ACLU Sues FBI, Justice Dept Over Y2K Flick

An AC writes " BetaNews reported that on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made good on its plan to file a lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department for allegedly suppressing a Web-based film that predicts a riot in Times Square on New Year's Eve." The ACLU's Complaint is online, and see the original slashdot story and the followup. The ACLU complaint gives a great deal of information about what the FBI actually did, errr, is alleged to have done. The ACLU also makes an interesting claim that this action was related to Project Megiddo, the FBI's plan to suppress any disorder around the millennium.

Comments

Geez...

[Kid Zero]

Okay. 1. Anyone who thinks this is real either cannot read or has serious discernment issues they need to work out.
2. I understand why the FBI/CIA/NSA/DIA/WTF is bonkers over this type of stuff. It is inflamatory. Sorry ya'll. He puts the disclamers at the end of the tape and claims it's for discussion only? Right. People aren't going to notice that, they'd take it as gospel and go ballistic. They panicked on War of the Worlds, even tho it was cleary noted to be "fiction" (as my Dad says, he heard it)

Perhaps another point of view?

[nlvp]

I read through most of the text of the link, and it seems to me that the FBI were worried not by the film itself but by the phone calls thehad received from people believing the film to be real.

Given the way the events are described (by the plaintiff), they imply but do not state that the FBI were heavy-handed. They also illustrate that the FBI gave the plaintiffs every opportunity to set their minds at rest, and instead the plaintiffs first failed to call when they said they would, then got attorneys to call on their behalf without their having been accused of anything.

If the FBI had a genuine concern given the telephone calls they had received, then the plaintiffs could have set their minds at rest. The easy answer to the question "where did you get the tape" is, "I made it, it's fictional". The easy solution to the problem was to indicate that this was a work of fiction on the front page.

The plaintiff compares his film genre to "War of the Worlds", and everyone knows that that caused serious panic. From the FBI's point of view, if that lopoked like it was going to reoccur, I can understand why they would want to put a stop to it.

Before I get flamed into oblivion - I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but in my honest opinion, the information we need hasn't been provided. We really need to know how heavy-handed and aggressive the FBI were, and all we have are statements telling us how 'worried' the plaintiffs were, not the exact words or even a decent level of detail regarding what they were threatened with. Is it possible they just overreacted to being called by the FBI?

To what extent is it irresponsible to imply that this tape depicting incited civil violence on Times Square originated in the military when that isn't true?