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ACLU Joins Fight Against Internet Surveillance
aychamo writes "The American Civil Liberties Union today joined an expanding group of organizations filing lawsuits against a new rule that increases the FBI's power to conduct surveillance on the Internet. The rule being challenged is one the Federal Communications Commission adopted in September, granting an FBI request to expand wiretapping authority to online communications.he ACLU charged in a petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the ruling goes beyond the authority of CALEA, which specifically exempted information services. "The ACLU seeks review of the CALEA order on the grounds that it exceeds the FCC's statutory authority and is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, unsupported by substantial evidence, or otherwise contrary to law," the organization charged in its petition."
From TFA:
Here's a good reference on just what will be required for universities to comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA),and the resultant costs involved.
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After all, how long can we maintain the 1st with out it?
Start a happiness pandemic
...and I didn't speak up because I wasn't using alot of 'T's. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me and I had to buy a vowel.
The ACLU is doing something that isn't going to piss the majority off?
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
When I read this headline the light-saber ad was displaying at the top, and my mind filled with pictures of jedi ACLU lawyers battling video surveillence droids. Whhhoommm chttzzz clnk.
*waves hand* These are not the geeks you are looking for.
Better than arguing a Muslim woman should be able to have her face covered in her driver's license photo. Society has an interest in having a drivers license photo accurately picture the individual that overrides religious freedom.
Before you argue that no societal interest overrides religious freedom, please note that all of the following "crimes" have tried to use the religious freedom defense:
In all of those cases, courts (up to the Supreme Court) said society's interest in prohibiting those crimes outweighed the First Amendment rights of the individuals.
The First Amendment is not absolute. You can't incite people to riot without punishment. You can't publish libelous accusations without punishment. You can't do anything you want and get away with it on the claim "God Says So".
While I admire the ACLU for taking on some contentious issues which are nasty, but have to be defended, most of their stuff seems to be things like forcing a nativity scene out of a city park or trying to make it possible for someone to mask their face in a driver's license photo.
Start a happiness pandemic
Instead of ignoring the second amendment, or crusading for the rights of Neo-Nazis to march through black neighborhoods the ACLU is doing something that's actually positive. I applaud them for this.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
First it was a war-waging company using Linux....
Now it's the ACLU vs Internet Surveillance.
How is any slashdotter supposed to karma whore when you keep putting up stories that are conflicting of the slashdot groupthink!
Next up: How Microsoft thinks that the US controls the internet too much...
No.. most of their stuff does not. Just most of the stuff that jokers like O'Reilly and Limbaugh like to focus on.
Almost all of their cases are about protecting the civil rights of the individual against the "man". You don't hear about most of those, because Fox News won't highlight them.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
"The diverse organizations also warned that the expanded eavesdropping rules represent only the beginning of what will become a broader effort to regulate the Internet."
Is this to fight terrorists or to regulate the internet? or both?
How much privacy are people willing to give up in order to fight a war without a clear enemy?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Therefore, 'information services' as defined by the law, must be considered services which generate, acquire, store, transform, process, retrieve, utilize or make use of information. This would include such things as Google Mail and web site providers. HOWEVER, an Internet Service Provider does not generate, acquire, store, transform, process, retrieve, utilize or make use of information... it transmits, or transfers.
Therefore, under the law, it is OK to wiretap an ISP, if the information being wire tapped was not destined to be to or from the ISP (but merely a pass-through). Section (c) covers this by saying it does not include command control functionality of the ISP.
At least, that's my interpretation of the law. Obviously this conflicts with the great ACLU, so I'm sure this will be modded down.
Isn't there value in a debate over the limits of religious freedom? I don't agree that someone should be allowed to cover their face in a driver's license photo either, but I don't begrudge the ACLU for bringing the case. One of the biggest dangers we face as a society, hell, as humans, is that we tend to believe that certain ideas like "religious freedom" are unchanging and self-evident; they're not. In fact, they're sources of constant contestation and both shape and are shaped by society. Insofar as the ACLU's driver's license lawsuit forces us to think about the limits of religious freedom, and furthermore just what we mean by "religious freedom", I say it's worthwhile; we certainly wouldn't be having this conversation otherwise. The idea that it's wrong to even ask those questions is, in my opinion, a much bigger threat than any possible outcome of the lawsuit.
Well said... You can always peg a Rushbot/O'Reillybot inside of 5 seconds when they unleash an uninformed and simplistic statement about the ACLU. O'Reilly and his ilk are successful because they manipulate the uninformed. The best way to do this is through the creation of "enemies"... the ACLU... George Soros and his "War on Christmas"...etc.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
>We do not have a militia, and unorganized people not enlisted in
/supposed/ to be a militia.
/people/.
/people/ must serve as the counterbalance to federal tyranny.
>"state security" are neither a militia nor necessary to the defense
>of a free state.
>But unless it's revised to protect a right for any American to own and use a gun without restriction, these contrived versions by 2nd Amendment fetishists are baseless. And dangerous to our security.
You are correct - today, there is no militia. But there is
What the founding fathers intended, based on other writings of theirs (like the Federalist Papers), was clearly to prevent a strong centralized government from having a strong military which would enable it to act as a tyranny. The way they intended to prevent this was to have no standing Federal army, or, at the most, a small one, countered by militias raised by the states, commanded by officers from those states, and made up of citizens from those states.
The overriding intent is clearly to keep military power in the hands of the citizens of the states, and out of the hands of a centralized federal government. The overriding intent is clearly to retain enough military power outside of the federal government to prevent said federal government from taking military action against the citizens of the states.
This kind of military setup died in the late 19th century. Many like to argue that the National Guard is now the militia of the founding father's vision. It is not. Today's National Guard in no way serves to counterbalance Federal military power. If anything, it serves as an adjunct to it and reinforces it.
Just because state militias have been commandeered by the Federal government does not mean that the founding fathers' intents are not still valid! The militias are gone, but the people are not! Given today's situation, the only way left to preserve the intent of the founding fathers is to keep arms in the hands of the
There are militias no longer, therefore the
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'm going to risk a few Karma points but here goes:
... "Can't we all just get along?"
You know that anytime the letters A*C*L*U* are used in a Slashdot posting, regardless of the subject at hand, you will get the following within one hour:
1. Swipes at religion
2. Swipes at conservatives (not the same as 1.)
3. Swipes at the United States and its foreign policies.
4. Swipes at the ACLU's position on xxx, where xxx is not related to the subject at hand
5. Counterswipes at 1-4.
To quote Rodney King
Wow, that's a really creative reading. However, the law doesn't say "services which generate...", it says "offering a capability for generating...". And it specifically includes "a service that permits a customer to retrieve stored information"... Web pages, for example, are stored information that an ISP permits a customer to retrieve.