The three California affiliates of the ACLU have filed a joint request for detailed information on the focus and methods of two little-known government centers in the state that gather broad data about American citizens in the name of fighting terrorism.

The three ACLU affiliates - in Northern California, Southern California, and San Diego and Imperial counties - are seeking information under the California Public Records Act about the Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk and the State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center in Sacramento.

'We don't know a lot about these centers. There's a lot of secrecy as to the methods they're using and what kind of information they're gathering,' said Tori Praul, a privacy researcher with the ACLU of Southern California who is coordinating the records requests.

This much about the two California data centers is clear, however: they are part of a de facto new domestic intelligence apparatus that poses potentially serious threats to privacy. Established by the Bush administration's National Strategy for Information Sharing, the California centers are among a growing network of some 40 such centers nationwide that collect criminal records, public- and private-sector data and, in Los Angeles, vaguely defined information from 'suspicious activity reports' generated by LAPD officers.

'The personal information of innocent Americans is being collected and used by these government fusion centers without proper safeguards. This opens the door to abusive police practices of the past, such as the FBI's targeting notable civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr.,' said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. 'All too often we've given our government new powers to protect national security, only to have them used against innocent Americans. We need to learn from our mistakes, not repeat them.'

The ACLU recently updated its November 2007 report, 'What's the Matter with Fusion Centers,' in which the group warned about the potential dangers of these new institutions, including ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sector and military roles, and collection of information about peaceful activities. The update explains how recent developments have only confirmed the urgency of these warnings.

'We warned that the structure of fusion centers was ripe for abuse, and that recruiting every corner beat cop to file reports on innocent, everyday behavior was a bad idea,' said ACLU National Security Policy Counsel and report co-author Michael German. 'Already, we have seen criminal abuses in California, and many reports of law enforcement personnel wasting their time harassing perfectly innocent individuals.'

Praul said the records requests by the ACLU's California affiliates are aimed at finding out 'everything we possibly can about how these centers function'who participates, what kinds of records are housed there, who has access to those records, what types of surveillance methods they employ, under what legal authority their activities are carried out, and what kind of oversight systems are in place to ensure that the centers comply with the law.

'Ultimately, we hope that by obtaining more information, we can assess the legality of their intelligence gathering. We are concerned that they may be targeting innocent individuals and groups based on characteristics such as ethnicity, religion or political activity. We are also concerned that they may be gathering information without the proper legal basis for doing so,' she said.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Certain laws meant to fight terrorism have actually hijacked the war on terror, says Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California who will speak at a public forum on government repression Wednesday evening.

Arulanantham, the director of immigrant rights and national security cases for the ACLU/SC, will be one of three featured speakers at the forum, scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 10 in room 311 of the Westmoreland Building of the Southwestern School of Law, at 3050 Wilshire Blvd.

The government has stepped up enforcement of so-called 'material support of terrorism' laws, but that has done nothing to make us safer, Arulanantham said. It has actually undermined American efforts to help victims of disaster around the world while at the same time threatening our most cherished freedoms.

'The war on terror has been distorted by misguided legislation and then hijacked by irrational enforcement policies,' Arulanantham said. 'There's no rationale for why we have laws that make it a crime to send school books or baby formula to people who are victims of natural disasters.'

At the forum, Arulanantham will describe United States v. Omidvar, et al, in which he represents one of several Iranian Americans being prosecuted under material support of terrorism laws for having worked with a charity alleged to have links to an Iranian resistance group designated by the government as terrorist organization. In fact, the group is collaborating with U.S. military forces in Iraq.

'The bureaucratization of the war on terror has resulted in a terrorism enforcement system that has taken on a life of its own,' Arulanantham said.

Also available at the forum will be copies of Arulanantham's paper for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 'A Hungry Child Knows No Politics,' published in June.

In addition to Arulanantham, the forum will feature as keynote speakers Vince Warren, executive Director of the Center For Constitutional Rights in New York City, which has coordinated representation for defendants detained as enemy combatants by the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay; and Stacy Tolchin, a National Lawyers' Guild member and noted immigrants' rights attorney who is involved in challenging recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Los Angeles area.

The forum is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Southwestern School of Law Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The ACLU of Southern California today applauded Calabasas Mayor Mary Sue Maurer and the other members of the Calabasas City Council for approving a new resolution on grant funding for community groups that eliminated language from an earlier version that violated First Amendment protections.

After receiving a strongly worded letter from the ACLU/SC that raised the constitutional concerns and threatened possible litigation, the City Council voted 5-0 on Wednesday night to rescind the old resolution and enact a new one. The new law eliminates language that prevented community organizations whose principals had “open or pending lawsuits” against the city, or who had vaguely defined “political affiliations,” from qualifying for city grants.

“We’re very pleased that the city responded to the concerns we expressed and eliminated the portions of previous funding language that we considered unconstitutional,” said Peter Eliasberg, Manheim Family Attorney for First Amendment Rights at the ACLU/SC. “Barring a group from obtaining city funding based on past or pending litigation comes dangerously close to a loyalty test. And if the city’s goal is to avoid the political use of city funds, it can do so by putting restrictions on how the grant money is used, rather than by restricting which organizations qualify.”

In fact, the city will now rely on the legal restrictions on political activity that apply to nonprofit organizations under federal income-tax laws, Calabasas City Attorney Michael G. Colantuono told the council in a report. “The city is fully supportive of rights of free expression and appreciates this opportunity to clarify that commitment,” he said in the report.

The ACLU/SC sent the first of two letters to Calabasas city officials in July after learning that the city had passed its resolution on grant funding in April. At that time, the council made it clear that under the resolution, otherwise qualified organizations would not receive funding if they had engaged in litigation against the city.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that litigation, because it is a way of petitioning the government for redress of grievances, is constitutionally protected activity,” Eliasberg wrote.