The Bush Administration knows no bounds when it comes to violating our civil liberties. Here's the latest:

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Arrestees who have not been convicted of a crime should not be required to have their DNA sampled and collected. It's just the latest step down the slippery slope of over-intrusion into our privacy without just cause.

As Innocence Project co-director Peter Neufeld points out:

The Fourth Amendment restrains the ability of police officers to stop and detain the people they encounter. Unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, the Fourth Amendment usually prohibits a detention. To frisk the detainee, the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous.

New York City police are apparently a suspicious bunch, given the number of stops they made last year. They're particularly suspicious of black people.

The New York Police Department released new information yesterday showing that police officers stopped 508,540 individuals on New York City streets last year — an average of 1,393 stops per day — often searching them for illegal weapons. The number was up from 97,296 in 2002, the last time the department divulged 12 months’ worth of data. ... The raw data showed that more than half of those stopped last year were black: an average of 67,000 per quarter.

Given the department's ugly history, transparency in its interaction with the public is important. Until yesterday, the department had stalled the (still incomplete) release of statistical measures of its citizen encounters.

Hoping, perhaps, to avoid a subpoena, Attorney General Gonzales announced the administration's decision to control the flow of information submit documents to Congress that will (Gonzales asserts) demonstrate the administration's newfound respect for FISA.

The documents, which include applications for electronic wiretaps and orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, will be made available to congressional committees only and not released to the public.

Now brace yourself for a laugh:

Gonzales said the Justice Department would cooperate with both chambers of Congress. "It's important for us that they understand what we're doing," the attorney general said. "All they have to do is ask."

Some of us would like to know what the administration has been doing for the last six years. It's time for Congress to ask.

A public school that wants to search a student's urine for evidence of alcohol consumption should seek a warrant based on probable cause. The shortcut taken by Pequannock Township (NJ) High School is offensive: random urinalysis using a dubious screening test.

Urine screenings look for ethyl glucuronide, produced by the body after it metabolizes alcohol. School officials acknowledge the test is sensitive, and false positive readings can be the result of using products containing ethanol, including mouthwash and Balsamic vinegar.

The test claims to detect alcohol consumption up to 80 hours before the urine is collected. Accuracy issues notwithstanding, whether students consume alcohol when they aren't at school, perhaps with a parent's permission, should be addressed by parents, not schools.

"Medical care and treatment are issues between parents and children," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched its biggest series of arrests of undocumented residents this week in Los Angeles as part of Operation Return to Sender. 761 people were arrested, most of them at home or in local jails.

The government says most of them were under deportation orders or had previously been deported.

What about the rest of them? How many had merely overstayed a visa or had no prior contact with law enforcement?

Those that were arrested in jail will have to finish serving their sentences before being turned over for deporation. Guess who pays for their incarceration? You, the taxpayer. Why not just deport them now?

Corporate accountability does not come easily to AT&T. The corporation's cozy relationship with the NSA prompted a lawsuit (discussed here) seeking redress for violations of customer privacy. Concerned about corporate decisions that harm customers and the corporation, shareholders are asking management to answer some questions.

[Shareholders have] introduced a resolution for consideration at AT&T's stockholder meeting in April. It asks the company's management to explain what steps it is taking to ensure customer privacy and to disclose how much money it has spent on collaborating with the NSA program.

Management has no interest in being held accountable.

AT&T is asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to exclude the resolution from its proxy statement, claiming it would interfere with business and the company should not have to divulge information because of state secrets privileges, according to a statement released by the groups pushing for the resolution.

The ACLU has released a new report (available here) documenting that "the Pentagon monitored at least 186 anti-military protests in the United States and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database."

“It cannot be an accident or coincidence that nearly 200 anti-war protests ended up in a Pentagon threat database,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. “This unchecked surveillance is part of a broad pattern of the Bush administration using ‘national security’ as an excuse to run roughshod over the privacy and free speech rights of Americans.”

The ACLU report reviews hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year. The documents revealed that the surveillance of peace groups and anti-war activists was more widespread than previously known.

The Pentagon document released in conjunction with the report is here.

Every now and then a lawyer gets arrested for raising a voice against injustice. Faya Rose Toure tells her story to The Selma Times:

According to Toure, a Selma officer - whom she referred to as Jim Crow - arrested her for attempting to defend her client Roosevelt Cleveland. Toure claims Selma Municipal Judge Valerie Chittom "found this young man guilty without any opportunity to present any evidence."

When voicing her opinion, Toure said she was found in contempt of court, arrested, manhandled and charged with disorderly conduct and failure to obey. She was later released on a signature bond.

Toure, who is the wife of Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, added both the Selma Police Department and the mayor's office are blind to the injustice taking place in Selma courtrooms and "it's our job to shed light," saying she was stripped of her right to free speech.

It is commonly assumed that the First Amendment right to engage in political speech is abridged by military service. Loyalty and duty have often been viewed as inconsistent with criticism of the military or its civilian commanders.

First Lt. Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq, but he's also facing charges for "making four public statements criticizing President Bush and the Iraq war."

Watada, a 28-year-old Honolulu native who enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks, said he gradually came to the conclusion that the Bush administration had lied about the basis for war and had betrayed the trust of the American people, making Watada ashamed to wear the uniform. In media interviews and in a speech at a peace convention, Watada also said that the Iraq war was "not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law," and that soldiers could stop it by refusing to fight.

At this point, Watada's opinions are widely shared. With good reason, many will view Watada's complaints as prescient, not disloyal. The military argues that it has the power to punish Watada for unbecoming conduct, but punishing a soldier for speaking the truth won't sit well with public opinion. The climate is ripe for a decision that respects Watada's right to be a vocal participant in American democracy.

A postal law enacted in December allows the Government to open our mail.

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

This is but another example of Bush's unitary theory of Government, that he as executive can trump the will of Congress and the judiciary.

The wall between federal and state law enforcement agencies continues to crumble.

The Justice Department is building a massive database that allows state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies, according to Justice officials.

The system, known as "OneDOJ," already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years, Justice officials said. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offenses, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets, officials said.

The Justice Department is preparing to take the breakdown of the wall even further:

I was about to write "Kudos to Mass. Gov. Elect Deval L. Patrick, who announced that when he takes office, he will rescind a plan endorsed by Mitt Romney that allows state and local police to bust undocumented residents."

The agreement, which Gov. Mitt Romney signed on Dec. 13, gave 30 state troopers the power to question, detain and arrest people whom they found in the course of other investigations to be illegal immigrants.

....“If I have that power, I’m going to rescind that agreement,” he told reporters. “I do believe I have that power.”

But kudos may be premature because Patrick's spokesperson is hedging:

“I think going forward he’ll be able to set out a timeline,” [spokesperson Cyndi] Roy said. “He has a lot to accomplish in his first couple of months in office, and I don’t know that it will be the very first thing he does.”

Memo to Gov. Elect Patrick: Do it. It's the right thing to do. Keep your police addressing state and local crime. Immigration enforcement is not within their jurisdiction, nor should it be.