Legislation

As the result of a major push by Providence city officials, the General Assembly approved legislation authorizing the installation of “red light cameras,” but only after accepting a bevy of ACLU amendments designed to mitigate some of the organization’s civil liberties concerns.

The Senate passed, but the House took no action on, legislation based in part on a USA Patriot Act provision to give local law enforcement broad authority to obtain subscriber information, including bank and credit card numbers, from Internet service providers without a warrant.

“The oldest profession” appeared to weigh heavily on the minds of some legislators this session, due to some recent highly publicized police raids on Providence “spas” claiming to offer massage services that were actually fronts for prostitution.

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.