Didn’t have time for longer commentary this week, just a note about the scope of these roundups. When I initially started this, I didn’t intend to follow incidents involving government interventions over parenting. This tends to be a difficult area with respect to things like vaccines and extreme religious beliefs. In some of those cases, I fully support government intervention if there’s a clear public health justification. And in some cases, I can be convinced that a person’s religious beliefs cross the line into the abuse of a child.
But the recent incidents involving arrests over merely allowing young kids to play or walk alone go way beyond the line of what should be acceptable for the state. I plan to track incidents like these as well, as I think they warrant importance and belong in the same category as the other things I write about and link to here.
News from the past two weeks:
The Economist writes about America’s over-incarceration madness.
Dara Lind writes about the possibility of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Congress.
Scott Shane writes about what the recently released documents from the Snowden cache tell us about drone strike targeting in the Middle East. Jon Schwarz discovers how American savings investments fund bomb manufacturers.
Brian Bennett writes about the Border Patrol investigative unit concluding that use of force was justified for every Border Patrol incident that ended with a dead body.
Dahlia Lithwick looks at whether “excited derlirium” is a made-up cause of death used to shield police officers from accountability in deadly encounters with mentally ill persons.
Ashley Gorski breaks down what was revealed by recently released documents concerning the legal justifications for CIA surveillance.
After printing unfounded government propaganda, the UK Sunday Times threatened First Look Media for publishing a screen shot of their shitty journalism. In related news of government-sponsored bullshit, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden opened his mouth some more. Conor Friedersdorf challenges Hayden’s perspective on the 4th Amendment.
The NSA and the FISC are planning to continue phone record metadata collection during the 6 month transition period under the USA Freedom Act.
Bill Blunden writes about the nexus between state surveillance and for-profit hacking companies.
A University of Wisconsin researcher discovered that prisoners in private prisons receive more infractions that lengthen inmate sentences and have a higher recidivism rate than other prisons.
Bill Keller writes about how law-and-order conservative Pat Nolan became a criminal justice reformer after ending up on the other side of that fence.
Ed Pilkington profiles a man who was wrongly imprisoned
for 31 years due to the FBI’s bogus hair analysis.
Amnesty International released a report saying that no U.S. state is in compliance with international standards on use-of-force by police officers.
The United Nations committee on refugees released a report saying that there were 14 million newly displaced people in 2014. The New York Times takes a deeper dive into the data.
Anna Fifield challenges the idea that journalists covering nations with severe restrictions on journalism are actually helping the regimes they cover.
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch write about the recent attempts to reveal the identities of Reason commenters who left harshly critical comments about the judge in the Silk Road case.
Google revealed to activist Jacob Applebaum that they were forced to release private information about him to the government as part of the investigation of Wikileaks. Ryan Gallagher has more.
Veterans with PTSD are still blocked from using medical marijuana in much of the United States.
People who have spoken out against World Bank and the International Finance Corporation have been harassed and jailed in various parts of the world.
There are concerns that new language in the DOD’s war manual could open the door to the U.S. military targeting journalists in war.
The Washington state DOC put on a summer camp for kids with incarcerated parents.
Ansel Herz writes about the recent federal report by the monitor assigned to the Seattle Police Department.
San Francisco police responded an accidental 911 call and shot the family dog.
The EFF and the ACLU are suing to get more information on the license plate reader technology used by the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff Offices.
LAPD shot an unarmed man whose hand was wrapped in a towel.
Undocumented immigrants at a detention center in Texas protested their living conditions as members of Congress toured the facility.
Even in parts of Texas, prosecutors aren’t wasting time enforcing marijuana possession laws that the legislature isn’t willing to change.
Oklahoma citizens filed a petition with enough signatures to trigger a judge to decide if a grand jury investigation is warranted for the case of a man shot by a volunteer deputy in Tulsa.
Jacob Sullum writes about the Kansas mom who’s facing decades in prison for using medical marijuana – arrested after her son questioned an anti-drug lesson at school.
Anthony L. Fisher writes about a North Dakota man who was found dead after police pressured him to become a drug informant.
A police officer in Chicago was caught on video shooting into a moving car with 6 unarmed teenagers in December 2013.
Witnesses to the Tamir Rice shooting contradict the officer’s account of what happened. Jaeah Lee writes about what happened with the 911 calls that led up to the murder.
Melissa Quinn writes about a man who had $11,000 stolen by law enforcement as he tried to fly from Cincinnati to Orlando.
Moron governor Rick Scott cost Florida taxpayers $1.5 million over his attempt to drug test welfare recipients.
Two Georgia police officers and a jail health care worker were indicted over the death of a 21-year old inmate in a Savannah jail.
Religious extremists in North Carolina have lost their battle to force women to have ultrasounds before having an abortion.
Baltimore police completely made up those accusations about various gangs targeting them at the time of Freddie Gray’s funeral.
Delaware decriminalized marijuana possession.
The family of Brandon Tate-Brown in Philadelphia wants an investigation opened after it was revealed that the police lied about their version of events. Another judge in Philly overturned the convictions of 58 drug defendants due to corruption.
Murtaza Hussain and Razan Ghalayini write about the story of the Fort Dix Five.
The New York Times takes an in-depth look at the death of Eric Garner.
A Massachusetts man who has maintained his innocence for 21 years behind bars for a murder was released and prosecutors now say they don’t have the evidence to retry him.
Vancouver is the first Canadian city to issue licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries, in defiance of the federal government in Ottawa.
The Dominican Republic is deporting Haitians en masse who can’t prove that they are legal residents.
Britain’s spy agency pushed the limits of British laws by hacking into anti-virus software and other security tools. Meanwhile, Britain’s justice system is increasingly failing the poor and disadvantaged.
It was revealed that the NSA spied on high-level members of the French government, including the past several Presidents.
Germany detained an Al-Jazeera journalist based on an Egyptian warrant. He was released 3 days later with no charges and is now demanding an explanation.
A drone will be flown into Poland to drop abortion pills into a nation where abortion has been banned since 1993.
A news editor in Turkey has been sentenced to a 21-month suspended jail term for insulting President Erdogan.
Human Rights Watch says that Lebanon is not doing enough to curb torture.
UN investigators accuse both Israel and Palestinian militants of committing war crimes.
IDF soldiers were caught on video beating and berating a restrained Palestinian man.
In Egypt, and Interior Ministry officer forced a pardoner prisoner to bow down as he was released to show his gratitude for the pardon
UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic are accused of sexual abusing children.
The Saudi bombing of Yemen has not been working.
An Indian journalist uncovering illegal activity of a government official was burned alive during a police raid.
China is attempting to ban Muslims from fasting during Ramadan.
Also in China, human rights lawyers continue to face harassment and worse in the country’s court system.
