Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties

• NCJ Number: 248457
• Date Published: October 2014
• Agencies: BJA-Sponsored
• Grant Number(s): 2013-TR-BX-0001

Annotation

This brochure provides information on the protection of the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of citizens to help law enforcement understand what activities are constitutionally protected.

Abstract

In addition to its role in fighting crime and keeping Americans safe, the protection of citizen's privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties is a vital law enforcement responsibility. This brochure covers law enforcement's duty to understand what activities are constitutionally protected and how to act in a manner to ensure equal protection for all citizens. It covers the importance of: 1) building relationships between the community and law enforcement; 2) protecting privacy and appropriately gathering, documenting, using, retaining, and sharing personally identifiable information only for valid law enforcement purposes; 3) protecting civil rights, ensuring that the rights of citizens and equal protection under the law are guaranteed to all citizens; 4) identifying constitutionally protected activities and limiting civil liberty violations; and 5) strengthening community trust by protecting privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of all citizens equally and without bias or prejudice.