According to a recent guest column in the Rockford Register Star, the ACLU's Ed Yohnka writes that “CSI” is not real life.

The ease of solving crime in a television program should not drive public policy. Many Americans today embrace a social phenomenon, dubbed the “CSI Effect.” Television programs about police investigators using forensic evidence to facilely solve murder mysteries drive the notion that science can provide easy answers for fighting crime.

House Bill 3238, which recently passed the Illinois House, would compel the collection of DNA from all people arrested for murder, home invasion or criminal sexual assault and indicted by a grand jury or subject to a probable cause finding by a judge.

This bill understates the constitutional and practical implications of collecting DNA from people who have not been convicted of any crime.

Supporters of the collection and permanent retention of DNA samples upon arrest and charging dismiss important constitutional concerns. Such compelled DNA testing violates the right to privacy under the U.S. and the Illinois constitutions.

Indeed, Illinois’ constitution contains even more explicit privacy protections than the federal Constitution.

To mark the seventh anniversary of the publication of photographs that exposed torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, the New York Times published an ACLU/PEN American Center op-ed today honoring those who stood up against the torture policies of the Bush administration. In the introduction, Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems write about Sergeant Joe Darby, as well as the many other Americans, known and unknown, who stood up against the Bush administration’s torture policies:

In January 2004, Spec. Joseph M. Darby, a 24-year-old Army reservist in Iraq, discovered a set of photographs showing other members of his company torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The discovery anguished him, and he struggled over how to respond. “I had the choice between what I knew was morally right, and my loyalty to other soldiers,” he recalled later. “I couldn’t have it both ways.”

So he copied the photographs onto a CD, sealed it in an envelope, and delivered the envelope and an anonymous letter to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. Three months later — seven years ago today — the photographs were published. Specialist Darby soon found himself the target of death threats, but he had no regrets. Testifying at a pretrial hearing for a fellow soldier, he said that the abuse “violated everything I personally believed in and all I’d been taught about the rules of war.”

He was not alone. Throughout the military, and throughout the government, brave men and women reported abuse, challenged interrogation directives that permitted abuse, and refused to participate in an interrogation and detention program that they believed to be unwise, unlawful and immoral. The Bush administration’s most senior officials expressly approved the torture of prisoners, but there was dissent in every agency, and at every level.

There are many things the Obama administration could do to repair some of the damage done by the last administration, but among the simplest and most urgent is this: It could recognize and honor the public servants who rejected torture.

The Bush administration repeatedly honored those who approved torture, but the Obama administration should honor those — like Joe Darby — who rejected it. You can send your own personal message of thanks to the American heroes who stood up against torture, and have copies of those messages sent to President Obama. 

For every Joe Darby, we know that there are countless other American heroes who opposed policies of torture and abuse whose names we do not know. To honor the best of America, we are asking you to share your stories of how you or someone you know stood up to oppose torture or abuse.

(Originally posted on the Blog of Rights.)

In a Chicago Sun-Times article Wednesday, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel was urged to rein in police spying after the city agreed to pay and publicly absolve an international peace and justice organization investigated in the run-up to a 2002 business conference in Chicago.

The Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee was one of several groups investigated by the Chicago Police Department prior to the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue.

The major business meeting had triggered violent protests across the country. The Daley administration was determined to avoid similar unrest in Chicago.

The police department’s notorious Red Squad had spied on, infiltrated and harassed political groups in violation of the First Amendment. A now-dissolved 1982 consent decree that reined in police spying required the city to audit compliance and publicly disclose investigative targets.

On Tuesday, the city agreed to settle a claim filed jointly by the Quaker group and the American Civil Liberties Union that accused the police department of overstepping its bounds in a way that damaged the reputation of a group with no history of violence.

Under the agreement, the city agreed to pay $7,500 to the ACLU and $5,000 to the AFSC. The Daley administration also acknowledged that its 2002 investigation “revealed no evidence that the AFSC ... had engaged in any conduct constituting a threat to public safety ... or a violation of any criminal law.”

“This is the fall-out from no longer having a spy suit consent decree in place. Without reasonable guidelines on the collection of intelligence information, the city is free to investigate the activities of law-abiding organizations,” said ACLU legal director Harvey Grossman.