ESTABLISHING A NEW NORMAL
National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights
Under the Obama Administration
AN 18-MONTH REVIEW
JULY 2010
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10004
www.aclu.org
Establishing A New Normal | 2
INTRODUCTION
On January 22, 2009—his second full day in office
—President Obama signed a series of executive
orders that squarely repudiated some of the most
egregious abuses of the Bush administration.
The new orders categorically prohibited torture
and limited all interrogations, including those
conducted by the CIA, to techniques authorized
by the Army Field Manual. They outlawed the
CIA’s practice of secret detention and shut down
the CIA’s overseas prisons. And they mandated
the closure of the Guantánamo prison within one
year. These auspicious first steps towards fulfill-
ing candidate Obama’s promise of change were
more than symbolic gestures: they carried the
force of law, they placed the power and prestige
of the presidency behind restoration of the rule of
law, and they gave weight to the President’s oft-
stated view that adherence to our nation’s funda-
mental principles makes us safer, not less safe.
But in the eighteen months since the issuance
of those executive orders, the administration’s
record on issues related to civil liberties and
national security has been, at best, mixed. Indeed,
on a range of issues including accountability for
torture, detention of terrorism suspects, and use
of lethal force against civilians, there is a very
real danger that the Obama administration will
enshrine permanently within the law policies and
practices that were widely considered extreme
and unlawful during the Bush administration.
There is a real danger, in other words, that the
Obama administration will preside over the cre-
ation of a “new normal.”
This report examines the Obama administra-
tion’s record to date on a range of national secu-
rity policies that implicate human rights and
civil liberties. It concludes