ACLU Uses Data Mining to Profile Donors/Members

slutdot writes "This NYT story tells of the ACLU's use of data mining in order to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort. The ACLU's own website has a page dedicated to privacy and technology."

Comments

Re:Except for when it suits our purposes.

[CokeBear]

I agree that the second amendment is just as important as the first and the fourth. The second amendment, however, has its very own organization (several, in fact). The ACLU should stick to what it does best: defending the first and fourth amendments, and leave then second amendment to the NRA.

Re:Makes me glad I never gave them money...

[More Trouble]

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.

These a good links, providing a nuanced view of the question. For instance, ACLU says:

If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please. But as soon as we allow governmental regulation of any weapons, we have broken the dam of Constitutional protection. Once that dam is broken, we are not talking about whether the government can constitutionally restrict arms, but rather what constitutes a reasonable restriction.

This seems like a reasonable perspective on the interpretation of the second amendment.

:w

Re:Makes me glad I never gave them money...

[swillden]

Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms.

This is a common way to pooh pooh the second amendment, but it doesn't hold water if you think about it.

It's certainly true that in a stand-up fight, rebels with deer rifles wouldn't have a prayer against a modern military force, but there are two fallacious assumptions here. First, that rebels would choose (or be forced to accept) a stand-up fight and second, that they would be facing a modern military force.

As to the first, guerrillas have proven time and time again that they can give any military force a very hard time. Granted, they usually obtain better arms than deer rifles, but the rifles provide an adequate starting point, allowing them to become a force that someone will arm or that is capable of stealing better arms from the military forces they face.

As to the second, if armed rebellion were to become needed in the US, it's likely that much of the standing military would sympathize with the rebels. They might just refuse to fight, or they might even join the rebels (perhaps taking some of their military weaponry with them). But I can't really see that happening until the stakes are raised by open violence, of the sort that requires some weaponry better than baseball bats and kitchen knives.

A high-powered rifle with a good scope in the hands of a dedicated and skilled sniper is a very effective guerrilla weapon and an extremely effective assassination tool. Don't discount what can be done by dangerous people with relatively low-tech weapons.

Now, opinions can, and will, differ over whether or not the benefits of an armed citizenry enabled by the second amendment are worth the cost of wide availability of deadly weapons. It's clear that if the government has escaped the control of the people, then an armed populace who is able and willing to overthrow that government and install one that does serve the people is a good thing. On the other hand, the misuse of deadly weapons by irresponsible, or just plain crazy, people is clearly a problem.

Weighing the balance, I'm in favor of guns (and own several). I can see how others can disagree, but the argument that an armed populace is unable to overthrow a bad government does not carry any weight whatsoever.