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Ahh, so nice. Watched through that, then clicked on the link the the ACLU. The site was not available due to an "upgrade in progress." Would that count as ironic?

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

Damn Anonymous Coward idiot.

Regarding the ACLU and the rare occasion they screw up and do something right

I cite two of *many* cases where the ACLU explicitly and deliberately defend the freedom of religion, yet you are so steeped in anti-ACLU propaganda that all you can say is that they somehow accidentally screwed up. Yeah, that makes sense. Be careful not to read the ACLU website where they make ALL SORTS of mistakes accidentally supporting and defending the right to religious freedom.

fact still remains, the overwhelming majority of cases they represent are for squashing the rights of a Christian

As I said, propaganda. These cases are aways about the abuse of government power. The only reason Christianity comes up is because it's generally only Christians in a majority position to attempt to abuse that power.

Waaaa! Waaaaa! Why is the ACLU always picking on us! This is a democracy and we are a majority and we can to vote ourselves the right to use government power to oppress minorities! Waaaa! We don't like other people's constitutional right to religious freedom interfering with our ability to use our majority democratic position to hijack government power for religious purposes! Waaaa!

A couple of years ago, the ACLU threatened to sue a Georgia School district because they had the phrase "Christmas Day" under December 25 on their school calendars.

I just did a Google search on: Georgia "Christmas Day" ACLU.
I searched through the top FIFTY hits. I found squat. Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

If your case actually exists, lets see a link to it and I will gladly address the merits of the case. As I said anti-ACLU propaganda peices almost invariably misrepresent the actual legal issue involved in such cases. The only question is whether they misunderstand these cases and inadvertantly misrepresent the case, or if they deliberately misrepresent the cases for inflamatory propaganda purposes. Get me a legitimate link and I will gladly address it.

You then proceed to go on some pointless atheism rant. Some stupid bable about proving or disproving god. I said the belief that there is no god is a religious belief. I really don't know why you see any need to rant on the subject, other than you probably didn't even read that far in your haste to demonize the ACLU and atheists. I said it is unconstitutional to attempt to hijack government power for the purpose of promoting or suppressing any religious belief - including the belief that there is no god.

Yep, evil me for saying the US government is forbidden to promote atheism. Evil me for saying the government is forbidden to infringe your (presumably Christian) religious freedom.

If the ACLU is going to strip religion from the public square

Flat out bullshit.
The ACLU sucessfully defended baptisms in a public park, and in part responded with the following:
"This kind of confusion over religious expression in public places is not uncommon," said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. "Government officials often seem not to understand that private religious expression is protected in public forums. Afraid of violating separation of church and state by permitting religious activities, they end up obstructing freedom of religion."

The ACLU defends our right to religious freedom - including in the "public square". What is prohibited is the POWER OF GOVERNMENT being used to establish religion in the public square. You are however perfectly free to pray in the public square, free to have a group prayer session, free to have a religious parade (with the ordinary permits for any parade), and free to preform baptisims.

-

These are in the U.S. Bill of Rights:

Article [IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article [VIII]
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Article [IX]
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

My religion is against taking anything akin to the mark of the beast. RFID chips used in such a manner are close enough that, unto death, I would resist the implant.

Article [I]13
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

http://www.stlplaces.com/constitution/

The bill of rights pertains to ALL citizens. That DOES include people who have been convicted of crimes. We should be thankful for that.

http://www.aclu.org/

"Why, yes, I AM a card carrying member of the ACLU." =)

You can help.

MoveOn.org donation page

MediaMatters donation page

Center for American Progress donation page

American Civil Liberties Union donation page

The cited indymedia page has how many suggestions of an actual attempt to shut down the convention?

0

That's right folks, the expression was in jest.

What's not a joke are Free Speech Zones everywhere our fearless leader goes.

Thanks for playing our game!

Lexis-Nexis just had the unfortunate luck of buying the wrong company at the wrong time. Even if it had occurred to them, Lexis-Nexis did not have enough time to perform the type of full security audit that would have prevented this breach. Some of the theft likely occurred BEFORE the buy out (speculation- I don't know the exact timing). You can blame Lexis-Nexis for not doing their homework, but you can't blame them for the original negligence that allowed the theft of information.

And just to avoid some confusion, when the previous poster mentioned the Matrix, he was closer to the truth than he knew. The "Matrix" is the "Multistate Anti-Terrorist Information eXchange," another product/project of Seisint's. That has a whole nuther set of issues. Mostly, those revolve around the alleged criminal behavior of Seisint's ex-CEO (who was long-gone before all this happened). Start with the ACLU's myths/realities page about the Matrix: http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14894&c =130 Then do some more research based on the ex-CEO's name and his prior companies. I can guarantee you an interesting and informative web crawl.

Bah... do you honestly think that the DHS is going to listen to you?

One word: ACLU

Proud dues-paying member since 2003.

One of the few organizations with the clout to truly (and positively) influence policy when it comes to these matters. You can be a member for less than $50/year. The min membership might even be half that much, IIRC.

Is there a real court order here, or is this just an FBI letter?

"We live in an open society in which the concept of widespread knowledge is embraced as a goal of governance,"

Maybe in the overall big picture that is true but in the current political environment that statement is most certainly not true.

The current administration has done and continues to do everything in its power to suppress the flow of knowledge and information. Witness the recent suppression of an EPA-funded study conducted by Harvard which found that the recent changes to rules regarding mercury emissions from U.S. power plants would have health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA said it would .

Why the difference? Because according to the EPA and the Bush administration, more stringent controls would cost too much to industry compared to the public health benefit. Thus the analysis was stripped from the final report even though the findings of the analysis were used in a briefing by the EPA to the Washington Post on February 2nd.

Even outside the administration the flow of knowledge is under attack. Witness the current effort by the Florida legislature to pass legislation which would allow students to sue professors who the students claim were punishing the students for their beliefs. Included would be a situation when a professor challenges a student to explain their theories by using the Socratic method. In other words, simply state you have a belief but you don't have to provide any evidence or rationale to support this belief.

Let us not forget the fiasco in my home state where Intelligent Design is being taught alongside Darwinian Evolution as a valid scientfic theory.

Along those same lines, this very site posted a story yesterday about some IMAX theaters not showing a film because it contained references to evolution.

While Kahles overall sentiment is correct the current political environment is not conducive to the flow of knowledge and won't be for a fairly substantial time.

Your belief is incorrect. There is no federal law that unequivocally forbids requiring identifcation to vote, although many people (including, the ACLU ) insist an ID requirement should be considered a poll tax, just as you do. Many states forbid requiring ID.

But in fact, one federal law requires identification for some voters. The Help America Vote Act (passed in 2002) requires first-time voters to show identification if they registered by mail and didn't include a driver's license number (or the last 4 digits of their SSN -- at least SSNs are free) on the registration form.

(This weird rule was added at the behest of Congressional Republicans, who apparently think the Democrats make up voters. That's silly. Democracts don't use imaginary voters, they used dead voters.)

Two big problems with the HAVA identification requirement:

"First time voter" actually means "first time voter in a given state", so if you move to another state, you'll need to be carded again. If that's not inconvienent enough, Oregon thinks people need to show ID every time they change counties.

The whole carding scheme requires states to have a state-wide voter registration database. Not all states have this. (In fact, most don't.) If a state doesn't have the database ready for 2006, it will have to card people more often. Santa Cruz county thinks they'll have to card everyone. Won't that be fun for them?

Oh, and technically, Arizona requires ID for every voter. New Mexico is thinking about it. Some states require ID before they'll give someone a provisional ballot. And I don't even want to think about what happens when Republicans go around contesting people's voter registrations....

My personal opinion is in line with that of the ACLU, but I can see how the Act could be considered useful as a government tool. However, as far as I've seen, it has not produced any terrorists for the courts to prosecute. All it has done it create major controversy in this country and made a lot of people really worried about their rights.

And, as many people have said, it doesn't matter if they haven't infringed on your rights yet, because by the time they do, it's too late for you to do anything about it.

The lawsuit also challenges the constitutionality of the statute's gag provision, which prohibits anyone who receives an NSL from disclosing even the mere fact that the FBI has sought information.

[Orin Kerr, February 27, 2005 at 1:56pm]

ACLU Approves Of Overwhelming Majority of Patriot Act: One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part of the Act; the overwhelming majority of the statute is uncontroversial among the fairly small number of people who understand what's in it. As best I can tell, this has been a well-kept secret for the last 3+ years mostly for tactical reasons: If you want to get the public very worried about a topic to help advance your cause in future legislative debates, you can't very well admit that your objections are actually quite limited.

In light of that, it's good to see that ACLU President Nadine Strossen apparently has admitted that the ACLU approves of more that 90% of the Patriot Act. As live-blogged at Ex Parte, from a recent address by Nadine Strossen at the annual Federalist Society student symposium: "[ACLU President Nadine Strossen] notes that the ACLU only has a few objections [to the Patriot Act, covering] about 12 of the 160 elements of the Patriot Act." While it's too early to know whether this live-blogged report is exactly accurate, note that the statement echoes the view of ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romer in early 2004 that "much of the Patriot Act is neutral legislation for civil liberties," and that only "about a dozen provisions" are objectionable to him. If anyone has a transcript of Strossen's remarks or a video, please send it on to okerr [at] law.gwu.edu.

Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

[Orin Kerr, February 27, 2005 at 1:56pm]

ACLU Approves Of Overwhelming Majority of Patriot Act: One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part of the Act; the overwhelming majority of the statute is uncontroversial among the fairly small number of people who understand what's in it. As best I can tell, this has been a well-kept secret for the last 3+ years mostly for tactical reasons: If you want to get the public very worried about a topic to help advance your cause in future legislative debates, you can't very well admit that your objections are actually quite limited.

In light of that, it's good to see that ACLU President Nadine Strossen apparently has admitted that the ACLU approves of more that 90% of the Patriot Act. As live-blogged at Ex Parte, from a recent address by Nadine Strossen at the annual Federalist Society student symposium: "[ACLU President Nadine Strossen] notes that the ACLU only has a few objections [to the Patriot Act, covering] about 12 of the 160 elements of the Patriot Act." While it's too early to know whether this live-blogged report is exactly accurate, note that the statement echoes the view of ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romer in early 2004 that "much of the Patriot Act is neutral legislation for civil liberties," and that only "about a dozen provisions" are objectionable to him. If anyone has a transcript of Strossen's remarks or a video, please send it on to okerr [at] law.gwu.edu.

Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

I don't know if this had previously been discussed but I've been thinking that something like this would be a good idea. We constantly see the effect Slashdot has on webservers. I would imagine a PAC consisting of even a portion of slashdotters could do great things. Especially if we worked together with other groups such as Citizen Works, the EFF, and the ACLU.

Since you consider yourself a liberal, I'll take this opportunity to say "thank you" - you guys are the ones that have always clamored for more government involvement in everything.

You know, you certainly need to learn to use google.

From the ACLU

Why the Patriot Act's expansion of records searches is unconstitutional
Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Constitution in several ways. It:

* Violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime.
* Violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy.
* Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.
* Violates the Fourth Amendmentby failing to provide notice - even after the fact - to persons whose privacy has been compromised. Notice is also a key element of due process, which is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

And in other news, Dept. of Educations is supporting inclusion of teaching of Creationism (i.e. Intelligent Design) alongside with the theory of evolution in public schools. After all, the bible says so, hence it IS so.... Creationism

In upholding the dog's sniff-search of the trunk, the Supreme Court held that it did not "compromise any legitimate interest in privacy." Why? Because, according to the court, "any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed 'legitimate.'"

Is it my imagination, or does this sound a lot like the rationale of, "If you aren't a criminal, you shouldn't have anything to hide."

If this were an isolated story, I would probably not worry too much about it. But along with the warrantless GPS tracking article, the USAPATRIOT Act, and other such nonsense, it is obvious that we are not on the way to giving up our privacy and liberty at the whim of the government, we are already there.

I hope that this is just one extreme of a cycle that will eventually swing back towards moderation, but when a court sets a precedent like this, it is infinitely harder to overturn than if people just defend their right to privacy to begin with. This is why it is more important than ever to support organizations such as the ACLU and the EFF.

... and allowing them to be used as investigative tools (again with court orders) against terrorists

Substantial parts of the PATRIOT act can be used without any kind of court order. The 'sneak-and-peek' provisions can be carried out without the government ever telling you that you were searched or investigated.

The ACLU and EFF have pages up about the PATRIOT Act, and clearly show how the effects are not limited to "terrorists". (Unless, like Ashcroft, you feel that breasts and calico cats are weapons of mass destruction.)

More importantly, can you give me the number of people whose civil liberties have *actually* been violated (N.B. not those who "felt" they were violated) under specific provisions of the PATRIOT Act?

Not easily, because it's secret. I can certainly say that Maher Arar had his civil liberties violated, but since the US government won't talk about it, it's hard to say whether it was PATRIOT-related or just plain extra-legal.

Of course, you may feel that using the PATRIOT act against pot-smugglers is excessive.

What the ACLU used to say about the 1st.

""Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."- as quoted by the ACLU

Something in the passage above is amiss, has been omitted, replaced with ( "...") in the ACLU's recitation of this important amendment. Have a look at the original wording of the first amendment below and see if you can see what the ACLU left out.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeechMain.cfm

What it says now

"It is no accident that freedom of speech is protected in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The Constitution's framers believed that freedom of inquiry and liberty of expression were the hallmarks of a democratic society."

...and they did a rather disturbing little demonstration of it:

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

... about privacy issues

Oh, wait! There IS

... about privacy issues

Oh, wait! There IS

As general information for any reader that doesn't know, masks on other than holidays are generally prohibited by law in many jurisdictions.

How broad the ordinances are and whether there are exceptions (i.e. as for Muslim women) also varies.

They seem to be susceptible to 1st amendment challenges, though.
Klan's old Kentucky haunts ban hoods in public
With a 'Hi-Oh, Silver!' ACLU Challenges Michigan Anti-Mask Law on Behalf of "Lone Ranger" Protesters
Anti-mask laws are spreading

http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeechMain.cfm

Then they edited the constitution and removed freedoms that we once had ... and no one spoke up, or if they did, the monkeys were yelling so loudly they couldn't be heard.

Yes, a very remote and indirect way.

Specifically, supporting this would not run afoul of their stated reasons for not supporting the broad interpretation of the right to bear arms. It is a pure speech issue.

You just (barely) crossed the line from debate to FUD.

IIRC, it's their legal position that student organizations all have an equal right to school facilities (yup even the Boy Scouts - just no 'special rights').

You may want to contact them via their students' rights web site at ACLU student rights

"Watch less TV and read some actual information - it will make you want to vote for people that are trying to streamline and minimize the government, not bloat it more and more to service interests that don't actually produce anything."

If you can cite some numbers showing how much the DOD actually spends on the FOIA maybe I'll subscribe to your arguement, I personally wager its a fly speck in their budget but I can't immediately find the figure in Google. Whatever it is its a really small price to pay to allow the public and watchdog groups to shine some light on the workings of the government. I am pretty confident the actual fraud, waste, abuse and pork in our government, which the FOIA is designed to help root out, far outstrips anything we spend on the FOIA.

I assure you it does produce priceless information especially in the hands of experienced watchdog groups like EPIC and the ACLU, that more than make up for all the frivolous requests. Here are EPIC's annual FOIA summaries.

Here are some recent gems uncovered by the ACLU. The only thing that suggests the FOIA is a waste of money is dynamite like this comes out, its in the news a day or two and then it disappears in to a black hole. These discoveries indicate our government is violating the most basic tenets of what our country and its Constitution stand for and we as citizens just don't care, neither we or elected representatives do anything about, and it just continues on unchecked. The DOD assembles a jury of biased soliders and hangs a few grunts for Abu Graib and we as citizens choose to ignore that the use of torture is OBVIOUSLY widespread and a matter of policy in the DOD and the FOIA shows this. It is no doubt endorsed at the highest levels and we do nothing about it.

All in all it sure would be interesting to find how much fraud, waste and abuse has been uncovered by the FOIA and whistelblower laws to see if they in fact pay for themselves, many times over, though much of it is intangible, if for example it stopped people from being tortured by our government and in our name, what price tag would you put on that.

So even if it is costing us a lot its a small price to pay to weed out corruption, abuse and incompetence in our government. On the other hand if the Bush administration in particular manages to completely frustrate legitimate FOIA requests as they are want to do then yes, it is a complete waste of money. If that becomes the case that is not the fault of the law but of the people whose legal duty it is to implement it, and those people are working against the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives in Congress and when that happens we don't live in the representative Democracy we've been led to believe we do.

I'd agree the situation here is not clear though I imagine the FBI, or more probably their masters in White House and the Pentagon, developed a strong desire to frustrate and stonewall FOIA seraches when these. surfaced.

Of concern, DOD interrogators impersonating Supervisory Special Agents of the FBI told a detainee that REDACTED. These same interrogation teams then REDACTED. The detainee was also told by this interrogation team REDACTED. These tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date and CITF believes that techniques have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee. If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done the FBI interrogators. The FBI will be left holding the bag before the public.

Not sure how much truth there this is to Seymour Hersh's recent expose on Pentagon special ops in Iran, I wouldn't be surprised if the Bush administration is duping Hersh' and feeding him all this to rattle cages around the globe and at home. If its true though it tends to suggest the Bush administration is making one Presidential finding after another in which they are giving the Pentagon a blank check to wage the war on "Terrorism" without congressional oversight, with complete disregard for the integrity of borders of sovereign nations, some probably ostensibly American allies, and most probably with complete disregard for the Geneva conventions and U.S. law against torturing prisoners. I'm pretty sure you send an FOIA request to the Pentagon you will get back sheets of wide black magic marker lines.

From Hersh's article:

"The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia."

"The Presidents decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the booksfree from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) The Pentagon doesnt feel obligated to report any of this to Congress, the former high-level intelligence official said. They dont even call it covert opsits too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, its black reconnaissance. Theyre not even going to tell the CINCsthe regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)"

NEWSFLASH! Dateline, Michigan - After ACLU Intervention on Behalf of Christian Valedictorian, Michigan High School Agrees to Stop Censoring Religious Yearbook Entries.
So is fighting for a student's right to express themself in a yearbook is just the most insidious of the ACLU's never-ending struggle to exterminate Christianity in public life or are you just nurturing a healthy persecution complex?

Even Bob Barr, of the American Conservative Union (and a former rabid-dog House Manager during the Clinton Impeachment), has joined with the ACLU to criticize this administration's moves to hinder personal rights in this country. How in the world can you say this is not a government flirting with fascism?

Here is a pretty nice case study on how useless the FOIA is.

"The U.S. government has a lot of work to do"

In the above case the government was apparently too busy practicing various forms of torture to be bothered with FOIA requests. In particular DOD interrogators were posing as FBI agents as they were torturing people presumably so the FBI would get blamed instead of the Pentagon if they got caught.

You see the problem is most governments have a tendency to corruption and abuse of power. The FOIA is just one little tool our enlightened society put in a while ago(though we've stopped being an enlightened society lately) so watch dog groups have a chance to catch them at abuse, expose it and reign it in. You are completely missing the point if you think FOIA requests have much to do with fixing roads. They are mostly a tool for preventing our government from becoming corrupt or abusing its power ot worst case becoming a corrupt police state though it appears the FOIA and the watch dog groups are losing that battle.

There have been attempts to use the FOIA to expose the incompetence and abuse behind the TSA's no fly list though the TSA/DOJ were more successful in censoring every important detail on that one. The end result is we have this super secret list of names of people who will get hassled when they fly or simply can no longer fly. Well its not real secret because if you have a name thats on it and try to fly its obvious that name is on the list. Ted Kennedy and Cat Stevens among others made the list. No one knows how names are added to the list or more importantly how to get yours off. You see it is just a list of names and even aliases of people that some anonymous bureaucrat decided might be the name of a terrorist. Unfortunately if you happen to have the same name you get to be treated like a terrorist even if you are a little old lady or gent who has never even had a parking ticket. If you are smart you just mutate your name slightly like throw in your middle initial and the list magically stops harrassing you. It is quite a magical exercise in bureaucratic incompetence and abuse of power.

All in all I think we need a little more FOIA and not less.

For those of you not from the US of A, it guarantees freedom of expression in the most absolute terms. Short of something that incites violence (e.g. "let's kill him") or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, it is OK.

Provided what you want to say is agreeable to the government, otherwise you might find yourself bannished to a free speech zone in a nice out of the way place.

Team America: World Police". Too rude to print here, it would probably get you put in jail in some countries.

If the way you handle accidently seeing a women's breast ( nice one at that) is any indication of how your nation reacts to "indecency" then maybe you should cover your own ass.

The ACLU begs to differ (warning, .pdf). (Index of FOIA requests)

The ACLU begs to differ (warning, .pdf). (Index of FOIA requests)

While Abu Ghraib is definitely an abuse situation, there were no cases of rape involved, and it's not standard U.S. policy to rape people. U.S. society doesn't view it as a viable, standard policy.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. It is commonly known that if you go to prison, you're probably going to be raped. Prison officials have done little to nothing to curb the problem, so the threat remains. Therefore, it has become defacto U.S. policy to rape people.

Go here to tell them all about it.

Perhaps we need to clear up what the PATRIOT Act says.

From http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12126&c=20:
For example, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.

They'll still need a warrant to enter your house, but according to http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12263&c=206 (halfway down, under "2. More secret searches":
The Patriot Act, however, unconstitutionally amends the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow the government to conduct searches without notifying the subjects, at least until long after the search has been executed. This means that the government can enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupants are away, search through their property, take photographs, and in some cases even seize property - and not tell them until later.

This means you can't review the warrant and verify that it is followed properly:
For example, it [presenting the warrant before searching] allows them [the person being searched] to point out irregularities in a warrant, such as the fact that the police are at the wrong address, or that the scope of the warrant is being exceeded

So, to fix the other AC's "strawman", mind if I search through all your private records without a warrant and without telling you, and then get a warrant to search your neighbor's house but instead search yours while you're away, and sieze your computer, returning it only after you take me to court and get a judge to open the files on the search and point out that the address was wrong?

Perhaps we need to clear up what the PATRIOT Act says.

From http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12126&c=20:
For example, without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done.

They'll still need a warrant to enter your house, but according to http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12263&c=206 (halfway down, under "2. More secret searches":
The Patriot Act, however, unconstitutionally amends the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to allow the government to conduct searches without notifying the subjects, at least until long after the search has been executed. This means that the government can enter a house, apartment or office with a search warrant when the occupants are away, search through their property, take photographs, and in some cases even seize property - and not tell them until later.

This means you can't review the warrant and verify that it is followed properly:
For example, it [presenting the warrant before searching] allows them [the person being searched] to point out irregularities in a warrant, such as the fact that the police are at the wrong address, or that the scope of the warrant is being exceeded

So, to fix the other AC's "strawman", mind if I search through all your private records without a warrant and without telling you, and then get a warrant to search your neighbor's house but instead search yours while you're away, and sieze your computer, returning it only after you take me to court and get a judge to open the files on the search and point out that the address was wrong?

Most of this seems to be focusing on the executive director, Anthony Romero. I think the ACLU would be well served by getting rid of him.

Of course, I have my own beef with the ACLU, namely that they are very selective about which civil rights they will and will not defend.

Most of this seems to be focusing on the executive director, Anthony Romero. I think the ACLU would be well served by getting rid of him.

Of course, I have my own beef with the ACLU, namely that they are very selective about which civil rights they will and will not defend.

You got it! ACLU.

• Americans United for the separation of church and state
• ACLU
• EFF Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

• The ACLU Foundation is the arm of the American Civil Liberties Union that conducts its litigation and communication efforts. ACLU Foundation is tax-deductible, but the ACLU is NOT tax-deductible.
  
  
• The American Red Cross offers domestic disaster relief; community services that help the needy; support and comfort for military members and their families; the collection, processing and distribution of lifesaving blood and blood products; educational programs that promote health and safety; and international relief and development programs.
  
  
• The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) provides effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals through national programs in humane education, public awareness, government advocacy, shelter support, and animal medical services and placement.
  
  
• Amnesty International undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination.
  
  
• The Cato Institute seeks to broaden public policy debate to include the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace.
  
  
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation works to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology; to educate the press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology; and to act as a defender of those liberties.
  
  
• The Nature Conservancy preserves the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive through land acquisition and conservation easements.
  
  
• The Rainforest Action Network campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants, and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through grassroots organizing, education, and non-violent direct action.
  
  
• Trickle Up helps the lowest income people worldwide take the first step up out of poverty, by providing conditional seed capital and business training essential to the launch of a microenterprise.
  

We know what you want!

I'll have to remember to use a Banana phone when I call to order pizza.

"The current government is doing the right thing...but you could do a lot worse. China is a police state? The US is MUCH more heavily policed, although if you DO manage to catch the attention of the real Chinese police they WILL shoot you in the head."

The Chinese government is doing the right thing? Tell that to the families of the hundreds of people slaughered in the Tiananmen Square protests, not to mention the people dissapeared or otherwise imprisoned for doing little more that speaking their mind or speaking the truth. Look, you want to say engagement is a more productive policy than isolation, fine, that's a reasonable stance, but don't try to claim the Chinese government really isn't so bad. The Chinese government is still a brutal group of thugs that do unconscionable things to their own people regularly.

To say that the US is no better on human rights is firstly beside the point and secondly false. That the Chinese government's actions are immoral stands independantly of how bad the record of any other government is. Clearly if a black person in South Africa during apartheid were to say that the shooting of a protester in the USSR was bad, no one would say to him, "Oh, you have no place to talk because your country treats you like shit."

I certainly won't claim that the US has a perfect record on human rights or civil liberties. That's why I am very vocal on the subject and have been a member of the ACLU here in the US. The difference, however, is that I am free to say that and free to continue that fight. I can go out and spread that message and those that are convinced can vote to change the government's policies. None of that is true in China, which is one reason why it is false to say the US is no better. Both nations have much room to improve.

As I said, I think there is an argument to be made that engagment is more effective than isolation, but engagement does not have to mean endorsement. Engagement is only a rational method of prompting change if we use that relationship as leverage to continue to fight for those improvements.

"Nothing ever shows up in the Chinese media that's critical of the government? SO what?! Nothing ever shows up on the USA's useless fucking media that hasn't been approved by the station's marketing department."

First of all, we're talking about Google news here, which includes many stories from domestic and international press, some of which are very critical of government, media conglomerates, and corporations. It's true that if you look at TV news its all mostly harmless, but the whole reason this is a big deal is because the internet is a mechanism to largely circumvent those controls and get at all the information. That's precisely what makes it so vital. Secondly, there's a big difference between "Rupart Murdoc doesn't choose to spend his money to criticise X" (the case in the US) and "if I criticise X I can be thrown in prison for years" (the case in China).

Remember, Freedom can't protect itself.