The ACLU has asked Congress to repeal a provision of the Patriot Act granting the FBI expanded powers to demand sensitive personal information without judicial supervision.

The Justice Department's own inspector general said the number of so-called "national security letters" the FBI has issued is significantly higher than previously disclosed. In 2005, the FBI alone issued more than 19,000 of the letters.

The ACLU believes the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is trying to evade responsibility for the rampant use of letters by blaming the FBI for them. "The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and they are dodging their responsibility," said ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston. "Congress must act immediately to exercise true oversight and repeal these dangerous Patriot Act provisions."

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records without court approval. The law has a "gag rule" that forbids a person who receives a letter from telling anyone about the record demand.

The Justice Department report found serious breaches of department regulations and numerous potential violations of the law. It also criticized the FBI for lax managerial controls that invited abuse, and found that agents had claimed "exigent circumstances" where none existed, and that some recipients had provided more information than authorized by law.

The ACLU has successfully challenged the procedures for issuing the letters in two separate lawsuits.

In response to the court rulings, Congress made some minor changes to the law when it reauthorized the Patriot Act in 2005. As the Justice Department report demonstrates, those changes are not enough.

In a September 2004 ruling striking down the draconian gag provision of the NSL power, Federal District Court Judge Victor Marrero said: "As our sunshine laws and judicial doctrine attest, democracy abhors undue secrecy. An unlimited government warrant to conceal, effectively a form of secrecy per se, has no place in our open society. Such a claim is especially inimical to democratic values for reasons borne our by painful experience."

In April, Judge Marrero is expected to hear arguments in the ACLU's challenge to the gag and secrecy provisions of the NSL law as amended by Congress in 2006.

LAKE FOREST - Acting on behalf of day laborer groups, the ACLU of Southern California has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the City of Lake Forest in federal court. The suit challenges a city ordinance that prohibits, and city enforcement actions that discourage, day laborers from soliciting employment while standing on sidewalks in Lake Forest. The suit alleges that the ordinance and the city's enforcement actions violate the free speech rights of day laborers guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

'Day laborers standing on the public sidewalk exercise the same free speech rights as anyone else,' said ACLU/SC Orange County director Hector Villagra. 'The First Amendment has been fought for and passed down over many generations, it is zealously guarded when exercised on the sidewalk and other public places, and it protects everyone living in this nation.'

The lawsuit on behalf of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Colectivo Tonantzin, and the Association of Workers from Lake Forest states that the city's law and its actions are illegal and discriminatory because they target the speech of a specific group, serve no significant government interest, and leave no alternative avenue for day laborers to advertise their availability for work within the City of Lake Forest. The case was filed late Thursday, and today the ACLU/SC asked for a temporary restraining order to block the city from targeting workers who gather on public sidewalks.

Previous federal challenges to similar ordinances and activities in Los Angeles County, Glendale, and Redondo Beach have been successful.

'Day laborers are members of the Lake Forest community, and they provide an important service through their hard work,' stated Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of NDLON. 'By filing this case, day laborers are standing up for their right to earn a living for themselves and their families.'

"The workers deserve equal respect and dignity. Working should not be a crime," said Naui Huitzilopochtli from the Tonantzin Collective, an OC-based human rights organization. "Day laborers are easy targets because of their visibility, and they are being unfairly targeted. But the City has no right to try to drive them out of Lake Forest."

'This country was built through the hard labor of immigrants, whether on the railroads in the

19th century or in today's booming housing market,' said Nora Preciado, ACLU/SC staff attorney and Equal Justice Works Fellow, who is representing the day-labor groups. 'This kind of discrimination is contrary to our deepest principles of freedom and fair play.'

February 17, 1987: L.A. police swept Skid Row, launching twice-daily raids and seizing and dumping residents' property. After the ACLU/SC, Legal Aid Foundation and private attorneys sued, the city was forced to scale back police raids and give notice to homeless.

"It would appear that we have miraculously solved the horrible problem of destitute homelessness in our community by simply declaring it illegal," actor Martin Sheen ironically wrote in a local newspaper later that year.

Twenty years later, the ACLU/SC is again asking Los Angeles to stop criminalizing homelessness. In that time, the estimated number of homeless in L.A. County has more than doubled, from 35,000 to 88,000.