News & Commentary

The Oakland Police Department oversaw the use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland demonstrators, and now the department is refusing to hand over information about what really happened.

The day after an enormous peaceful demonstration, and the first general strike this country has seen since the 1940s, some of the focus has turned to bonfires and tear gas. But as we continue looking into what happened during late-night clashes between demonstrators and the police, let's not forget the voices of the thousands upon thousands of people who peacefully came together and marched through the streets of Oakland. That's the First Amendment in action.

In response to the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) transformation last week of downtown Oakland into this battle zone-like scene, the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers’ Guild demanded that OPD conduct a full and independent investigation of the recent enforcement actions on Occupy Oakland.

Picture this. In response to a peaceful anti-war protest, the Oakland Police Department uses large wooden bullets, sting ball grenades and shot-filled bean bags, as a result of which at least 58 protesters are injured. That was 2003, and unfortunately sounds eerily similar to reports of OPD's response to an Occupy Oakland demonstration yesterday evening, in which bean bags or other projectiles appear to have been fired directly into crowds and multiple rounds of tear gas were used.

We know that the government takes advantage of outdated privacy law to demand our personal information from online services that collect and hold our data. But what we rarely know is exactly how often this happens: the government isn't required to reveal how many demands for information they make or how many individuals are affected, and companies rarely volunteer this information. One of the very few exceptions is Google, whose Transparency Report shows that the government continues to increase its demands for data about users of online services.

Today's early morning raid by the Oakland Police Department on Occupy Oakland raises a number of questions.

Today, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) turns 25 years old. On October 21, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed ECPA into law. As Wired reported today on the "Aging 'Privacy' Law," ECPA was passed "at a time when e-mail was used mostly by nerdy scientists, when phones without wires hardly worked as you stepped out into the backyard, and when the World Wide Web didn't exist. Four presidencies later, [ECPA] has aged dramatically, providing little protection for citizens from the government's prying eyes — despite the law's language remaining much the same."

By Christopher CalabreseWashington Legislative Office

Catherine CrumpACLU National Office