March, 15 2011, 11:28am EDT
ACLU To Testify Wednesday At Hearing On Internet Privacy
The American Civil Liberties Union will be testifying at a hearing on the state of online consumer privacy before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday, March 16 at 10:00 a.m. EDT.
WASHINGTON
The American Civil Liberties Union will be testifying at a hearing on the state of online consumer privacy before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Wednesday, March 16 at 10:00 a.m. EDT.
In his testimony, ACLU Legislative Counsel Christopher Calabrese will describe the pervasive nature of online surveillance and call for increased Internet privacy protections, including a "do not track" option for online consumers. This mechanism would allow individuals to opt out of having their online activity tracked, stored and shared with private companies for use in targeted advertising or for other purposes.
WHAT:
Hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the state of online consumer privacy
WHO:
Christopher Calabrese, ACLU Legislative Counsel, will give testimony on the need for greater Internet privacy protections
WHEN:
March 16, 2011
10:00 a.m. EDT
WHERE:
Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253
Washington, DC
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
(212) 549-2666LATEST NEWS
Sunrise Protesters Arrested at VP's House Demanding Biden Declare a Climate Emergency
"We deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
Apr 15, 2024
Six young activists were arrested outside Vice President Kamala Harris' Los Angeles home on Monday while calling on the White House to declare a climate emergency, according to the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
Harris and President Joe Biden–Democrats who are seeking reelection in November—campaigned as climate champions in the 2020 cycle but have had a mixed record on the topic since entering office.
"My generation is spending our teenage years organizing for climate action because people like Kamala Harris have failed us," said Adah Crandall, one of the activists arrested after blockading the street outside her California residence overnight.
"We're ready to do whatever it takes to win a climate emergency declaration—we will camp out overnight, we will get arrested, we will mobilize our peers by the thousands to win the world we deserve," the 18-year-old continued. "The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
"The Biden administration are cowards for not standing with young people."
The White House has been praised for climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act as well was a recent pause on liquefied natural gas exports. However, the president has also faced criticism for continuing fossil fuel lease sales, backing the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Willow oil project, and skipping last year's United Nations summit.
Just last week, the Biden administration approved a license for a pipeline company to build the nation's largest offshore oil terminal off of Texas' Gulf Coast—despite surging fossil fuel pollution that is pushing up global temperatures.
Sunrise last week condemned the approval as "very disappointing" and also joined with Campus Climate Network and Fridays for Future USA to announce Earth Day demonstrations intended to pressure Biden to declare a climate emergency.
Biden
claimed last year that "practically speaking," he had already declared a national climate emergency; however, as campaigners and experts have stressed, actually doing so would unlock various federal powers to tackle the fossil fuel-driving crisis.
"Our communities in California breathe toxic air from fossil fuels and face fires that destroy our homes," noted 18-year-old Ariela Lara, who was arrested at Harris' home.
"I'm on the frontlines raising my voice for my Black and Latine families and friends," Lara added, "because I know that we deserve to have affordable housing and healthcare, we deserve an administration who will fight for us, but instead of declaring a climate emergency, we are seeing Biden and Harris expand oil and gas production to record levels."
The action targeting Harris came after a February protest at Biden's campaign headquarters in Delaware that also led to arrests.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Democracy Defenders Stress NY Trump Trial 'Is About Voter Deception'
"Trump engaged in criminal acts to cover up the truth just days before the 2016 election, and now he will finally face a jury of everyday Americans."
Apr 15, 2024
As former U.S. President Donald Trump's first of four potential criminal trials began in New York on Monday, progressive groups emphasized that what is often called a hush money case involving a porn star "is about voter deception."
Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November, faces 91 felony charges across the four cases. For this one, he was indicted by a New York grand jury last spring with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to alleged hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle.
The payments were made by Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer, to porn star Stormy Daniels, and by the tabloid The National Enquirer to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. The twice-impeached ex-president has pleaded not guilty.
"This case is about the allegation that Trump criminally hid information from voters to influence the outcome of the 2016 election," said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, in a statement Monday.
"You can draw a clear pattern from this election interference behavior to his more emboldened efforts to subvert the 2020 election, which led to the January 6th insurrection, a lasting stain on American democracy," she added, referring to the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack that some critics argue makes him constitutionally ineligible to hold office again. "Accountability for criminal deception of voters is absolutely necessary to ensure future candidates and public officials know they can't get away with this sort of conduct."
Gilbert stressed that "despite what Donald Trump and his allies may claim, no one is above the law—including a former president charged with serious crimes, and today marks the start of the legal system's chance to prove this point."
Stand Up America president and founder Sean Eldridge similarly celebrated that "Donald Trump will finally face accountability for falsifying his company's business records in order to conceal damning information from voters ahead of the 2016 election."
"Concealing secret payments and then lying in official filings to cover it up is a serious crime, which is why Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts," Eldridge said. "This case is a clear example of Trump's pattern of engaging in criminal behavior to cling to power and hide the truth from the American people. No one is above the law in the United States of America, including former presidents."
"A functioning democracy depends on voters having the information they need to pick their leaders," he continued. "Trump engaged in criminal acts to cover up the truth just days before the 2016 election, and now he will finally face a jury of everyday Americans."
This is the first criminal trial of a former American president. Monday featured a series of rulings from Judge Juan Merchan—who has rejected Trump's demands that he step away from the case—and the beginning of jury selection.
The New York Timesreported that "the initial pool of prospective jurors dwindled rapidly. More than half of the first group of 96 were dismissed in short order after indicating that they did not believe they could be impartial. Court adjourned for the day roughly two hours after jury selection began, with zero jurors chosen."
In addition to the case in New York, Trump faces two federal cases—overseen by Special Counsel Jack Smith because of Trump's 2024 campaign. One is about his mishandling of classified material and the other stems from his attempt to reverse the 2020 election results. The Republican also faces a Georgia case for interfering with the last presidential contest.
It is not clear whether any of the other three cases will go to trial before the November election. Trump is trying to claim presidential immunity to get the federal election charges dismissed and the U.S. Supreme Court—to which he appointed three justices—is set to hear arguments in that case on April 25.
Public Citizen is among the groups that last week submitted briefs to the high court criticizing Trump's claims. The watchdog's president, Robert Weissman, said that "Trump's legal theory defies common sense and would enable an almost limitless tyranny. Nothing in the Constitution—which aims to prevent tyranny—supports Trump's theory."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Palestine Allies Stage Global 'Economic Blockade' of Gaza Genocide
Organizer A15Action said the worldwide demonstrations targeted "the global economy for its complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people."
Apr 15, 2024
Pro-Palestine activists around the world on Monday executed a day of direct action protests aimed at "blocking the arteries of capitalism and jamming the wheels of production" amid Israel's ongoing genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
Asserting the need to "shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy," organizer A15Action vowed ahead of Monday's demonstrations that "together we will coordinate to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital."
Protesters taking part in the worldwide "economic blockade" flooded the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City in an afternoon action, while at least hundreds of people marched through downtown Los Angeles demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and no war against Iran.
In downtown Los Angeles several hundred people marching in a Pro-Palestinian protest, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/BoBhFWWKat
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) April 15, 2024
Earlier in the day in the San Francisco Bay Area, thousands of protesters blocked the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and two key East Bay highways—I-880 and I-980—from morning rush hour into the early afternoon. Protesters locked themselves and their vehicles together, complicating law enforcement efforts to disperse them and clear traffic lanes. They unfurled a banner reading "Stop the World for Gaza" across all three southbound lanes of the Golden Gate Bridge. The California Highway Patrol said 15 people had been arrested by 11:30 am local time.
"In halting traffic along this route we seek to stop the movement of millions of dollars in daily capital flow, much of which, headed to and from the Port of Oakland, the Oakland Airport, and the nearby rail yards directly and indirectly supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza," A15Action explained on Facebook.
Both directions of the Golden Gate Bridge have been shut down due to a Pro-Palestinian protest. Demonstrators have blocked the southbound direction of Highway 101. This is the second protest causing major back-ups on Bay Area roadways, the demonstration has blocked northbound… pic.twitter.com/oO5dMCvqFD
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) April 15, 2024
"Global capital is complicit in the war crimes occurring daily against Palestinians, and it also hurts us here at home," the organizers continued. "Increased cases of respiratory ailments and cancer are but some of the signs of this uneven devastation at home in Oakland."
"The genocide in Gaza is the horrible cost visited upon our comrades and brothers and sisters abroad," the group added. "We are shutting down 880 to disrupt the global flow of capital that causes so much destruction across the world. We are shutting down 880 in support of a liberated Palestine."
In Middletown, Connecticut, at least 10 people were arrested after dozens of demonstrators blockaded a road leading to Pratt & Whitney, which manufactures engines used in Israeli warplanes. The company is also a subsidiary of military-industrial complex giant RTX—formerly known as Raytheon—several of whose facilities have been previously targeted by protesters since last October.
The Middletown protesters—who said they weren't from any group but were acting in solidarity with A15Action—said Pratt & Whitney is "complicit in the arming of the Israeli military."
The activists demanded that the company—whose stock price has soared by nearly 50% since October—end exports to Israel "and begin the transition to a peace-based economy where the engines will not enable war and genocide."
(1/3) More than 50 protestors from NYC & CT shut down Pratt & Whitney Factory in Middletown, Connecticut demanding it halt its profiting from ongoing genocide in Gaza; Israel has been using planes powered by Pratt & Whitney’s engines to drop bombs on Gaza.
Demonstrators are… pic.twitter.com/SUJC3SkppN
— @TheIndypendent (@TheIndypendent) April 15, 2024
A15Action and allied actions shut down highways in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Illinois—where 40 people were reportedly arrested after blocking the I-190 entrance to Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
"On this Tax Day, when millions are paying taxes which fund the ongoing U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Gaza, protestors seek to take dramatic action, alongside other A15Action organizers worldwide," Chicago Dissenters wrote on Instagram.
Arms giant Lockheed Martin's office in Arlington, Virginia was occupied by activists who locked themselves together while chanting "fund care, not killing."
Activists shut down the arms factory Lockheed Martin in Arlington, VA to protest its complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza by providing Israel with weapons.https://t.co/g4Lafxgrjk pic.twitter.com/IM3FqKsqdY
— Kuffiya (@Kuffiyateam) April 15, 2024
Boeing's St. Charles, Missouri facility—which demonstrators said "produces missiles and bombs sent directly to Israel"—was also targeted in a pre-dawn protest that ended with the arrest of seven activists, who are likely to face unlawful assembly and trespassing charges.
Protesters chanting "free, free Palestine" and "from the river to the sea" blockaded the Port of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. Similar chants were heard during a shutdown of Piraeus Port in Athens, Greece.
BREAKING: Anti-Israel protesters are blockading Deltaport in the Port of Vancouver.
This is part of a global campaign by the far-left activists who say: "No business as usual during a genocide".
They ask dock workers to join in.https://t.co/kddQK47rmLÂ pic.twitter.com/l1ciRyhW1Q
— Efrain Flores Monsanto 🇨🇦🚛 (@realmonsanto) April 15, 2024
There were actions in cities including Barcelona, Spain; Dublin, Ireland; Utrecht, Netherlands; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Adelaide, Australia, where Foreign Minister Penny Wong's office was the stage for an occupation and "die-in."
Demonstrations also took place targeting the Australian ports of Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
"As states founded on colonization and violent dispossession, so-called Australia has much in common with so-called Israel," A15Action wrote on Facebook. "The call for 'Land Back, Liberation, End Colonial Occupation' has been a consistent one since October."
"Building on a decadeslong movement for a free Palestine, and staunch Aboriginal resistance by the First Peoples of this continent, activists continue to protest at arms manufacturers that contribute essential F-35 fighter jet components to the global supply chain, complicit seats of government, universities funded by weapons dealers, and at Zionist-funded sporting and arts events," the group added.
"Land and sea blockades of the ports of Melbourne and Botany have caused major disruption to business as usual during the genocide," A15Action added. "Long live the Intifada!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular