News & Commentary

This article is an expression of my personal opinion as a private citizen, and in no way reflects that of the United States Navy, the government, or affiliated agencies and organizations. My name is Brock Stone. I am a Petty Officer First Class in the Unite

In his first year in office, Donald Trump has proved to be simultaneously the most dangerous and the most frustrated president in living memory.  The danger is clear: He seems unable to control his most basic impulses, and those impulses are shaped more by concern about his image than about the Constitution or the people’s best interests. He has sought to ban Muslims, increase deportations, intimidate the media, repeal Obamacare, bar transgender people from serving the military, and threaten football players taking a knee to oppose racial injustice. The threat he poses continues.  But he has also proved to be one of the nation’s least effectual presidents — even though he enjoys Republican majori

CoreCivic, Inc., the private prison company, will release its quarterly earnings report tomorrow, Nov. 8, to investors, which will mark an extraordinary one-year turnaround for an industry that depends on keeping people trapped in the criminal justice system. Just over a year ago, the company — then named Corrections Corporation of America, or CC

This piece originally appeared at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  If all eyes aren’t on New Jersey and Virginia today, they should be. As the one-year

For nearly two months, the U.S. military has been detaining an American citizen at a secret jail in Iraq, denying him access to a lawyer and even refusing to release his name. The Trump administration is calling the citizen an “enemy combatant,” claiming he was fighting for ISIS in Syria, but it has not presented any evidence to back up its allegations. We went to court asking a judge to protect the citizen’s constitutional rights, including the right not to be impriso

In the 1970s, Frank Serpico, a whistleblower, exposed rampant bribery in the New York Police Department. Serpico, a cop himself, ended up getting shot in the face when fellow officers wouldn’t come to his aid when confronting a suspect. He eventually testified before a special commission set up to investigate corruption in the NYPD, and Al Pacino played him in the Hollywood classic “Serpico.” A new documentary out this week, “

When a judge sent Shane Norrid to an addiction rehab program rather than to jail, Norrid thought he’d get the help he needed. Norrid packed his bags and traveled to Decatur, Arkansas, to begin a program he believed would change his life for the better. Instead, he landed in a human trafficking scheme built on the false promise of addiction treatment. Norrid and hundreds of other individuals ended up at the D

Learn about what's happening across the most pressing civil liberties issues of our time, and what you can do.

The FBI is making increasing use of an investigative technique that puts the public’s internet security at risk. This month, the ACLU filed amicus briefs in two cases to challenge the FBI’s use of this technique, which has significant cybersecurity implications for everyone. The technique — government hacking — involves sending malware over