This evening's music features Motown r&b singer William "Smokey" Robinson.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

The United States Considers Itself a Human Rights Champion. The World Begs to Differ.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is part of a regular examination of the human rights records of all 193 U.N. member countries and will be the second review of its kind for the U.S. since 2010. The review comes at a critical time when the U.S. human rights record has been criticized for falling short of meeting international human rights standards. From racially biased policing and excessive use of force by law enforcement to the expansion of migrant family detention and from the lack of accountability for the CIA torture program to the use of armed drones abroad, the U.S. has a lot to answer for. ...

The world will be asking hard questions of a country that considers itself a human rights champion, and, as the UPR represents the final human rights review of the Obama administration, it will be expecting meaningful answers and a concrete plan of action, including in the area of economic justice, which the U.S. submission to the Human Rights Council regrettably referred to as social and economic "measures" rather than the universally accepted framework and terminology of "rights."

What human rights legacy will the president leave behind in January 2017? Will President Obama be remembered as a leader who approved secret kill-lists, institutionalized the use of indefinite detention, and failed to end unlawful surveillance practices? Or will the president endorse accountability for torture and provide an apology and reparations for victims, including the 26 former CIA detainees who the U.S. Senate torture report found were wrongfully detained? Will President Obama heed the recommendations made by former Justice John Paul Stevens, who this week called the government to compensate some of the Guantanamo detainees, or will he be seen as the president who turned a blind eye to injustice? ...

On Monday, the world will be watching to see whether the Obama administration will stand on the right side of history.

U.S. Government: We Can Classify Anything and Judges Can’t Stop Us

At a hearing today on a lawsuit seeking to make videotapes of force-feedings at Guantánamo public, Justice Department attorneys argued that the courts cannot order evidence used in trial to be unsealed if it has been classified by the government. “We don’t think there is a First Amendment right to classified documents,” stated Justice Department lawyer Catherine Dorsey.

The judges at the D.C. Court of Appeals appeared skeptical. Chief Judge Merrick Garland characterized the government’s position as tantamount to claiming the court “has absolutely no authority” to unseal evidence even if it’s clear the government’s bid to keep it secret is based on “irrationality” or that it’s “hiding something.”

“That is our position,” Dorsey agreed. She added that a more appropriate tool to compel the release of the videos was through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Sixteen media organizations, including First Look Media, are seeking footage of Abu Wa’el Dhiab being repeatedly force-fed at Guantánamo. ... “There is a public right at stake,” David Schultz told the panel of judges on behalf of the media outlets, adding that the videos depict “illegal conduct by government employees.”

The government countered by claiming release of the videos could harm national security, the same argument it made during a district court proceeding late last year. In that case, District Judge Gladys Kessler rejected the feds’ national security claims and ordered the release of the force-feeding videos after they had been redacted to strip out any personally identifiable information. However, she then granted a stay to that order in December to allow the government to appeal to the D.C. court.

Debt Collectors Fight Privacy Advocates Over Limits for Automated License Plate Readers

As privacy advocates battle to rein in the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), they’re going up against another industry that benefits from this mass surveillance: lenders and debt collectors. ...

California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and other states have proposed laws to better clarify the use of these cameras, which can track the GPS location of every car and transmit registration information to third parties. In Rhode Island, for instance, state Rep. Larry Valencia and state Sen. Gayle Goldin proposed bills in 2014 to prohibit the sale or trade of data collected by ALPRs, and to mandate that the state destroy records after one year.

I filed a records request and found two letters in opposition. One letter came from the Steven G. O’Donnell, on behalf of the Rhode Island State Police, arguing that law enforcement should be able to come up with its own internal procedures to govern the use of ALPRs.

The other letter came from Danielle Fagre Arlow, senior vice president to the American Financial Services Association (AFSA), a trade group for consumer lending companies, some of which target the subprime market.

“Our particular interest in the bill,” Arlow wrote, “is the negative impact it would have on ALPR’s valuable role in our industry – the ability to identify and recover vehicles associated with owners who have defaulted on their loans and are not responding to good-faith efforts to contact them.” Arlow opposed the bill’s restrictions on “how long data can be kept because access to historical data is important in determining where hard-to-find vehicles are likely located.”

Baltimore: thousands of suspects arrive too injured to go to jail, records show

Nearly 2,600 detainees were turned away by city’s detention centre in past three years, suggesting police officers either ignored or did not notice the injuries

Thousands of people have been brought to the Baltimore city jail in recent years with injuries too severe for them to be admitted, newly released records have shown.

The records, obtained by the Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request, showed that correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center refused to admit nearly 2,600 detainees who were in police custody between June 2012 and April 2015.

The records did not indicate how the people were injured or whether they suffered their injuries while in custody. However, they suggested police officers either ignored or did not notice the injuries. Suspects are constitutionally guaranteed health care before they are booked into jail.

Also of interest:

The Killing of Osama bin Laden

Secret Tapes of the 2013 Egypt Coup Plot Pose a Problem for Obama

Chris Hedges: A Nation of Snitches

America as Dangerous Flailing Beast

Enforcing the Ukraine ‘Group Think’