Georgia | |
Kathleen Baydala Joyner
Opponents of Georgia's ban on most abortions after 20 weeks since fertilization have found comfort-but not strategy-in a federal appeals court's recent ruling against a similar law in Arizona.
Rather than relying on the federal principles that felled Arizona's law, the Georgia plaintiffs argue that the state constitution's right to privacy protects a right to abortion. If it's successful, the challenge could etch a constitutional right to abortion in Georgia that would stand even if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturns Roe v. Wade.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which played a role in the Arizona case, represents three obstetricians practicing in DeKalb and Fulton counties. They contend that the Georgia law prohibiting abortions beyond 20 weeks post-fertilization-except for narrowly defined medical emergencies-would violate state constitutional rights to privacy, equal protection and due process. Their complaint, filed last fall, sues Governor Nathan Deal, Attorney General Sam Olens, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James, state Department of Public Health Commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald and officers and members of the Georgia Composite Medical Board.
Chad Brock, staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Georgia, said the organization decided to file its challenge to the Georgia law in Fulton County Superior Court instead of federal court because the Georgia Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the state constitution provides greater privacy protections than the U.S. Constitution.
"We had already set up a federal challenge to the 20-week law in Arizona. We took a closer look at the long line of precedent in Georgia and found that consistently, through the 20th century, the Georgia Supreme Court stated that the Georgia Constitution was at the forefront of guaranteeing a constitutional right to privacy," Brock said.
Georgia's right to privacy appears to be "broader and more protective" than the federal right, Brock said.
"In a long line of reproductive right cases going back to Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held, under the right to privacy, women have a right to terminate pregnancy pre-viability. If the state court is going to be consistent with prior precedent, then it will have to find that, of course, the state constitutional right to privacy also protects a woman's right to abortion," he said.
The ACLU's privacy argument in Lathrop v. Deal is rooted in the 1905 Georgia Supreme Court case Pavesich v. New England Life Ins., 122 Ga. 190, in which a man sued over unauthorized use of his image in a newspaper advertisement. The Supreme Court held that the state right to privacy is immutable and derived from natural law.
"The right of privacy has its foundation in the instincts of nature. It is recognized intuitively, consciousness being the witness that can be called to establish its existence," Justice Andrew J. Cobb wrote in the court's unanimous opinion.
With this reasoning, the ACLU argues, Georgia was a pioneer among states recognizing privacy as a fundamental right. Pavesich was crucial to the state high court's decision in Powell v. State, 270 Ga. 327 (1998), in which the court struck down Georgia's criminalization of sodomy almost five years before the U.S. high court did the same.
"The broad constitutional right 'to be let alone' and to 'liberty of choice as to [one's] manner of life' recognized in Pavesich and reaffirmed in Powell also protects the right to make medical decisions free from unwarranted government interference," the complaint stated.
While the May 21 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to declare Arizona's law unconstitutional is not binding on Georgia, it may provide fodder for persuasion. In the panel's unanimous decision, Judge Marsha Berzon wrote, "A woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable. A prohibition on the exercise of that right is per se unconstitutional."
Not so fast, said Nels Peterson, solicitor for the Office of the Attorney General.
"The plaintiffs in Lathrop have intentionally brought only state constitutional claims-not the federal constitutional claims at issue before the Ninth Circuit. Before there can be any analysis of whether the Arizona decision is even relevant to our case, Plaintiffs first have to convince a court to conclude that the Georgia Constitution contains a right to abortion separate and independent from the federal constitutional right recognized in Roe and its progeny. We don't believe that it does," Peterson said in a written statement.
While the attorney general's office's briefs have not responded directly to the ACLU's privacy argument, the office notes that Georgia's law may ban some abortions that would be performed at 20 weeks but not all.
Georgia legislators approved the 20-week ban, House Bill 954, during the General Assembly's 2012 session. The legislation was slated to go into effect in January, but Fulton Superior Court Judge Doris Downs granted a temporary injunction halting its enforcement.
In briefs, the ACLU argued that the ban would force some women to carry their pregnancies to term against their will "even where the pregnancy jeopardizes their health or where the fetus has been diagnosed with a severe or potentially lethal anomaly."
"[T]he Act will also rush women and families who have learned of a fetal anomaly to decide before 20 weeks whether to continue the pregnancy. Some women may terminate before 20 weeks, so as not to lose the ability to do so after 20 weeks, and of those some may have-given more time-decided to continue their pregnancies," the complaint stated.
"The Act presents physicians, including Plaintiffs, with an untenable choice: to face criminal prosecution and up to 10 years imprisonment, as well as disciplinary and licensing sanctions, for continuing to provide abortion care in accordance with their best medical judgment or to stop providing the critical care their patients seek," the complaint adds.
The state said in its defenses and answer brief, filed Feb. 5, "[T]here is divergent medical evidence regarding when a fetus is considered to be 'viable,' which is understood to mean that the fetus has a reasonable likelihood to survive outside the womb of a woman."
While neither the federal nor the state high courts have defined the point of viability, it is generally understood in the medical community to be around the 23rd or 24th week of pregnancy. Bans in Arizona, Georgia and several other states were grounded on the claim that there is evidence a fetus can feel pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization.
The Law Department filed a motion to dismiss what it called ancillary claims on Feb. 19. The ACLU's challenge also asserted that giving district attorneys access to women's medical records was unconstitutional. The attorney general's office countered that the records access law has been on the books since 1973 and that the plaintiffs could show no imminent harm.
The case is Lathrop v. Deal, No. 2012-CV-224423. |
Defunding 287(g) Can Not Come Soon Enough | |
Azadeh Shahshahani
National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project Director
A federal judge in Arizona recently held that Sheriff Arpaio and his Deputies have engaged in racial profiling against Latinos in Maricopa County. The decision found that policies and practices of Arpaio and his office are discriminatory, violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The ruling which came as result of a lawsuit by the ACLU and other organizations vindicated not only immigrant communities in Maricopa County who have long endured Arpaio's reign of terror but also communities across the country including here in Georgia where programs leading to racial profiling such as 287(g) have been in effect for several years.
287(g) enlists local police as immigration officers and has been active in four Georgia counties - Cobb, Gwinnett, Whitfield, and Hall.
The program has had devastating consequences, including diminished community trust in the police, as documented by the ACLU of Georgia in our reports on Cobb and Gwinnett.
The program has led to deportation of thousands of people and separation of countless families. Between 2006 and April 2012, 14,831 people were deported through 287(g), making Georgia rank fifth among all states based on numbers of deportations.
287(g) has also encouraged racial profiling and targeting of communities of color in the four 287(g) counties. This was recently experienced by Jon-Christopher Sowells who was stopped and subsequently arrested by Snellville police in Gwinnett during a test drive of a BMW for no apparent reason. "They're treating me like I'm a criminal and I hadn't done anything," he told the news media.
The racial profiling rampant in Maricopa County was in part due to 287(g). In fact, as the Arizona decision showed, ICE had been teaching Arpaoi's deputies during 287(g) trainings that they could use race as a factor in forming a reasonable suspicion about unlawful presence.
The government's own watchdog units have also faulted 287(g). The US Government Accountability Office issued a 2009 report describing the mismanagement, lack of supervision, and poor oversight of 287(g). The Office of the Inspector General also issued a report in 2010 highlighting the targeting of community members who have not committed any crimes, lack of state and local supervision, and insufficient training. It is high time to end 287(g).
Instead, the current version of the 2014 budget as pending before the House of Representatives will provide an additional $44 million dollars above the White House's requested amount for 287(g).
Additionally, the budget will cut $3.4 million dollars from the White House request for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) which oversees the Department of Homeland Security operations to ensure their alignment with constitutional rights and the prevention of racial profiling.
Human rights advocates across the country and in Georgia are calling upon their Congressional representatives today to vote in favor of an amendment proposed by Rep. Polis (D-CO) that would right grave wrongs in the current House appropriations bill by defunding 287(g) and restoring the funding to CRCL.
The call from advocates to defund the program as the Polis amendment proposes is in line with previous Congressional positions including the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, and Progressive Caucus call upon Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to "finally end the ill-conceived, discriminatory 287(g) program."
At a time that Congress is seeking immigration reform, the House should be budgeting to protect immigrants' human rights, not endanger all of our public safety by throwing money at a program that is universally recognized as a failure.
The budget amendment to cut funds to 287(g) and reallocate them to civil rights oversight would help repair Georgia's racial profiling history. The House must pass it. |
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Protestors Rally Outside Drone Conference in Buckhead | |
Jonathan Shapiro
Protestors gathered in Atlanta Tuesday to rally against the nation's drone strike program. They demonstrated outside a Buckhead hotel currently hosting a national conference on drone aircraft.
As nearby cars whizzed by Peachtree Street, long-time Atlanta civil rights advocate and Air Force veteran Joe Beasley said the drone strikes need to stop.
"I would implore President Obama to move away from these drones. It's just deplorable. It's just co wardice," said Beasley.
He was flanked by about two dozen protestors with signs calling for an end to the nation's drone strike program.
The rally comes just a week after the president vowed to dramatically reduce drone strikes and make the program more transparent. He said there'd be a new emphasis on capturing suspects instead of killing them and targeting only those who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the U.S. He also pledged to transfer oversight of the program from the CIA to the Pentagon, a move that would make more information available to the public.
But at the rally, Georgia ACLU attorney Azadeh Shahshahani said the president didn't go far enough.
"To the extent that there's going to be extra oversight, that's good, but it doesn't end the problem that the program is going to continue and people far from any battlefield without charge or trial are going to be killed," said Shahshahani.
A recent Gallup poll shows 65 percent of Americans support the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists based overseas. That number drops to 41 percent when targeting U.S. citizens in other countries who are suspected of terrorism.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington after the president's counterterrorism remarks, Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued the use of covert drone strikes remains a vital tool in the War on Terror.
"To open the books, so to speak, on the drone program does not make America a safer place to live."
And at an event held Tuesday in Sandy Springs, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson called drone technology "remarkable" and expressed support for the continued use of drones in intelligence-gathering and terrorist assassinations.
"The day we decide we are no longer going to participate is the day the terrorists have won that battle and they will hold us to cower in fear," said Isakson.
But Georgia State University political science professor Chip Carey said at the rally the use of targeted drone strikes is "shortsighted." He argued drones kill civilians and thereby breed more terrorists. Plus, he said, the technological gap is closing quickly.
"Between 50 to 70 countries have drone technology now including Iran. It's only a matter of time before what goes around will come around."
Carey argued drones pose as much danger as chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and therefore should be tightly controlled. He wants the U.S. to enter into a binding international arms treaty banning their use.
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ACLU: Fulton and DeKalb's marijuana arrest rates are among the most "racially biased" in the country | |
Creative Loafing
Max Blau
A new study looking at marijuana arrests across the country shows that African-Americans are arrested significantly more often than white people throughout the United States. And few areas display that trend more than Fulton and DeKalb counties.
The American Civil Liberties Union, looking at pot possession arrests between 2001 and 2010, found that black people who are found with weed are almost 4 times more likely to be sent to jail than white people who get caught with pot. The nonprofit, which compiled the study using the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program and U.S. Census data, says the analysis is the first of its kind to look at the specific issue on a county-by-county level in all 50 states:
"[Marijuana arrests have] needlessly ensnared hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system, had a staggeringly disproportionate impact on African-Americans, and comes at a tremendous human and financial cost," the ACLU's report says. "The price paid by those arrested and convicted of marijuana possession can be significant and linger for years, if not a lifetime."
Chad Brock, an ACLU of Georgia attorney, thinks that Fulton and DeKalb's marijuana arrests are indicative of a larger national problem. He called the war on marijuana, which costs Georgians an estimated $310 million every year, an "unequivocal failure" that's in need of major legal reforms. Failure to fix the laws, he says, would allow a "racial profiling element" seen in many pot arrests to continue in Georgia.
"It's hard to say what's causing it, but the problem exists," Brock tells CL. "These arrests have tremendous lifelong consequences."
Between 2001 and 2010, DeKalb saw its overall marijuana possession arrests skyrocket by more than 450 percent - the sixth-highest spike among all U.S. counties. According to the study, black DeKalb residents were almost six times more likely to get arrested.
In Fulton, black citizens made up 87.3 percent of all the county's pot arrests over that period - nearly double the county's African-American population. What's worse: black residents were nearly eight times more likely to go to jail for getting caught with weed on them. The Atlanta Police Department, in response to CL's inquiry, says there haven't been targeted arrests based on racial demographics.
"This is a difficult issue that is far more complex than numbers can properly illustrate," APD spokesman Carlos Campos says. "I can assure you there is no effort, formal or informal, to target or profile African-Americans or other minorities for arrests of any kind, including for marijuana possession."
The APD responded similarly to a WSB-TV report last year that found 93 percent of Atlanta's marijuana possession arrests were African-Americans. CL also reached out to the DeKalb County Police Department for comment. If we hear back, we'll post an update.
In addition, Georgia CARE (Georgia Campaign for Access, Reform and Education) will host a meeting about "common sense marijuana policy" at Manuel's Tavern next Thursday with the ACLU and NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). It'll start at 6:30 p.m.
For now, though, you can check out the ACLU's full report after the jump (be sure to check out page 145 for the bulk of Georgia's analysis). |
| The ACLU of Georgia National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project is celebrating its fifth anniversary! |
Founded in March 2008, the project works to bring Georgia into compliance with international human rights and U.S. constitutional standards in treatment of refugees and immigrant communities, including those in detention. This project engages ACLU of Georgia staff and volunteers in litigation, legislative advocacy, human rights documentation, coalition-building, public education, attorney training, and community organizing to address a range of issues. Here you can find a few of our accomplishments over the past five years.
Download Brochure
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Don't Miss the Following Events!!
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100 Stories - Building 100 Solutions For Securing The Education Pipeline For Georgia's Children | |
How can we help raise student achievement?
Join us in this community collaboration and improve your child's learning environment and educational outcomes at school
Saturday, June 22nd
9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Quality Inn Banquet Room
1725 Memorial Drive
Waycross,GA 31501
Free and open to the public.
Self pay lunch
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Privacy vs Security | |
Meetup Group
7:00pm
Monday, July 15, 2013
Taverna Plaka
2196 Cheshire Bridge Road
Atlanta, GA
Price: $1.00/per person
How much privacy should we trade for greater security? The recent Boston bombings and revelation about the NSA's massive phone call monitoring program have given this question renewed relevance.
More video cameras like the ones that identified the Boston bombers could help stop more terrorists, but they could also lead to government abuse.
-What is an appropriate balance between privacy and security?
-Has the government overreached the 4th amendment, which supposedly protects us from unreasonable search and seizure?
A recent poll by the Washington Post shows that most Americans "support the blanket tracking of telephone records in an effort to uncover terrorist activity."
Azadeh Shahshahani, National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project Director for ACLU of Georgia will be presenting at the beginning. |
Mission Statement
The purpose of this association shall be to advance the cause of civil liberties in Georgia, with emphasis on the rights of free speech, free press, free assembly, freedom of religion, due process of law and to take all legitimate action in the furtherance of such purposes without political partisanship.
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