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Wired interview with Steinhardt
mlknowle writes "Wired has just posted a great interview with former EFF president and ACLU associate director Barry Steinhardt. In the interview, Steinhardt expresses concern that next year will be an even worse year for civil liberties. He does offer tips on what to do to help, however."
Donate money to the EFF. For your Bday, ask that people donate money in your name.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
...unfortunately no one follows up. Really, how many Slashdot articles are posted here, and each time everyone says the same thing- "WRITE, fax, call you members, donate money, get other people involved, etc."?
And how many times do people follow through on this? We certainly have the power of numbers. If people would just practice what they preach, even in small amounts, we'd likely start to see things swing pretty well. The Skylarov rallies and press was good, and similar actions against RIAAssholes, but just one or two per year isn't good enough?
Seriously, how does the NRA do so well? They make sure people know they're still around at least once or twice per month. They flaunt it, without being holier-than-thou about it (most of the time.) And in numbers of greater than 50 at a time. If we can stop being anti-MS, and get to work, God only knows what we can do. The more public you are, the more people will start to see our side and work with us. And of course, the more MS will go after us (kinda like the NRA and anti-gun people..)
I'm not the best at practicing what I preach, but damnit, at least I do something. To those who already do too, great, keep it up. The rest of you who talk had best put some action behind those words, and the people who've stayed silent until now are certainly welcome to help out.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I don't think you can reverse this sort of trend until people start acting like they give a damn -- the various opposition forces have way too much motivation. At best, the ACLU and EFF can only drag their feet while Ashcroft and the MPAA and Disney work to strip us of our rights.
You figure out how to make people give a damn, you let me know. The fact is that people are ignoring even the really outragous stuff, say, secret trials, indefinate detentions, eternal copyrights, limits to free expression, etc. Mindshare, I suppose -- that's what really, really matters.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
While some members of the ACLU are hopelessly left wing to and extreme. The organization itself has tried its best to maintain its dignity. It has even defended the KKK because it realizes that if it want free speach it has to be all the way, and fair. Please do some research before you post next time. I know the ACLU is spoken of horribly among right wingers, (and there have been times when the ACLU has deserved its reputation) but please, think for yourself, and find out whats really going on.
Just after 9-11, when the Patriot Act bill sailed through congress despite glaring problems, I wrote a letter to Larry Combest, my representitive, detailing what I thought the problems were with the act and my general displeasure with the erosion of civil liberties in the name of war.
Now, the return letter was delayed until just a few days ago simply because congressmen couldn't use DC mail facilities because of the Anthrax scare (My letter was sent before the first anthrax case...), but in the form-letter reply, the congressman claims that he and his comrades are doing their best to balance civil liberties with the rigors of war.
This should tell us a few things:
Our congressmen have had the shit scared out of them. That a form letter directly addresses my complaints about the erosion of civil liberties means that I am one of many who has written in complaint. I live in a *very* conservative part of the country and Combest is a very typical representative of the luddite mindset around here. If he is admitting there is a problem, then you can bet that *every* congressman knows there is a problem wether he will admit it or not. They know that the people are upset and are making noise, and are in the process of trying to quiet that noise.
There is already massive distrust in Washington for George Bush and John Aschroft-- at least toward their war-time policies. If people who are concerned about their rights being taken away continue to hound their congressmen about it, the problems do have a good chance of being addressed rather than being ignored.
Remember that a lot of your congressmen are simply scared, afraid to go against the flow because of the reprecussions. If you show them (with massive amounts of mail) that you want positive change rather than negative change, it might strengthen their spirits a little.
The best part of this is that most congresspeople now prefer email to snail mail because there is no chance of contracting anthrax from Outlook. Of course they could always get Nimda, but I'll give my congressman the benifit of the doubt and assume he patches.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Besides being an obvious troll, you sound like a Christian, so I'll take a chance on that assumption, friend.
The ACLU will fight to keep porn in and any concept of God out of any part of our society.
Being of a Christian bent myself, I shake my head in dis-belief every time something like this is said. Whose "God" are you referring to, here? If it's the Christian God, you are presumming that yours (that of a Christian view, puritanical, police state) is the only valid point of view. Forcing Christian morals down throats is a problem, not a solution. I suggest you approach the problem as Our Saviour would - dissuade those "sins" with kind words and deeds befitting the name "Christian".
Sure they will fight for free speech for all, except those who disagree with the liberal ideology in which case they are obviously racist right wing fundamentalist anti-choice homophobes!
No, they dissagree with those who wish to limit our choices to one view - such as yourself. Please don't confuse Liberty with religion - there is only problems and not solutions in doing so. As Voltaire said, "Liberty then is only and can be only the power to do what one will. That is what philosophy teaches us. But if one considers liberty in the theological sense, it is a matter so sublime that profane eyes dare not raise themselves to it."
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Besides being an obvious troll, you sound like a Christian, so I'll take a chance on that assumption, friend.
Actually, he sounds like a religious zealot, which is arguably the antithesis of Christianity.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
On one hand, American cultural mores dictate at least an appearance of privacy and security in one's person and one's papers. In many ways, Americans define themselves by the degree of privacy that they have been able to acquire.
On the other hand, we expect our government to protect us from attack and wrongful injury. We expect it to be proactive in discovering and analyzing any threats to its citizens, and become irate when it is unable to predict such a threat, even when such a prediction would have required violations of privacy.
On the gripping hand, though, analyses that would bear useful results in most times might not do so now. We are in the cusp of a sea change from a peacetime to a wartime footing. We look at war-based policy changes through a peace-shaped perspective.
There are a couple of old definitions that come to mind:
- Conservative: A liberal who has been mugged.
- Liberal: A conservative who has been arrested.
How would we now define a Post-9/11 American? How will our existing knowledge that we can be die anytime, anywhere—coupled with the new awareness that a small but significant fraction of the world's population is willing (and increasingly able) to do make that happen—affect our perception of civil rights issues? I would predict that a shift of equilibrium is occurring, and it'll take another couple of years before the new balance point is reached. It will be interesting then to look back on Your Rights Online posts from this period and see how drastically our own positions have been altered by time and events.Of course, some believe that the government sees the situation as simply an opportunity to curb civil rights (some even think they orchestrated the whole thing). Personally, I think most people just want as much information as they can get, that can possibly let them achieve their goals more effectively. That goes for everyone from DIRNSA to my network administrator. Heck, even the Slashdot editors can read the IP's of anonymous posters.
My theory is this:
- Privacy will continue to erode.
- The more we grouse about privacy, the more secretive the 'eroders' will be.
- The best we can hope for is a future where monitoring is directly observable, so surveillance will come at some cost to the perpetrator.
This must be a hot topic, as it's the second time today that I've commented on it, and I don't have that much free time today.