Jan 1 2007
Here's a review of stories we covered in 2006. For coverage of additional stories, check out my Top 10 Civil Liberties News Sources.January 2006
January 23rd: In light of recent attempts by the U.S. government to acquire private user information from Google (as part of its case in favor of the Child Online Protection Act), BBC technology expert Bill Thompson looks at the serious privacy risks posed by search engine data storage.January 31st: Despite his mixed record on civil liberties issues, the Senate votes 58-42 to place Justice Samuel Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court.
February 2006
February 4th: Betty Friedan, a pivotal figure in second-wave feminism, passes away.February 7th: A new report reveals that the vast majority of Guantanamo Bay detainees have not been accused of hostile acts or membership in terrorist organizations.
February 14th: A number of high-ranking Chinese officials, including a former aide to Mao Tse-tung, publish an open letter condemning government censorship of investigative reporting.
February 20th: Holocaust denier David Irving is sentenced to a three-year prison sentence in Austria for a speech he delivered in 1989. European anti-Nazi laws are understandable, considering the continent's history; what is less understandable is the explicit double standard directed against Europe's growing Muslim immigrant population.
March 2006
Early March: The Afghanistan Human Rights Commission releases a report describing persistent widespread discrimination against women.March 3rd: In a letter to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) addresses the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's concerns over the controversial Bush domestic surveillance program by threatening to essentially dissolve the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
March 6th: Governor Mike Rounds (R-SD) signs a bill banning all abortions in South Dakota, even in cases of rape or incest. The largely symbolic legislation is never enforced--and never enforceable, for that matter. Opponents of the bill will successfully petition to have it as a ballot referendum on November 7th, where it will be handily defeated. March 7th: Journalists learn of a plan to set up 80 surveillance cameras in Dillingham, Alaska (population 2,400) using a Homeland Security grant. If this 1:30 person-to-camera ratio were maintained nationwide, the United States would have ten million government surveillance cameras. Big Brother is watching, indeed.
March 8th: Iranian police violently disperse a crowd celebrating International Women's Day.
March 14th:
- A federal judge condemns unethical witness tampering on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 9/11 "20th hijacker." Although the Department of Justice is seeking the death penalty, Moussaoui will later be sentenced to a life term--probably due, in part, to the fact that a great deal of evidence had to be thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct.
- The ACLU of Pennsylvania releases evidence that the FBI has been spying on antiwar groups, such as the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Justice, under the pretense of investigating "terrorism." Later reports will reveal that the FBI's monitoring of antiwar groups has been extremely broad and aggressive.
March 22nd:
- In Georgia v. Randolph, the U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-3 that warrantless searches of homes conducted under visible protest from one or more residents violate the Fourth Amendment, even if another resident has given permission for the search.
- Freelance journalist Doug Ireland reports that the Badr Organization in Iraq is executing LGBTs, particularly gay men, a situation that the Bush administration has ignored. Prior to the Iraq War, a bill signed by Saddam Hussein had made homosexuality a capital offense.
March 25th: News agencies report that, according to a defecting physician, the North Korean government encourages the execution of disabled newborns as part of its "purification" policy.
