Viviette Applewhite, 93, of Philadelphia has become the face of a civil liberties lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania for requiring voters to show identification before voting. The new requirement was signed into law by Republican Governor Tom Corbett on March 14.

 

The wheelchair-bound Applewhite says she has voted since 1960, but won’t be able to do so this November because of the new legal requirement. She doesn’t possess a driver’s license and is unable to obtain a birth certificate from the state, she says, making it impossible for her to show the requisite ID at the polls.

 

Another 93-year-old plaintiff, Bea Bookler, first voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940.  She has the documents needed to obtain a valid photo ID, but state law requires that she present them in person and she is too frail to do so.

 

Representing Applewhite, Bookler and eight other plaintiffs are the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Color People. They contend the law will disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians who lack ID.

 

A 2006 survey by the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that about 13 million adult American citizens lack the kind of proof needed to comply with voter ID laws.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

City Woman Is Lead Plaintiff Against Pa. Voter ID (by Amy Worden and Jan Hefler, Philadelphia Inquirer)

Pennsylvania Voter ID Plaintiffs (ACLU)

Viviette Applewhite et al v. State of Pennslvania (pdf)

Citizens Without Proof: A Survey of Americans’ Possession of Documentary Proof of Citizenship and Photo Identification (Brennan Center for Justice) (pdf)

84-Year-Old Women: Pepper-Sprayed and Losing Right to Vote (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Like the rest of the U.S. military, the Air Force isn’t supposed to spy on Americans. But the secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley,  has decided the service’s drones can conduct “nonconsensual surveillance” of people in the U.S. for a limited time.

 

An April 23 document uncovered by Secrecy News revealed the Air Force’s top official authorized unmanned aircraft to collect imagery of Americans on the ground. The service can also store this data for 90 days. Although the directive was written to limit surveillance of innocent Americans, it contains a loophole that does the opposite.

 

“In other words, if an Air Force drone accidentally spies on an American citizen, the Air Force will have three months to figure out if it was legally allowed to put that person under surveillance in the first place,” wrote Spencer Ackerman at Wired.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

USAF Drones May Conduct “Incidental” Domestic Surveillance (by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News)

Oops! Air Force Drones Can Now (Accidentally) Spy on You (by Spencer Ackerman, Wired)

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), composed of conservative politicians and corporations that promote pro-business legislative agendas, has been allowed to lobby in South Carolina and other states without being required to register like other lobbying organizations.

 

The revelation was discovered by Democratic state Representative Boyd Brown, a critic of ALEC, who found that South Carolina lawmakers adopted legislation in 2003 that specifically exempted the conservative group—and no one else—from registering or disclosing its lobbying expenditures.

 

“I can’t get in a car with a lobbyist and drive up the street,” Brown told iWatch News. “But ALEC can give me a scholarship to fly across the country.”

 

Brown has introduced a bill that would remove ALEC’s exemption from lobbying laws.

 

ALEC also enjoys exempt status when it comes to lobbying regulations in Indiana and Colorado.

 

Common Cause last month filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service asking it to review ALEC’s status, saying it is “a corporate lobbying group masquerading as a charity” that promises its donors a tax deduction.

 

ALEC has been responsible for creating templates for more than 1,000 state bills, at least 200 of which have become law, including the controversial “Stand Your Ground” laws.

 

In the wake of recent controversies, some corporate members of ALEC, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's, Kraft, Mars, Wendy’s and Procter & Gamble, have reportedly dropped out of the organization. So too have 34 lawmakers.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

ALEC Exempted from Lobbyist Status in Three Separate States (by Paul Abowd, iWatch News)

South Carolina ALEC Member Literally Exempted ALEC from State Lobbying and Ethics Laws (by Lee Fang, Republic Report)

Smart ALEC Models This Year’s Fashionable Conservatism for Lawmakers (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Ken Broder, AllGov)

Severe trauma, the kind most commonly but not exclusively linked to combat, may get a new name if the military has its way.

 

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could soon morph into PTSI—for post-traumatic stress injury.

 

Former General Peter Chiarelli, who recently was in charge of the U.S. Army’s program for dealing with PTSD, called for changing the term in order to help de-stigmatize it. “No 19-year-old kid wants to be told he’s got a disorder,” Chiarelli told The Washington Post.

 

Before he retired, Chiarelli began by naming the condition post-traumatic stress. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta went along with the change. Others, including doctors, didn’t like PTS. Some psychiatrists then recommended adding “injury,” and PTSI now is gaining momentum among public and private health professionals.

 

Although the proposed name change is being pushed as a psychological aid for veterans, there are also legal and financial elements to the subject. The word “injury” implies that the problem resulted from outside, traumatic forces, which would make it easier for veterans claiming post-traumatic stress to obtain benefits.

 

Before PTSD became the common expression, militaries called the trauma shell shock, battle fatigue and soldier’s heart. It has since also been associated with civilian experiences, including rape.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

New Name for PTSD Could Mean Less Stigma (by Greg Jaffe, Washington Post)

Psychiatric Community Still Divided Over Idea of Changing PTSD's Name (by Daniel Sagalyn, PBS Newshour)

Vets Accuse Pentagon of Saving Money by Classifying PTSD as “Personality Disorder” (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

From Tennessee to the District of Columbia, police are using mobile and stationary surveillance cameras to collect and store license plates of residents who have committed no crime—so that they can be found if they ever do.

 

In Tennessee, police utilize cameras mounted atop patrol cars that can capture thousands of license numbers each day. The information is then loaded into an ever-expanding database, which can help officers locate a vehicle in the event its owner is suspected of criminal behavior. The program is now expanding to include stationary cameras mounted next to busy roads.

 

“I’m sure that there’s going to be people out there that say this is an invasion of privacy,” Detective James Kemp of Gallatin County told The Tennessean. But “the possibilities are endless there for solving crimes. It’s just a multitude of information out there—to not tap into it to better protect your citizens, that’s ludicrous.”

 

In Washington D.C., local police make use of 250 cameras set up around the city that can capture license plates. Last year they claimed that the cameras led to an average of one arrest a day. DC reportedly has the highest concentration of cameras per square mile in the United States for spotting criminals on the move or just ordinary citizens going about their lives.

 

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s technology and liberty program, expressed concern over D.C.’s “large database of innocent people’s comings and goings.” He told The Washington Post: “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant.”

 

Others predict that the technology will be declared constitutional because license plates are displayed in public, so there is no invasion of privacy.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

High-Tech License Plate Readers Aid Police But Raise Ethical Issues (by Tony Gonzalez, The Tennessean)

DeKalb County’s sheriff’s department recently treated the eviction of a four-generation family like a violent drug bust, all because the local Occupy Movement was helping her avoid losing the current homeowner home.

 

In the middle of the night, sheriff’s deputies stormed the home of Christine Frazer, who lived in the house with her mother, her daughter and her grandson—a family ranging in age from 85 to 3. Frazer’s husband, Leroy, died less than a year after the couple secured a loan with First Franklin Financial Corporation in 2002. Frazer subsequently lost her job and fell behind on her mortgage. She was in the process of trying to restructure her loan through the courts when a dozen police cars showed up at 3 am, with officers prepared for a battle.

 

Sheriff Thomas Brown said the show of force was necessary due to the presence of Occupy Atlanta on Frazier’s property. It was Brown’s belief the protesters—only one of whom was present the night of the eviction—might be armed, based on what he saw take place in Oakland, Washington D.C., and other cities last year.

 

Frazer’s loan was bought and sold several times. She was negotiating with the latest mortgage holder, foreclosure specialist Investors One Corporation, when the sheriff was given the okay to remove her from the house she had lived in for 18 years. Investors One is registered in White Plains, New York, but information about its owners is difficult to ascertain.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am (by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet)

Georgia County Sheriff Evicts Four-Generation Family In Raid Resembling 'Drug Bust' (by Allison Kilkenny, The Nation)

Occupy Our Homes: Christine Frazer's Story (occupyatlanta.org) (video)

Christine Carter-Frazer v. Investors One Corp. et al (Superior Court of DeKalb County) (pdf)

In what critics are calling a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, the Obama administration has issued a proposed new rule requiring energy companies that engage in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on public land to reveal the toxic chemicals they inject into the ground…but only after drilling is completed, when the information has lost much of its value to the public. 

 

In fracking, energy companies use powerful pumps to force a pressurized mix of water and chemicals into deep layers of rock like shale, causing fractures there, which allow the extraction of otherwise unavailable natural gas or oil. The good news is that the mix is about 99% water; the bad news is that the remaining 1% includes highly toxic chemicals harmful even in tiny amounts, including methanol, hydrofluoric acid, sulfuric acid and formaldehyde.

 

Originally, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages public land, proposed that frackers be required to disclose the chemicals 30 days before a well could be started, an idea that proved popular with landowners and communities concerned about pollution of groundwater.

 

The administration’s retreat followed a series of closed-door meetings at the White House in which oil and gas industry trade association lobbyists, as well as individual corporations like ExxonMobil, XTO Energy, Apache, Samson Resources and Anadarko Petroleum, complained to the Office of Management and Budget, which reworked the rule to address industry concerns. The industry feared the additional paperwork and potential loss of trade secrets, although it is unclear how merely delaying the release of the list of chemicals protects any secrets. Interior

 

Department officials claim that having a record of the injected chemicals at all would be an improvement, but a spokesperson for the environmental group Earthjustice called the rule “a free pass to the oil and gas industry at the expense of public health.”

 

The draft rule affects drilling operations on the 756 million acres of federal and Indian land administered by the BLM, where about 3,000 wells are drilled each year using fracking. The rule will not affect most fracking operations, which are conducted on private land and thus fall mainly under state regulation.

- Matt Bewig

 

New Proposal on Fracking Gives Ground to Industry (by John M. Broder, New York Times)

Frack First, Disclose Chemicals Later Under U.S. Rule (by Katarzyna Klimasinska, Bloomberg)

Proposed Rule on Well Stimulation, Including Hydraulic Fracturing, on Federal and Indian Lands (Bureau of Land Management) (pdf)

Conservative legislators in Utah and Arizona have recently passed new laws demanding that the federal government turn over control of federally-owned land in those states or face state taxation. Although legal experts point out that the constitutional prohibition on state taxation of federal land will prevent these laws from having any actual effect, supporters say federal regulation harms industries like ranching, timber and mining, and has led to overgrown forests and massive wildfires.

 

They argue that the federal government owns too much land in their states–it owns about 42% of Arizona and 60% of Utah–and that most of it, excluding National Parks and military bases, should be “returned” to the states, which are closer to the “pioneer spirit” of Westerners. Utah is demanding the return of about 30 million acres and Arizona 48,000 square miles (but not military bases and national parks).

 

But those seeking the return of federal land to state control may find their claims pre-empted by a group whose claims predate those who hearken back to the pioneer spirit. Native American groups throughout the West have long argued that millions of acres of Western land were illegally stolen from them, and now they too are arguing for return. Mount Rushmore, for example, is located in the Black Hills, which the Sioux people consider sacred and to which they have territorial claims based on an 1868 treaty. Although the U.S. seized the land after gold was discovered, in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the land seizure was illegal and ordered the government to pay compensation, which the Sioux have rejected, continuing to demand the return of the now public lands.

 

Native Americans have even sought help from the United Nations, which recently sent James Anaya, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, on a 12-day visit, during which he met with representatives of indigenous peoples. Although Anaya did not endorse specific Native demands for land return, he did agree that “securing the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands is of central importance to indigenous peoples’ socioeconomic development, self-determination, and cultural integrity.”

-Matt Bewig

 

Arizona Senate Passes Bill Demanding Return of Federal Lands (by David Schwartz, Reuters)

Fear of Losing Iconic Western Culture Spurs Fight (by Michelle L. Price and Josh Loftin, Associated Press)

Arizona’s Feuding with Feds is as Old as the State – but Sharper than ever (by Dustin Volz, Cronkite News Service)

U.S. Must Heal Native Peoples' Wounds, Return Lands: U.N. (by Louis Charbonneau, Reuters)

Under federal law, telecommunications companies are required to provide affordable phone and Internet rates to schools in low-income areas, as well as subsidize the cost of equipment and services. The program is called E-Rate, but the time may have arrived for it to be renamed I-Rate.

 

Some telecom giants are simply not abiding by the requirements of E-Rate, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hasn’t helped matters by not enforcing the law, according to ProPublica.

 

One company, AT&T, hasn’t bothered to train its employees about the mandatory low rates. AT&T, as well as Verizon, have been caught charging school districts higher rates than what’s allowed under the E-Rate program. In fact, AT&T has charged some schools 300% more than others in the same region for the same services.

 

The FCC has exacerbated the problem by not going after companies for violating the low-price rule. E-Rate was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, but in the 16 years since then, the FCC has yet to file a single case against a telecommunications company violating the “lowest corresponding price” requirement.

 

The FCC also delegated the responsibility of administering the E-Rate program to a private company, and “has provided little if any guidance to companies on how to apply the best-price rule,” wrote Jeff Gerth of ProPublica.

 

The money for the E-Rate fund comes from regular Americans in the form of an extra charge on their phone bill labeled by many companies “Universal Service Fund.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

AT&T, Feds Neglect Low-Price Mandate Designed to Help Schools (by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica)