Wrath and revenge, dynamite often thrown back at former partners of a dissolved personal relationship, have morphed with technology and now often appear online as revenge porn.  Across the country, and here in Illinois, legislators have advanced proposals designed to combat the malicious postings of an ex-partner in a sexual situation.  While acknowledging the abusive impact of revenge porn and the need to give victims legal recourse against perpetrators, The Chicago Sun-Times editorial cautions against state legislative action that slaps on criminal sanctions. The editorial, decrying the reality of unchecked revenge porn, notes that:

While acknowledging that revenge porn is a serious problem, the American Civil Liberties Union prefers to attack it with civil, rather than criminal, penalties. There’s some sense to that; over recent decades we’ve been in too much of a rush to find ways to put people in prison. We’ve seen police and prosecutorial overreaching with laws on sexting, for example... We’re not sure civil penalties would be a sufficient deterrent, but it seems wise to try them first.

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Chicago Reporter blogger Curtis Black reviews Chicago Police Department surveillance activity over the last several years in the wake of the undercover infiltration revealed in the trial of the NATO 3.  Black notes, appropriately, that the Chicago Police Department largely has reverted back to using surveillance tactics and methods similar to those used by the department’s notorious Red Squad of the 1970’s. While many of these practices were barred for many years under a consent decree in the ACLU of Illinois' so-called "spy suit."   The ACLU of Illinois expressed special concern the these tactics may be used now that the consent decree has been lifted:

“The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the Red Squad to court in the 1970s, has urged the City Council to enact stricter regulations on police surveillance activities, according to legal director Harvey Grossman.  The group brought this issue to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's attention shortly after he was elected in 2011, when the city settled a lawsuit charging unlawful police spying on the American Friends Service Committee 10 years earlier.”

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