Legislation

For the third year in a row, Affiliate lobbying helped defeat a bill, based in part on a USA Patriot Act provision, to give local law enforcement authorities broad authority to obtain from Internet service providers information, including bank and credit card information, of subscribers.

In the waning hours of the session, the legislature approved an important ACLU bill designed to address privacy concerns raised by the state’s new barcoded drivers’ licenses.

The legislature took no action on a bill introduced late in the session to allow cities and towns to use “red light cameras.”

The legislature passed an ACLU bill that removes from a variety of professional licensing statutes an archaic requirement that licensees be “free from contagious disease.”

In order to give members a better sense of the scope of the Affiliate’s work, we have picked one topic – privacy – and briefly summarized how the ACLU helped shape lesser pieces of legislation on the issue, in addition to the more prominent bills summarized elsewhere.