Comment by tpmx
4 years ago
I miss the times when the EFF and the ACLU would both do what's right 100% of the time, instead of doing what's fashionable. I think there's a trend here.
4 years ago
I miss the times when the EFF and the ACLU would both do what's right 100% of the time, instead of doing what's fashionable. I think there's a trend here.
Can you please be specific about what the EFF is doing that you find objectionable? Especially if you can relate it to the article (as opposed to something generic), that would be great.
Firing John Gilmore is highly objectionable on its own.
I suppose that depends on what actually happened. Which they have not released any information on. So it's too early to make a judgement call on that.
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For one, support Signal without reservations for the required phone number.
> ACLU would do what's right 100% of the times
Have you considered that your values might've changed? Or their values of "what's right 100% of the time" has changed?
However you choose to describe it, the ACLU's values have changed in recent years and there's internal disagreement about the right path forward for the organization. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
(alternate links to the article: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06... / https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/...)
I can't speak for tpmx, but I'm fairly certain that my values have changed less than the ACLU's. They recently edited a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsberg in a very 1984-esque way[1], and my values have always been that 1984 is a warning not an instruction manual. I think that any organistion with "Civil Liberties" in its name should believe the same.
[1]: see https://pontifex.substack.com/p/links-13-nandy-and-aclu-cont... , last item on the page.
Ah yes, exactly like 1984. The Ministry of Truth was infamous for putting []s around the changes it made when quoting people on its own Twitter account.
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I was critical of this at the time because it associated Ginsburg with a viewpoint that she may not have held, but there's nothing Orwellian about that. People smooth over the rough edges of their historical idols all the time. There's virtually nobody who quotes the US founders who is actually advocating for the precise same set of values and institutions those founders supported.
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Any organization willing to put "Civil Liberties" in their name should be foremost concerned with the individual liberties of Americans. So it worries me that their position on the Second Amendment is:
> Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right.
https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment
Of course, they have their reasons. And they concede that there are some instances where the state goes too far with regulations and prohibitions. But I would want to see an organization which defends civil liberties to frequently err on the side of protecting the individual than the government.
The ACLU is supposed to defend free speech. Period. Even if we hate it.
Now they pick and choose, and that's not right.
Do I like people with hatred towards their fellow humans? Absolutely not. But I don't think we should muzzle them. One day, that'll come back and bite the rest of us.
Likewise, the EFF needs to focus on the incredibly important missions of keeping software accessible and our privacy paramount. They're getting distracted too.
edit: mistakenly mentioned FSF instead of EFF. I'm clear about the distinction, it was just a mistake. Thanks for pointing it out, mig39.
What do you mean by pick and chose? ACLU always has to pick their cases.. they cannot afford to be the nations lawyers nor should they be.
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While they may now be more often on one side of the political divide, they have not completely stopped defending freedom of speech regardless of political message: https://lawandcrime.com/first-amendment/aclu-backs-n-j-woman...
Of course, this is just one case. But it at least shows they're not opposed to defending those they may otherwise disagree with.
Are you confusing the EFF and FSF?
Obligatory The Onion link: https://www.theonion.com/aclu-defends-nazis-right-to-burn-do...
[flagged]
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ACLUs values have definitely changed. They no longer support free speech. One thing that turned me off, was when one of their lawyers tried to cancel Sandmann. Sandmann was the kid, wrongfully accused of racism, simply because he stood his ground. And one of the ACLU lawyers publicly said the college shouldn't admit the kids... Because, well who knows.
They changed.
They went from defending Nazis to calling people Nazis.
I’ve always hated Nazis but I’ve also always wanted speech to be free, and the ACLU is the one who changed their tune.
> They changed.
So yeah, they realized some stances they had has fucked over a huge group of people that weren't listened to for centuries \o/.
For people like me, ACLU went from a pretty dangerous org to an org I actively support.
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So I guess one question I have is: what organizations still do defend freedom of speech in the old style?
Both orgs have absolutely done what's right many, many times, but 100% is a little high.
I'd highly recommend checking out All EFF'd Up [0] in The Baffler—it's quite long, but below is a relevant bit for both orgs:
> Leading EFF’s invasion of Washington, D.C., was Jerry Berman, who had been a top ACLU attorney and founder of ACLU Projects on Privacy and Information Technology ... Berman was a Beltway insider who in the 1980s was at the center of a push to turn the ACLU into a big business lobby and an ally of intelligence agencies and right-wing political interests. Among other things, the Berman-era ACLU defended Big Tobacco from regulations on advertising and worked with the National Rifle Association to fight electronic collection of arrest data by the Department of Justice for background checks to deny firearms licenses. Among Berman’s personal achievements: working with the CIA on an early version of a bill that criminalized disclosing the names of CIA agents—a law that was later used to prosecute and jail CIA officer John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the Agency’s use of waterboarding as a torture and interrogation technique.
> ... Berman also helped craft the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a controversial law that gave the government power to grab electronic metadata from cellphone calls, email, and other digital communications without a warrant, which is now routinely used to collect user data from companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook...
> Freedom to Surveil
> ...His signature achievement had been collaborating with the FBI to draft and rubber-stamp a law that expanded FBI surveillance into the digital telecommunications infrastructure. Known as the “Communications Law Enforcement Assistance Act”—or CALEA—the 1994 law required that telecommunications companies install specialized equipment and design their digital facilities in a way that made it easy to wiretap.
> ...
> When EFF’s role in crafting this surveillance law came out, outraged members of its cyber-libertarian base cried foul. EFF, they’d been led to believe, was created to push back against government control of the internet...
> ...
> In reality though, the outrage stemmed from a basic confusion about what EFF was created to do. EFF emerged as a lobby for the budding internet industry...
[0] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine (Ctrl/Cmd+F "Buying Silence" to skip the intro portion)
What is the EFF doing that's fashionable and wrong? Is this just wild speculations as to what's going on?