This Week in Civil Liberties: Electronic Privacy and Guantanamo

Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.

Guantanamo
Prisoners in Guantanamo are now in their third month of a hunger strike. This past Wednesday’s New York Times article gives more details. One prisoner’s Op-Ed (here) describes being painfully force-fed with a feeding tube. In his words for the Op-Ed, “I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial. I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here.”
 
Privacy and Technology
The ACLU of Maine is currently supporting a package of privacy bills. Three of five of those bills will have their public hearings this coming Thursday.  One of those bills protects employees from having to forfeit passwords to their social media accounts to their employers. As Allie Bohm, advocacy and policy strategist for our National office, is quoted saying here, "We'd balk if an employer said, 'I want to look at your photo albums once a week or listen in on your dinner party conversation.’…By allowing them to monitor your social-media presence, that's what they might be doing."
 
In other privacy related news, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to update the main statute protecting online privacy, the Electronic Communication Privacy Act. Read more here. 
 
Two other articles of interest for electronic-privacy minded civil libertarians include this one on how students can protect their privacy and this one  describing how Facebook and data brokers work together to show you targeted ads.