On Tuesday, March 16, experts on constitutional and military law, national security and criminal defense will participate in a panel discussion in Rochester to debate whether terrorism suspects should be tried in civilian courts or with military tribunals. Last November, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to prosecute five men accused as co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks in federal court, but recent press reports indicate that the Obama administration could reverse course and try the men before military commissions.

With Congress poised to vote on reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act later this week, the New York Civil Liberties Union today joined a coalition of 43 organizations from across New York State in urging the state’s federal lawmakers to support critical reforms to the controversial law that would restore Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today praised the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to prosecute five Guantanamo Bay detainees charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan Federal Court. The following can be attributed to NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman: “The Justice Department has done the right thing. It is absolutely appropriate to transfer these cases to federal court. Due process is an essential American value. Prosecuting people in our courts is the way we do things in our society, and it’s what our entire system of justice is based on.

By Donna Lieberman Mayor Bloomberg's got a camera fetish. He must - how else do you explain the blank check to blanket New York with enough surveillance cameras to track millions of us going to work, taking our kids to school or stopping into a corner store? This month, he vowed to "spend as much as necessary" to install a web of high-tech surveillance cameras documenting every move New Yorkers make on every street and sidewalk in midtown Manhattan between 30th and 60th Sts. Clearly he can't control himself.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today called on the NYPD to provide the public with basic details of its multi-million dollar plan to blanket Midtown with a computerized network of surveillance cameras and license plate readers – a massive expansion of the “Ring of Steel” surveillance system being developed in lower Manhattan. “The NYPD is collecting massive amounts of personal information about law-abiding New Yorkers, with no hint of how it plans to protect individuals’ privacy,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “This is an invitation to abuse.”

When Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came to New York to give a speech last week, New Yorkers picketed and held a news conference outside to criticize the Obama administration’s embrace and expansion of ineffective Bush-era immigration enforcement policies. Napolitano recently announced the expansion of a program which enlists local police to act as immigration agents. But many police chiefs say the program is counterproductive, undermining community policing efforts and setting the stage for rampant racial profiling.

The American Civil Liberties Union and its New York affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union, today filed a lawsuit seeking the disclosure of still-secret records relating to the torture of prisoners held by the U.S. overseas. The requested documents include legal memos authored by John Yoo and Steven Bradbury, who were lawyers in the Bush administration Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as well as documents sent by the Bush White House to the CIA.

The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for refusing to disclose public records about the massive surveillance system it is helping the NYPD develop in downtown Manhattan. The planned system, called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, will establish a network of thousands of surveillance cameras to monitor and track vehicles and pedestrians south of Canal Street. The system will allow the NYPD, and possibly the federal government, to create a computerized database on the movement and whereabouts of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers.

Members of New York State’s Commission on Forensic Sciences voted late yesterday to authorize law enforcement to investigate family members whose DNA is a “partial-match” with an individual whose DNA is in the state’s databank. Under existing law, DNA evidence from a crime scene is compared against DNA samples in the state databank, which have been taken from individuals who have been convicted of certain crimes. When a DNA sample in the state databank is a precise match with crime scene DNA, the individual from whom that sample was taken is typically considered a suspect.

The government will not ask the Supreme Court to review a decision that struck down Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to impose unconstitutional gag orders on recipients of national security letters (NSLs). NSLs issued by the FBI require recipients to turn over sensitive information about their clients and subscribers. A lower court ruled in 2007 that the gag order provisions were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in 2008. The government's time for petitioning the Supreme Court for review has now expired.