CIVIL LIBERTIES

MAN ARRESTED FOR TELLING CHENEY HIS POLICIES WERE 'REPREHENSIBLE' SUING
SECRET SERVICE

MIKE MCPHEE, DENVER POST - A Golden man is suing a Secret Service agent
who arrested him after he made a caustic comment to Vice President Dick
Cheney on a sidewalk in Beaver Creek last June. Steven Howards, 54, a
consultant to non-profit organizations, was vacationing with his family
in Beaver Creek when he spotted Cheney in an outdoor mall shaking hands
and posing for photos. Howards and his son walked over and told Cheney
that his policies in Iraq are "reprehensible." Howards said he may have
touched Cheney on the elbow or shoulder, like others in the crowd.

Howards kept walking to his son's piano lesson. He returned to the spot
about ten minutes later with another son, and that's when Secret Service
agent Virgil Reichle handcuffed and arrested Howards for assaulting the
vice president. The charge was later reduced to harassment, then
dismissed in Eagle County Court a month later.

The lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Denver. Lon Garner,
special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Denver, declined to
comment and said Reichle would not be made available for an interview. A
spokeswoman for the Secret Service in Washington did not immediately
return a call. A White House spokesman referred questions to the Secret
Service. In the lawsuit, Howards claims Reichle violated his First
Amendment right to free speech and his Fourth Amendment protection from
unreasonable search and seizure. "It's such a blatant attempt to
suppress a right to free speech. Such a traumatic event for my son, I
couldn't just let it pass," Howards told the Associated Press Monday
night, before the suit was filed.

http://prorev.com/2006/10/man-arrested-for-telling-cheney-his.htm

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NIGHTCLUBS STASHING AWAY PATRONS' PRIVATE DATA

SLASHDOT - Clubs in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere are requiring
patrons to give up their drivers licenses for a swipe through a card
reader. Some bars do this too. The card reader displays their birth date
and the establishments let it be assumed that the only purpose of the
swipe is to check the customer's age. They rarely if ever disclose that
the personal data stored on the license — the customer's name, address,
license number, perhaps even height, weight, and eye color — go into a
database and are retained, perhaps indefinitely. While a federal law
forbids selling or sharing data from drivers licenses, there is no
prohibition against collecting it. A few states have enacted such
prohibitions - New Hampshire, Texas, and Nebraska. Privacy advocates
warn that such personal data, once in a database, is bound to be
misused. "

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/52590316/article.pl

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