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No thanks. Any issue I might agree with them on is swamped by this.

That's exactly my sentiment. ACLU should rot in hell for trying to keep the daily slaughter of fully grown babies. Just because these beautiful babies aren't outside of the woman's body yet doesn't mean anything. Sure the ACLU and their cronies can try and say "prove" it's a baby, it's the mother's right, it's a biological process, etc.. that's just their way of sidestepping the issue with confusing legal or medical terms. If you can love the child growing inside, then who has the right to kill it?? If you can't see that killing a fully grown baby is wrong, then you must either not get it or be very sick.

If the woman can't make up her mind whether she wants a baby by the end of 3 months, too fucking bad. Give the baby up for adoption once it is born. And, I have yet to hear a good argument for killing babies in the 3rd trimester. They don't have one!

If you don't agree with what I'm saying then consider this: read carefully what is on the ACLU's website and Planned Parenthood's website compared with counter-arguments. Those who are in favour of killing babies (ie. by severing their spinal cord, sucking their brains out of their heads, etc.) are very careful to not be explicit about how it is done. Visit websites with a counter opinion and you will be absolutely DISGUSTED and shocked that the procedures are even legal anywhere in the world! Let alone the "land of the free", the place which should be a model for others to emulate. It's mind boggling. So why is the ACLU and "Planned Parenthood" (don't you love the way they use euphamisms) avoiding talking about what really happens?

Was there a huge uproar when the Act was introduced?

Well, yes and no. 26 October 2001 was the day President Bush signed the PATRIOT Act into law, and as the poster above has mentioned it followed the anthrax scare that began around 4 October 2001 (not to mention the 11 September World Trade Center attacks), used by Bush to political advantage in his signatory speech:

The changes, effective today, will help counter a threat like no other our nation has ever faced. We've seen the enemy, and the murder of thousands of innocent, unsuspecting people. They recognize no barrier of morality. They have no conscience. The terrorists cannot be reasoned with. Witness the recent anthrax attacks through our Postal Service.

Our country is grateful for the courage the Postal Service has shown during these difficult times. We mourn the loss of the lives of Thomas Morris and Joseph Curseen; postal workers who died in the line of duty. And our prayers go to their loved ones.

I want to assure postal workers that our government is testing more than 200 postal facilities along the entire Eastern corridor that may have been impacted. And we will move quickly to treat and protect workers where positive exposures are found.

But one thing is for certain: These terrorists must be pursued, they must be defeated, and they must be brought to justice. (Applause.) And that is the purpose of this legislation. Since the 11th of September, the men and women of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been relentless in their response to new and sudden challenges.

We have seen the horrors terrorists can inflict.

Most disturbing is that most supporters of the PATRIOT Act accept the possibility that it might infringe (it does) on citizens' liberties with the reasoning that the government will only go after terrorists who don't deserve rights anyway; that FBI agents will only issue writs - erm, letters - of "national security" (one-page forms that require a court clerk to okay a warrant to search someone's home or workplace and that issue a gag order so that no one can tell the target they've been searched) against terrorists; that the government is never wrong; and that, after all, even if they do monitor people's Internet traffic, they'll only do it to the real threats (which in this case might mean "people conversing in Arabic on the Internet").

The reason there's little opposition from some quarters is that most people think the Act doesn't affect them much; others' civil liberties simply don't come into consideration, particularly when those others constitute a significant minority of the population (say, Arab-Americans, hundreds of whom under provisions of the PATRIOT Act have been detained without access to legal counsel or their families or the outside world for up to a year and released with no remuneration except a "sorry about that" letter from the State Department; and nobody-knows-how-many more of whom remain incarcerated indefinitely). Our legislative system is one where fifty-one percent can pass a bill. (Well, it might possibly require more than that in the Senate because of filibusters and cloture votes and the possibility of Presidential veto - but we definitely operate on a majority rather than a unanimity system for reasons of expediency.) The effect is that the inalienable rights of a minority can be, well, alienated by even a well-intentioned majority only seeking to preserve its own interests.

The fact that you haven't seen much public outcry about the PATRIOT Act (notwithstanding the hundreds of villages and townships that have passed resolutions at least symbolically refusing to cooperate with its provisions, and ignoring the national tour that John Ashcroft had to make - abandoning his duties as Attorney General for a PR campaign - to try to boost the Act) means that many people simply don't care bec

The ISP's name was kept secret, but you may be able to deduce it from the redacted brief

In the following excerpts, I have made the number of asterisks proportional to the size of the censored words:

So, we can be reasonably sure that the ISP is NOT:

• AOL
• Earthlink
• Google
• RoadRunner
• Compuserve

It's probably a more obscure provider. Any guesses?

The ACLU isn't interested in the politics of the situation - they protect Republicans and Democrats alike.

As shown in the case of Rush Limbaugh.

free fax

I'm probably going to edit the default text after I read up on whether adding a law is a more reasonable response than just urging my congressdrone to repeal PATRIOT altogether, but it looks like you could use it to express any opinion you wanted.

mitch

No thanks. Any issue I might agree with them on is swamped by this.

The ACLU takes care of all the ammendments that the NRA doesn't take care of. It would be a waste of time any money for the ACLU to duplicate the efforts of the NRA.

Their full position can be read here. You may not agree with it; but it is a perfectly valid position to take, and in no way inconsistent with their and praiseworthy longstanding defense of our civil liberties.

Check out the ACLU's page on the challenge. There's info on the (redacted) complaint itself, a press release, and related cases and efforts.

Check out the ACLU's page on the challenge. There's info on the (redacted) complaint itself, a press release, and related cases and efforts.

Check out the ACLU's page on the challenge. There's info on the (redacted) complaint itself, a press release, and related cases and efforts.

You were saying?

The ACLU has often been criticized for "ignoring the Second Amendment" and refusing to fight for the individual's right to own a gun or other weapons. This issue, however, has not been ignored by the ACLU. The national board has in fact debated and discussed the civil liberties aspects of the Second Amendment many times.

We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government. In today's world, that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles. The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.

Thank God for the American Civil Liberties Union. For everyone who hasn't done so yet, I recommend visiting the ACLU website as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and donating, even if it's just a small amount. Help keep America free.

You misspelled ACLU fundraisers in your link. Yeah. Look out. The bad big gummint is coming. Send in donations. We'll protect you.

You didn't read my links. According to the ACLU lawyers:

The treaty requires criminalization of offenses such as hacking, the production, sale or distribution of hacking tools, and an expansion of criminal liability for intellectual property violations (Articles 2-11).

Here's a disturbing possibility: donations to groups that sound "subversive". I've given money to groups like Iraq Body Count, which tracks civilian casualties in Iraq. And Voices in the Wilderness, which opposed the UN sanctions on Iraq and worked to prevent the war. And of course that most subversive organization, the ACLU, which is actively fighting the existing "no-fly list". I hope I'm wrong about this, but think about the implications if donations to groups like these are enough to prevent one from flying.

The EFF and ACLU will begin distribution of tinfoil bodysuits to the homeless to combat this extreme invasion of privacy.

LK

Howdy. I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU and a lifetime member of the NRA. Nice to meet you. Come here often?

Note: This isn't a hypothetical situation but REALLY DID HAPPEN.

I think everyone should have an ACLU Pocket Card on Police Encounters. I'm tempted to make some more and start handing them out.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical situation but REALLY DID HAPPEN.

I think everyone should have an ACLU Pocket Card on Police Encounters. I'm tempted to make some more and start handing them out.

here
And remember, we are stll the people. It is not late to stop these things.

Do I smell another visit to the DoJ?

I love the Department of Justice smell of Crisco and calico cat repellant in the morning!

(At the DoJ morning Bible Study, of course, not in Vietnam where you love the smell of napalm in the morning -- John Ashcroft, and George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Dennis Hastert, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, and Russ Limbaugh, were all eligible to serve in Vietnam, but somehow never did.)

...since they have a habit of censoring just about everything under the sun.

The C stands for Censorship. After all of this, what's left to justify broadband? :)

"None of the retail tests of RFID tags invaded the privacy of shoppers in the Wal-Mart stores, Roberti [editor of RFID Journal] said. He also said that RFID chips in building security passes and toll-booth tags have never been used to invade a citizen's privacy."

New Yorkers were conned into installing EZPass toll ID systems around our entire infrastructure by a lying Mayor Giuliani who promised that the logs would be tightly protected, available only by court order and subpoena after due process, evidence discovery, legal confidentiality, all the rights by which we protect ourselves from our governments. Once up and running, it turned out that $50 through any low-rent lawyer could buy the logs from the cops, at first used in divorce cases, and now surely used for whatever pretext is convenient to invade our privacy.

Now the industry continues the lies to propagate their bugs throughout our consumer society. The deployment of the tech is inevitable, their lies as well. But our privacy rights can win, if we maintain zero tolerance for these invasions, and the liars who would have us pay for our own illegal surveillance. Join or promote the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The freedom you save will be your own.

Doh!

I'll go shave my head now so the electrodes will make better contact. I do live in Florida, you know.

Wrong. The Patriot Act did not remove any checks or balances. Everything that used to require judicial branch approval still does.

The ACLU disagrees with you. When it comes to either believing some pseudoanonymous poster on the internet who only says those he disagrees with are wrong and then goes to argue a straw man[1], or a civil watchdog group run by professionals whose job is to monitor and understand law developments, I'll believe the later over the former.

[1] Where did the author you're replying to say the Partiot Act gave a "blank check to do whatever they want?"

1. Read Juise's post above. Civil rights at this point in time is not about Thoreau-ish arguments about showing an ID nobody cares about. It matters, right now. Learn, be informed, join the ACLU.

2. I like Thoreau, and also care about the Thoreau-ish arguments about showing an ID nobody cares about. I think it's an important thing to increase the "time penalty" police suffer for randomly asking people for ID.

3. If you are going to do this sort of thing, expect your life to be more difficult. The police may decide that you are suspicious, and take you in for questioning. There is nothing you can do (I mean, what are you going to do? Throw a punch? Moron.) You may be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you may go to jail, or be "fined" by a lawyer who will try to defend you. Do not expect much sympathy from your town.

4. Thus: only do this if you are willing to take the heat. Think carefully, and ahead of time, whether the particular issue you care about is important enough to get you in trouble for. If you decide to exercise the full extent of your rights, your life will not be easier in the short-run. To me, the freedom to walk alone on the beach, or in the city among my fellow citizens, without having to answer to any authority is very important, and it is something I am willing to go through a lot for; but I have thought about it. It helps me stay calm in the cases when I am challenged for doing it.

I have never had a problem in the big cities. This is most probably because I am white. The police there have focused their efforts on hispanic and Af-Am people. If you want to hear about civil rights violations, how about the kid who was just shot and killed for walking on the roof of a housing project in NYC?

But when I go down to the beach in small town Long Island, I often run into cops. Either rent-a-cops who will watch me as I walk down a long, empty avenue, or the real police.

Here are your rights (as understood by the court up until now):

1. The police have a recognized right to try to stop and talk to you. (i.e., don't get all like "hey, you have no right to bother me. I ain't doing nuffing wrong.") Argue with it if you like, agitate to change the system, but don't bother to try to change it right there.
2. The police have a (generally) recognized right to ask you where you're going and where you're coming from. This is a bit fuzzier.
3. You do not have to show them identification if you don't want to. This does not apply if you are in your car and driving, and are pulled over: then you must produce Driver's ID. If you are a cyclist, like me, you have to have some kind of ID if you a cycling on the road, but it does not have to be a Driver's license.

Watching this video, this guy is making a lot of mistakes. Look, I don't like dealing with the police, but if your real intent is to be left alone to exercise your freedoms (and not to just cause trouble), you are well advised to:

1. NOT make any sudden movements, jump around, act agitated, or get nervous. Look, I know you want to exercise your rights, and if you're (like me) a white male who's never been in trouble with the law you are probably the most likely to succeed, but calm the hell down. If you can't calm down, you have lost. Bzzt. Sorry, Constitutional Crusader.
2. Do not elaborate. Repeat what you have said. Refuse to show your id. Expect the officer to play mind games.
3. Once you have repeated your refusal not to show your id, ask, very calmly, "am I free to go?" If the officer says, "no," ask "am I under arrest?" Repeat this question until you get a firm answer. If he says "no," then say "as I am not under arrest, I wish to go. Am I free to go?"
4. If questions of searching, "helping out" or otherwise obliging come up, repeat "I do not consent." This is robot time, people, don't get involved in a debate.

This is the ACLU 'Bust Card.'

It's the way it works. If you really care, give $100 to the ACLU. They work on these things, and they really have been effective in a huge number of national, state and local cases. They don't just cover the big ones.

The ACLU doesn't atually "shun" the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU takes a neutral stance on the 2nd Amendment and has argued 2nd Amendment cases many times. The ACLU spends the majority of its time protecting my "other" rights. I'm alright with that. I look towards the National Rifle Association and the Kansas Sportsmen's Alliance to protect my 2nd Amendment interests. In fact I was doing exactly this on this very day. Today the Kansas House of Representatives had a proponent's hearing on HB 2798. Kansas is one of 6 states (5 once Missouri's Supreme Court upholds their new CCW law) that does not issue licenses for the concealed carrying of weapons. 6 of 50. You can track the progress of the bill on the Kansas Legislature's website. I spent last night and this morning expressing my support for this proposed bill to my district's house representative and state senator. In short I'm only confused on days that end in "y" but not about the ACLU and the protection of my rights. :-)

Even the ACLU says to you have to show ID when stopped in a car. (read here) It is irrelevent whether or not you are parked. (You can get a dui for sitting in the driver seat of a parked car with the engine off.)

The RIAA cannot get money from an artist or company that is not member. The RIAA is NOT a record company but a trade group whose main goal is to represent the U.S. recording industry (the record companies, artists, distributors, etc.). Its mission is to protect the right of artists, etc.

I believe membership fees for the RIAA are based on gross revenues... ahh this outlines it.

In some ways the RIAA is like the ACLU, almost everyone hates it at some point until it is defending a constitutional right that they care about.

-Shawn

They do not.

Yes they do.

Cracker Barrel terminated 11 homosexual employees in 1991 because they did not conform to their "family friendly" image.

Even more, there wasn't a thing any of them could do about it. Sexual preference is not legally protected in most states.

LK

Now, none of your posts have acknowledged that the Patriot Act is being abused to prosecute other kinds of crime than terrorism, despite your assertion that one has.

You did mention the "Bank Secrets Act", but so what? What are you driving at here? When you troll, you're "just kidding"?

I've answered your specious question in all candor -

I've answered your specious question in all candor - so come clean: why are you satisfied with these criminal investigations being undermined by easily challengable Patriot Act overreaching for inadmissible evidence? Or are you so deeply perverse that you're laundering money, and can't help cackling as these keystone kops work overtime to keep you in business?

More accurately, they said we know what it says, just nevermind this time. We'll bring it back for speech we approve of.

Maybe donate to the ACLU and EFF
to help them protect our freedom of speech online.

Cheers, Joel

Why is that great?

would you want to live in the world with the same freedoms of uncivilized times?

9/10/2001 was uncivilized times? In that case, yes! The only way to ensure democracy is transparency in the government, not in the citizenry. I would consider this age of secret trials, secret military tribunals, and illegal captivity without due process to be uncivilized.

I'm still miffed that I lost my freedom to dump toxic waste in drinking water.

I can't believe you really did that. If you did, and when you say "I lost my freedom", I hope that means you're in jail for violating the rights of others. But, what I don't understand is how that relates to the State monitoring your every move in public, and after that's allowed who knows how much longer before they do it in private?

Why can't I take guns on airlines?

Because, unlike guarding your privacy from intrusive government, carrying a lethal weapon can be contributive to intentionally lethal acts? Couple that with the ease in which a single bullet could quickly wipe-out hundreds of lives, on the plane and on the ground, made the argument for a gun-ban on planes that much easier to swallow. Mass murder, as it happens, was illegal pre-9/11.

Why can't I have the freedom to molest young children?

Because you would be violating their rights?

This cameras sounds like a good one. Do people really have an expectation of privacy when they're on public streets?

Not from each other, but from a government proven to abuse the power granted to it by the people at every opportunity. Your unreasonable fear of everything in life (from sudden heart-attacks to skidding in the rain), and incessant need for safety, encroaches upon my liberty to enjoy life without intrusive government. Just behave sensibly and you'll survive as your forefathers did across millions of years simply to produce the unique individual known as *you*. There's no government-monitored camera on you right now, and look you're still breathing!!

I'd love to see national ID's, I don't even understand the privacy argument against it.

The reluctance you don't understand stems from years of documented abuse by what at first appeared to be reasonable (to the population at the time) requests and benign acts by various governments to keep order. The arguments are always the same, as are the results. I don't have to name recent government abuses to you, you know them. We won't even go into the governmental abuses throughout history. To ignore the lessons from the past and think that they won't be repeated is naive. People haven't changed, and it's people in government who abuse their responsibilities and their authority. Most do so without penalty.

It's simple the government needs a way to identify it's citizens.

How does it do it now? Have

You're right: what's the point of ridding a country from a vicious dictator who brutalizes his own population, destroys the environment, instigates war and supports terrorism unless you actually get some financial benefit from it?!?

No, you are right, we should do it because it is the right thing to do. So, when does the war against Bush begin?

Joking aside, most of the people who criticize Bush and the war are making just your point, though you seem to have missed it: We belive they started the war for their own financial benifit, not because of the goodness of their hearts. After all, they don't mind vicious dictators anywhere else.

Well, to repost what I posted in another topic concerning the PATRIOT act, don't just bitch about it, do something. Encourage your congressperson to support the SAFE act. It seeks to correct some of the more egregious PATRIOT act violations.

Details and an easy way to send a fax to your congressperson here

This post brought to you by a proud card carrying member of the ACLU.

This may seem a touch off topic, but if you are interested in helping fix some of the problems introduced by the PATRIOT act, you should urge your congressperson to support the SAFE act. Details and an easy way to send a fax to your congressperson here

They forgot to include the never-published Orwell novel : 1984 -- 20 years later

California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

So Texas must have dropped out before 6/03 when archive.org crawled the site.

The state information comes from the response to a Pennsylvania "sunshine law" request by the ACLU. The PDF is available from the ACLU site.

--vs

7. Pennsylvania.

Fuck.

Governor Imposes Stay on MATRIX

Governor ends Utah's roles in database

Matrix FOIA Request to Utah State Police

The MATRIX

Privacy Watch: Matrix

Matrix Updates

Matrix Raises a Stir

There's no credible organization stepping forward to say that there is no link between illegal drugs and terrorism...

So what? I see no such requirement in the policy CBS puts forward in defense of this onerous decision.

You're grasping at straws.

And who says that the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance aren't credible?

And even if that were the case, why do you suppose that would be? Because so many in the media refuse to run advocacy ads disputing the connection between drugs and terrorism?

Just because your OK with goosestepping into a future of shit doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.

For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.

That may be true, but I think it's only a one-way logic. I doubt you can reverse-deduce the weight of people by asking them how much they'd pay to reveal it. The best proof is that these guys aren't necessarily all obese, and these guys definitely aren't on the skinny side.

ACLU and the Patriot act

Hopefully, that will cure your rant. You can stop foaming now.

The government hasn't done anything TO me or FOR me.

Then you are much more fortunate than the millions put in cages for exercising private choices about their bodies, or the handful whose religion was not ATF approved, or those denied the right to travel freely for holding politically incorrect views...

The U.S. Government: the people who brought you the Fugitive Slave Act, the Trail of Tears, Prohibition, concentration camps for Americans of Japanese ancestry, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to intimidate the USSR, MK-ULTRA, COINTELPRO, the War on (some) Drugs, and "pre-emptive" war based on lies, among other great hits. So is a high degree of skepticism appropriate when analyzing its actions? You bet your liberty.

Is this better than a strictly email campaign? Could we (or the EFF, or whomever) use this sort of thing to combat the DMCA & other heinous perversions, the heinous perversity of which seems to be no match for the inherent laziness of the average citizen?

Interesting thought: this is much the same problem as spam, only inverted. We want a lot of people to quickly & easily send off thousands of letters to a select few - with each letter being treated as unique, and not being filtered out as procedurally generated junk.

mitch

If you want to do something about it, the ACLU allows you to send free snail mail, e-mail, or faxes to your representatives, just by filling in your zip code and a little contact info (I usually get canned letters back from my reps when I fax them.) Here's the link(the zip code field is at the bottom). If you're interested, this is a very fast, and simple way to get through to your representatives. Of course, I have no idea if it has any real effect, but anything is better than nothing..

Click here to do something about this.