Supreme Court Will Hear ACLU Case Against Former Attorney General Ashcroft
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, the ACLU's case against former Attorney General John Ashcroft on behalf of Abdullah al-Kidd.
>> Learn more about al-Kidd v. Ashcroft.
>> Learn more about other Supreme Court cases the ACLU is involved with this term.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, the ACLU's case against former Attorney General John Ashcroft on behalf of Abdullah al-Kidd, a Kansas-born U.S. citizen who was wrongly arrested and detained as a material witness in 2003.
The federal material witness statute allows law enforcement to detain a witness whose testimony prosecutors believe is material at a criminal trial if it believes that witness won't testify voluntarily. Al-Kidd was arrested and detained ostensibly so he'd testify as a material witness in the trial of Sami Omar al-Hussayen, who attended the same university as al-Kidd and was charged with visa fraud.
During his 16-day detention, al-Kidd was moved to three separate federal detention facilities in three different states—and was sometimes held naked and shackled hand-and-foot. After he was released, al-Kidd's travel was restricted to only four states, and he had to surrender his passport and report to probation officers.
But al-Kidd was never asked to testify against al-Hussayen. And al-Kidd himself was never charged with a crime. So, why was he being treated like a criminal?
Prior to 9/11, the material witness law was used sparingly to ensure witnesses would be available to testify in criminal cases. After 9/11, Attorney General Ashcroft retooled the law into an investigative detention statute, allowing the government to arrest and detain individuals for whom they lacked probable cause to charge with a crime. Our lawsuit charges that this Ashcroft policy violates fundamental constitutional principles and that al-Kidd was a victim of that policy. The district and appellate courts agreed.
>> Learn more about al-Kidd v. Ashcroft. >> Learn more about al-Kidd v. Ashcroft.
http://www.aclu.org/scotus/2010-supreme-court-term
>> Learn more about other Supreme Court cases the ACLU is involved with this term.
http://www.aclu.org/scotus/2010-supreme-court-term
Expanded Wiretapping Capabilities = Potential For Abuse
>> Sign the ACLU's petition to Attorney General Holder: Rein in FBI surveillance power.
According to a report in The New York Times this week, the Obama administration will be submitting proposals to Congress next year seeking to expand its wiretapping capacity by overhauling the law requiring telecommunications companies to ensure their networks can be wiretapped.
The administration claims that Congress must rework the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)—which compels telecommunications and broadband companies to ensure their services are wiretap-ready—in order to keep up with technological changes in the companies' services. The administration is also asking that the government's power to enforce compliance by companies with the law be strengthened. However, the government's authority under CALEA to lawfully collect information from telecommunications and broadband companies is currently sufficient, as is its ability to enforce penalties for noncompliance.
Does this sound familiar? In 2007 and 2008, in an analogous situation, the Bush administration pushed to "modernize" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by claiming technological changes had made it more difficult for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor foreign communications. The former administration successfully used the opportunity, under the guise of a technical fix, to radically expand the government's power to monitor Americans' international communications through passage of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) in July 2008. The ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of the FAA in federal court.
>> Take action: Sign the ACLU's petition to Attorney General Holder: Rein in FBI surveillance power. https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/12bd937db4984b3c
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