Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Reacts to Privacy Concerns
nettle writes "Back in September I began a series of commentaries about one person's experience signing up as a new member of the ACLU. I'd used their website to sign up, and was shocked to find my mailbox full of junk parcels, flyers, and personalized merchandise from dozens of nonprofit organizations like People for the American Way, Sierra Club, Americans for This, Americans for That, yadda yadda. I complained to the ACLU, having suspected that they had given out my contact info. So I wrote about the situation on my Nettle.com blog here and here and began a public correspondence with Anthony Romero, Exec Dir of ACLU, and Nadine Stossen, President of ACLU. Nadine promised they'd take action. I told her if they fixed the signup page on ACLU's website so that people could opt-out of ACLU's personal-info-sharing, I'd renew my membership. Well, Nadine kept her end of the bargain. Here's a screen capture of their new signup page. And my check to the ACLU goes out in today's mail! Blogs DO make a difference."
Anybody who believes that members of mainstream religions are "persecuted" in the US is seriously out of touch with reality and has no idea of what religious persecution actually is.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I've mentioned this story in the past, but it bears repeating here - even with good intentions, sometimes opt-out doesn't make much difference...
I worked for several years at a well-known nationwide nonprofit charity, maintaining a donor database with an address list in the low 6 figures in length. For a variety of reasons, we had a lot of ongoing technical problems, especially when it came to address sharing with other nonprofits - long stories aside, there came a day when I was digging into the workings of an update query which effectively implemented the "Don't share my address" checkbox on the donation form. Turns out, for at least the past 3 years (starting prior to my tenure), it had been set up backwards. When I fixed it, some 16,000 records got updated... (and who knows, maybe the correction eventually propagated around the nonprofit community's mismash of list-exchange systems??)
My point is, once your information gets out, consider it out for good. Everything from fuzzy wording of a privacy agreement to out-and-out unethical behavior (either as company policy, or due to a disgruntled employee or hacker attack) could cause your data to go where you don't want it to - or, it might just be a technical glitch somewhere deep in an under-tested program handled by an under-trained user.
Perfectly Normal Industries
ALL governments protect the majority, and especially the powerful. That's no big feat. Even the USSR did that.
The mark of a good government is how well they protect and respect the rights of everyone.
The religious right is always tromping on the rights of minority religions, and nonbelievers. They can't do that legally, and they persist in trying. The ACLU rightly stops them whenever they can.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
OK, I got more information, so I'm responding again. You're definitely wrong about the facts, and that should tell everyone reading about your dedication to the truth.
1) Courtney Love was not receiving an award, she was PRESENTING an award and making a speech about freedom of the press at the event.
2) The filmmaker RUSHED ONTO THE STAGE after her speech and started asking why she was talking about freedom of the press. Sure, it might have been an ironic choice, but WTF was the filmmaker doing rushing the stage? The moron was ejected, as he should have been.
You have been CAUGHT lying, which is typical for the right wing.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
ACLU persecutes mainstream religion?!
At worst, they argue for separation of church and state, which is part of the Constitution's featureset, if you weren't aware. You want to run a religion, mainstream or not, well it's up to you to seek funding and favor from the people, not the government.
Funding of religion education from my tax dollars? Over my dead body.
"Minimize the majority to accomodate the minority."
Uh, propaganda anybody? Until recently, the minority was pretty much under the bootheel of the majority, and it still ain't grand being non-white / non-christian in the U.S.
If ACLU and other defenders of liberty relax on this, how quickly do you think the race back to the bottom will begin? It's already underway, as the thinly-veiled efforts of Bush and friends show us.
You've been listening too much to the tranked-up Mister Limbaugh. Do some reading. Get out into the world. Visit the favelas of Brasil, or take a job as a busboy or dishwasher, and find out just how difficult life is for the half that wasn't born "the majority."
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Except that is not what the Supreme Court has found on 47 separate occasions. On those occasions the Second Amendment is individual right. This has been extensively documented by Prof. Eugene Volokh, of the UCLA Law School.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Blogs DO make a difference.
Bad press has always prompted organizations to right their wrongs, especially guys like the ACLU whose entire reasons for existence are moral in nature. I think you would expect them to change their ways if you point out their hypocrisy in a public forum, regardless of whether it's in a blog, a newspaper, or a billboard. This is by no means a "win" for blogs, it's just common sense.
Just tired of people thinking "blogs" are something revolutionary. Nobody really cares.
rooooar
Hmm, that's a toughie... lessee... where wuz that battered scrap of paper? Oh, here it is! It's in, would you believe, The Bill of Rights... and it's the first "right," AKA the First Amendment, otherwise known as the Religion Clauses:
http://memory.loc.gov/const/bor.html
Google for: congress law respecting religion -and you'll get many articles explaining the context and limits the First Amendment have placed upon our government. The Religion Clauses do, in fact, establish a clear boundary between the religions practiced by citizens and residents of the U.S., and the government.
The courts have ruled over the years that the government cannot limit the practice of religion (so long as no laws are broken), and it cannot pass laws that favor a religion or its institutions.
It's better that way. Would you want to end up living in a country ruled by fundamentalists? Oh, wait, our Pres...
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
...is when you donate 10 bucks to an organization and then they proceed to blow that ten bucks on sending you keychains, notepads, organizers and calendars every few weeks for the indefinate future. I wish there was a check box like "take this $10 and be grateful and please limit your correspondence with me to ONE time per year of your choosing".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What, like the KKK, for example? Or how about the numerous other free speech cases they've taken on, regardless of the positions of the people doing the speaking?
I suggest you read up a bit before making uninformed statements.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.