FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Tuesday, June
11, 2002
PHOENIX, AZ--The American Civil Liberties Union today sent a letter to
Arizona
prison officials demanding suspension of a state law that bans prisoners
from contacting
groups or individuals who may post information about them online.
"This ill-conceived law places prisoners in a Catch-22," said Eleanor Eisenberg,
Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. "The only way for prisoners
to stop
information from being posted on the Internet is to contact the very organizations
the
prisoners are now banned from contacting."
The broadly worded legislation bars prisoners from corresponding with a
"communication service provider" or "remote computing service" and disciplines
prisoners if any person outside prison walls accesses a provider or service
website at a
prisoner's request. To date, two prisoner advocacy organizations with websites
-- the
Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty and Voices from Inside --
have been
singled out by the Arizona Department of Corrections. Recent department
notices
demand that prisoners have their names and case information removed from
these
websites, or face prison discipline and possible criminal prosecution.
"Arizona's attempts to restrict and censor the content of advocacy organizations'
own
websites certainly violates the Constitution and establishes a troubling
precedent," said
Ann Beeson, Litigation Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program.
"Prisoners and the groups that choose to assist them retain the same vital
freedom of
speech that all Americans do."
In its letter to corrections chief Terry Stewart, the ACLU said such censorship
is not "a
legitimate governmental objective" and expressed confidence that the legislation
would
be swiftly invalidated by the courts. "There can be no doubt that the purpose
and effect
of this legislation is to suppress the flow of information from prisoners
to the outside
world, and to chill the advocacy of CCADP and other anti-death penalty
and prisoner
rights organizations," the ACLU letter said
“The Internet is a vital source of news and information for millions of
people in the
United States and around the world,” said David C. Fathi, staff counsel
with the
ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The government may not ban information
about
prisoners from the Internet any more than it could ban such information
from
newspapers or television.”
| DOC letter to prisoners ordering removal from the internet |
| CCADP letter responding to ADOC's prisoner removal requests |
| ACLU letter to ADOC regarding litigation if enforcement continues |
