It's strange to me that technology workers are seemingly unwilling to unionise and hold general strikes to protest these kinds of policies -- if we aren't willing to take real collective action, we aren't ever going to have our voices heard. When Australia passed an even more ludicrous anti-encryption bill a year ago, the only real response by the technology community was a handful of blog posts (after it was too late to do anything about the legislation[+]) and grand-standing on twitter.
Why are we so shocked when politicians don't listen to us? We act like petulant children -- small bursts of outrage, but with no consequences for the people in power.
[+]: Most posts were published either a day or two before it passed through the House of Reps, and some were posted during the day of the Senate discussion and passage. I did submit comments during the comment period, but we all know that had zero effect on their decisions.
Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government. Governments are very weary to permit any union to become politically important for historic reasons. And any wise union thinks twice before getting involved in politics.
So you'd need workers to unionize (which they have NOT done to deal with their employers). AND for that union to pick the federal government as it's first opponent (and not it's members' employers!?). AND to get that all done before this bill becomes law (and in a time of epidemic). AND then for them to win an uphill battle with the most powerful political entity on earth despite the fact that ~80% of voters don't know what you're campaigning about and if they did wouldn't care.
I think the real question here is why tech companies (or rather their CEOs, founders etc) are not making a fuss. I was disappointed by the revelations from Snowden about how Google, FB, Apple, ISPs and everyone else turned over everything without asking any questions before it was even legal after sept. 11th. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt: they were afraid, they wanted to be patriotic, it's hard to say no when someone asks nicely etc. Then they were all "outraged" by the revelations. If they were really outraged, they'd be buying senators, hiring PR firms and making public statements decrying this.
The cynical answer to that is that these companies have made a calculated decision not to pick a fight most users don't (yet) care about.
I'd also be careful calling us petulant. Politicians ignore us because 90% of people are not informed and choose not to think about history when these issues come up. But the audience here are mostly members of the other 10%. Since we're overwhelmingly outnumbers, out voted and ignored, what can we do but be outraged, share some articles about self-service-encryption and then move on?
Sorry, I've been quite confrontational in this comment. I also think there will be a lot more "outrage" than action on this. But when the possible action is very limited... Unionization would likely be positive too, I just think it would be a small part of a large and complex solution.
> Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government.
Labor parties in countries like the UK and Australia specifically exist to act as union-supported (and funded) parties. Unions do exist to help deal with members' employers, but they also exist to allow for collective political action.
An obvious example worldwide is teachers' unions (though you could argue because their employer is the state government, the union is fighting against their employer). Another example would be the strikes in the UK during Thatcher's time in office. Not to mention that basically all workers' rights legislation in most countries came out of battles between unions and governments, hence why they are so "weary" to "permit" unions to take political action -- because collective action works.
> So you'd need workers to unionize (which they have NOT done to deal with their employers) [...]
There's a saying about the second best time to plant a tree being today, and that applies here. This battle is most likely already lost, but actively choosing to not learn a lesson from it (unionise and mobilise for the next time this happens) is simply foolish. Ideally the technology industry would've unionised 30 years ago, but you'll never have any strength if the immediate response to someone saying "we should unionise" is "even if we unionised right now we couldn't solve $current_problem". Even if that is true, maybe having that infrastructure in place will allow you to solve tomorrow's problem?
> I think the real question here is why tech companies (or rather their CEOs, founders etc) are not making a fuss.
I hope by "fuss" you mean "shutting down operations until demands are met". Plenty of CEOs blogged about how insane the aforementioned anti-encryption legislation is (as they have in most of these cases). Looks like that doesn't work, maybe we should stop trying the same tactic?
> Politicians ignore us because 90% of people are not informed and choose not to think about history when these issues come up.
If (hypothetically) Google shut down for a week over this or any other bill, it would not be passed. They ignore us because all of our complaining is petulance -- it's not a substitute for action. That's the entire historic purpose of general strikes.
The last Labour (UK) government launched the Iraq war, started privatising the NHS, brought in student fees and cut benefits for working people. They supported measures far more draconian than this, including detaining people without charge for 28 days.
The party was founded to empower workers and unions. But that was in 1900. Things have changed a lot on the last 120 years.
>If (hypothetically) Google shut down for a week over this or any other bill, it would not be passed.
Assuming that's true, its irrelevant. No one here can turn off Google (or Facebook or whatever else) for a week. So no one here is being petulant are they? A few very rich and powerful people might be able to. I'm happy to agree they should do more. But 99.999% of people can do nothing but complain.
Edit: FYI, I agree they should get on and unionize. But that will be a multi-year (maybe multi decade) process...
The most recent U.K. Labour government also reintroduced national minimum wage, raised the zero-tax threshold, and passed the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act.
I don’t like everything they did, but they did do various things which supported worker rights.
I disagree fundamentally with many of the things the last UK Labour government did.
However at the same time, the last Australian Labor government combated the GFC with a stimulus package that allowed us to be the only country that survived the recession effectively unscathed. They developed the NBN which (before the Liberals got their hands on it) was affordable and actually stood a chance to revolutionise Australia's economy. The Labor government before that was responsible for the largest structural change to Australia's economy through floating the dollar.
My point is that just because one Labour government did many reprehensible things doesn't discount the very concept. And even in the UK (where Labour has struggled to get elected for decades), Labour governments have done more than a handful of worthwhile things in the past 120 years.
> No one here can turn off Google (or Facebook or whatever else) for a week. So no one here is being petulant are they?
Right, and I was going to say this in my original comment. But then I thought "if all the engineers who worked for Google striked, would Google function for a week?" and wasn't sure of the answer. This is ultimately the downside of working on self-regulating machines -- strikes become less effective because the machinery stops for no-one. But I still think general strikes by technology workers would be effective.
> I think the real question here is why tech companies (or rather their CEOs, founders etc) are not making a fuss.
A heavy compliance burden is a moat for incumbents. This is true in most industries - businesses only squeal about regulations if it's going to severely hurt their bottom line, if it's just an annoyance than they'll publicly claim they don't like it but also point out that it stops cowboys and amateurs (i.e. new competitors) from potentially hurting consumers.
I think stripping this encryption would make competition MORE easy, since now offering encryption is a niche google etc won't compete for (Telegram got started here) and since now you don't have to spend time and energy adding security like before. But who knows.
It's also worth considering more conspiratorial (tin foil hat time, sorry) answers:
* Don't make a fuss and we will keep your Chinese competitor companies out of western markets for another decade.
* Don't make a fuss or we will come down hard on you with taxes and audits, both at the corporate level and for you as individuals. We might even move our lucrative federal contracts elsewhere or brand you "insecure" (yes, they are that hypocritical) and ban your products.
* Don't make a fuss, you gave us access to all that data and it includes you and your families. We will start by outing peoples sexuality and affairs and move on to arresting them for trumped up minor offenses we would never have known about without your help. And they'll blame you for their ruined lives.
Unions must be political because workers rights, healthcare, and pay are already political issues and business is already political. Anything which is a major fight with other powers is political, and if your issues are on the table for the nation to fight over, then it's political.
> Since we're overwhelmingly outnumbers, out voted and ignored, what can we do but be outraged, share some articles about self-service-encryption and then move on?
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
If asking nicely isn't getting you anywhere then the only alternative to achieve your goal is to use some kind of force. Economic, social or direct physical force.
I'd think that in this particular case, black-hat hacking would also be in play--to include those untrustworthy black-box voting machines.
To that trope of "four boxes" (soap box, ballot box, jury box, ammunition box) we might add "burner box", for the computer that was purchased with cash and kept off all of one's usual networks.
It's one of the quirks of the modal ethics of the computer person that we'd rather get someone fired, ruin their credit, reassign 20000 orphaned traffic/parking tickets to their name, or send a SWAT team to their home address, than to dirty our own hands with actual blood. You have to account for that in any organized resistance strategy. Nobody around here is going to be beating up scabs.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, to be perfectly honest. Beyond that, the fight is a moving target. A union that forms for this issue would not be the same union as for the next issue, nor would its members uniformly be for or against the next thing in lockstep. This is how political parties splinter, expecting the same members to be mad about whatever the next issue as they were the last, however tenuously related they are.
And beyond the fight itself being so ephemeral, there's no real way to know when it's been won or not. I believe that the FCC's tight-fisted control over what's allowed on what is allowed on network television is gone, and has been for some time. The Supreme Court has shown that they actually value the first amendment pretty strongly in recent years, even when its exercise may have bad side effects, and I think that if the FCC were to try and level fines against a new broadcaster for using the word 'ass' on television or something, it could be fought and the law overturned. But existing broadcasters are relatively complicit in that. The bigger networks don't want their family friendly-mass market television to have to compete with FX, HBO, or whatever other edgier networks are out there on the same spectrum, so they don't make a fuss because the barrier to entry that those broadcasting standards impose is worth paying the occasional small fine for accidental violations.
This is undoubtedly true in some tech arenas as well, and that tech companies - despite their lofty ideals, are finding it hard to find the energy to muster full-throated rebukes of policies that they may dislike ideologically, but maybe derive some small benefit from that their upstart competitors may not.
> "Governments are very weary to permit any union to become politically important for historic reasons. And any wise union thinks twice before getting involved in politics."
An interesting notion, but not at all reflective of the way unions relate to politics in the US or Europe at least.
> Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government. Governments are very weary to permit any union to become politically important for historic reasons. And any wise union thinks twice before getting involved in politics.
Wise unions may not, but U.S. unions constantly do. Some governments may not permit politically-active unions, but the U.S. government does, and unions are consistently large contributors (cf. https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/toporgs.php?view=hm&cyc...).
> Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government.
Simply not true. Unions engaged in both historically. Workers rights is a political cause after all. Historically, unions primarily engaged the government to gain rights for the workers. Every union is/was a political organization first.
Just because unions did that historically, doesn't mean they can do it today. When was the last time a Union engaged the federal government for something not related to workers rights (like this) and succeeded? My guess is before Reagan. Before I was born, and I am old now.
Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if they could and did. Increased union power would be a boon to workers. But wanting something doesn't make it happen.
I am also happy to agree that unions used to be much more politically powerful. Though even then, they concentrated workers rights, not say freedom of speech issues. Since at least the 70s, Unions have been crippled by changing economic structures and politicians who don't like the competition. In the 1960s, 30% of workers were in a union. Today it's 13% mostly federal or state employees. Unions in private industry barely exist anymore. Simultaneously, the percentage of votes who are workers (and so might be in a union) has fallen. That double-whammy means they can barely keep their members from unemployment. Expecting them to safeguard to constitution and take on the federal government is (sorry) silly.
> Just because unions did that historically, doesn't mean they can do it today.
You said Governments, not USA specifically. Unions are very politically active all over Europe, a large number of top politicians have been or were union leaders. So to me USA seems to be the odd one out on this rather than the rule.
Your example was working with the federal government not opposing it.
Your answer was purely about saving their members jobs, not them going off an engaging politically.
Your union had the support of CEOs and Owners.
I have to ask: do you really, honestly, believe that unions are politically powerful at the federal level and interested in subjects that don't directly affect their members? Really? Despite the dwindling memberships, widespread At Will employment being passed, record gaps between worker and CEO pay? Really?
> It's strange to me that technology workers are seemingly unwilling to unionise
A better model may be a guild like actors have (SAG).
Certain 'base-level' protections are agreed to with regards to health and safety, working hours, perhaps minimum salary guidelines, healthcare, retirement plans/pensions (?), etc. However things like salary can be independently determined. Paying dues would also give access to employment lawyers and dispute resolution mechanisms.
Just as (e.g.) SAG makes sure everyone on set is safe (both Tom Cruise and Jane Smith who plays Waitress #2), but people can be paid according to their (perceived?) importance to the project.
Many people instantly bristle at the word "union". It's worth distinguishing between the gatekeeping and seniority effects of a "union" as understood in the currently-not-pro-union mind and the potential benefits of a collective voice using more descriptive nomenclature.
Most unions don't have "union" in their name, I don't think it's an issue of nomenclature. People know which organizations can be colloquially referred to as a labor union.
That said people just have problems understanding how unions work. It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members. If you want that to include gate keeping and seniority protections that's up to the members. If you want it to be a political lobby, same thing.
>It's a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the union members.
I've never been in (or had the opportunity to be in) a union, but it seems like you could apply this exact same argument to the US congress. Congress is a collective voice. How that voice is used is up to the voters. Of course, it's far from that simple in the real world.
Do you have some organizational mechanisms in mind to prevent such an institution from eventually evolving gatekeeping and seniority (or to dislodge it from power if it does)?
So re-brand it. How about ‘collective’? Bernie Sanders literally lost the election because he couldn’t rebrand socialism and instead called it socialism.
I also don’t thing developers need a traditional labor union. We probably need baseline guidelines where non-compliant companies would be seen as ‘very lame, avoid’. Similar to a coding standard.
> How would you keep the baseline protections reasonable enough so every startup and tech department would be proud to support it?
It would take a few years of back and forth of negotiation. Of course not all organizations would have employees may necessarily be part of it.
Holywood is a 'closed shop' where you basically need to be in the union / guild, but that is not true in every industry.
I'm in Ontario, Canada where a lot of car OEMs have plants: the Detroit Three plants are all unionized AFAICT. However the Cambridge Toyota plant is not: the CAW has been asking the employees for a while, but they always said 'no'. Seems that Toyota has a different mindset towards their employees.
Similarly Air Canada has been unionized with pilots for a while, but WestJet (~Southwest) only recently unionized: turns out the pilots there were tired of crap.
> the only real response by the technology community was a handful of blog posts
Something that is rarely talked about anymore but true is that the original 'internet culture' from the early 90s is basically dead.
The ethos of that age was an active distrust of government and centralized authority. Further, there was a lack of trust in politics in general. That's basically gone now.
The new technologist are not just unprincipled, they are deeply political and will support whatever initiative their tribe is pursuing. Even more cynical, is how can they even be against 'spying' and 'privacy violations'? 90% of the jobs available involve doing just that.
There is no way to have a world both against the EARN IT act and yet work for FB, Google, etc - they are basically all part of the same spyware industry.
>There is no way to have a world both against the EARN IT act and yet work for FB, Google, etc - they are basically all part of the same spyware industry.
Exactly correct. I said elsewhere in this thread that I gave them (plus ISPs etc) the benefit of the doubt when it came to Snowden and their compliance with government requests because I could understand they were scared by sept 11th, they wanted to be patriotic, maybe they didn't fully understand the risk or the future they were building etc. If they let EARN pass and comply with it, we all need to opt out.
My worry is how to get enough people to do the same. Being in the 1-10% of people not using these services is difficult (I have too many friends stuck using Whatsapp and Facebook messenger), it's uneconomic (who's buying a non-apple, non-android phone?) and it just makes it too easy for government to surveil you as your own special group.
That age died when the general public started coming online. That was the time when people self hosted their own email and web servers. Nobody has time for that anymore.
Sadly, centralization is simpler. And privacy was an illusion anyway.
It's hard to keep that mindset when you end up getting a lion's share of the world's wealth and power from your technology. How can you distrust yourself and your people, then?
I'd think (if I didn't know any better) that being well-off would result in people having more time and energy to consider things like ethics or politics. I think this is how it's supposed to work, historically. Evidently, it stopped working, both in the general populace and in people involved with tech.
It's not very surprising, though. The technology is mostly built by one-step-above (or outright-) autistic nerds, and marketed and sold by hyperactive pie-in-the-sky megalomaniacs. The nerds don't care that much about anything in particular (other than tabs vs. spaces), and the business types have flexible ethics. Both groups would be dangerous - for different reasons - if taken separately but taken together make for the most ethics-free industry ever.
The complete inability of both nerds and founders to act as a (larger) group might be the only reason why the industry is not under regulations stricter than surgeons and soldiers are. If it were possible for this industry to actually wield the power it has, the governments would be much more pressed for securing what became a vital infrastructure. My guess is that they know for a fact that shutting down Google for a week is not going to happen, ever - and that they are content with the kinds of people that self-select into IT.
>There is no way to have a world both against the EARN IT act and yet work for FB, Google, etc - they are basically all part of the same spyware industry.
It seems to me that emigration is the only socially-acceptable tax revolt. I'm a South African with a BEng. degree in Electronic Engineering & Comp Sci who has been looking to emigrate.
After Australia passed the anti-encryption bill, I crossed it off the list of places I would ever start a company in. Previously it was quite high on my list, but now I feel like I would be funding a corrupt state if I paid taxes there. That is also why I intend to flee ZA.
(Any software companies in the Netherlands need someone a senior Clojure engineer, let me know!)
> It's strange to me that technology workers are seemingly unwilling to unionise and hold general strikes to protest these kinds of policies
How would that impact hobbyist software? Am I going to be run out of my job for being a "scab" if I keep developing my hobbyist projects during a strike? (Historically, "scabs" got killed, of course.) How about if it's a strike I don't agree with? Even if there's some kind of voting process on whether to strike or not, which is itself fraught and open to abuses, nothing guarantees that majority rule will be just, and nothing guarantees that anything else will result in enough legitimacy to lead to collective action. (As in: "I didn't vote to strike, so I'm not going to.")
Im with most of the tenets of the post, however its worth noting the US Government and its member states tend to generally ignore the fourth amendment unless you've got the cash to file a lawsuit.
It's incredible how far we've fallen; the border exception is particularly terrible.
I was once driving along I-10, which is an 8-lane / 80mph interstate. CBP had blockaded the entire road, and were pulling every single car and truck off to be questioned and searched.
My truck had a canopy with heavily-tinted windows that could have easily fit a few people, but I don't "look foreign", so they waved me through without even glancing at my ID or vehicle. From the people who had been pulled off, it looked like their job was to hassle people with brown skin.
I can't fathom how it isn't a violation of the Constitution to (ostensibly) search every individual driving along a major highway. What ever happened to 'probabale cause'? Is living in the US considered evidence of committing a crime in the US nowadays?
"I can't fathom how it isn't a violation of the Constitution to (ostensibly) search every individual driving along a major highway. What ever happened to 'probabale cause'?"
How can someone possibly not 'fathom' a scenario?
There's someone shooting at people/cops, car chase, prison break out, or some kind of major violent criminal moving down the highway - they may roughly what he looks like, i.e. race and gender, hence, people who fit this profile get flagged, those that don't move on.
How hard is that to imagine?
Surely it's pretty rare, but surely such situations happen.
I've literally never seen anything like that in my entire life so it's probably not like the police are likely to be acting outrageously disproportionately. But I don't know, maybe you can look it up. But it's certainly easy to see scenarios in which many might want this to be public policy given certain scenarios.
It appears the 4th amendment certainly still applies in the 100 mile zone, and if it did not that would be insane. According to that page, 2/3 of the population lives inside the 100 mile zone.
The CBP officers do apparently have more leeway as far as detaining a person roadside (see 'reasonable suspicion'), or boarding a bus/ train and the like, but probable cause is still required to search a vehicle, or arrest a suspect.
"An immigration officer also cannot search you or your belongings without either “probable cause” or your consent. If an agent asks you if they can search your belongings, you have the right to say no."
In the past, I have successfully denied an officers request to search my vehicle at a routine traffic stop. He backed off immediately. It is easier said than done, being stopped by law enforcement is always stressful. But simply saying in a polite manner, 'No, sir. I prefer you didn't search the vehicle', is one of our greatest tools the 4th amendments provides us.
Officers WILL ask and try to gain consent if at all possible. I suspect that most of the vehicles the other commenter saw being searched by the roaming patrol, either did not know they could say no, or did not have the nerve to say no in a tense stressful situation.
I know that's what the courts say, I just think it's insane and indefensible. And that erodes my trust in our judicial system and my respect for our institutions.
Or it would, if I had any left. If the law doesn't apply equally to everyone, it's not a legal system so much as a way to selectively keep people down.
And of course there's also Wickard v. Filburn, which held that feeding cattle in one state grain raised in the same state is somehow interstate commerce, and Baker v. Carr, Gray v. Sanders & Reynolds v. Sims which combined prevent states from having a republican form of government patterned after the federal model. And there are the drug laws, which are mostly although not entirely unconstitutional. And then there are the many state and local firearms laws which violate the Second Amendment. And there's Maryland v. Craig, which guts the right to confront one's accusers. And then there are all the executive departments with no authorisation in the Constitution (e.g. the Department of Education), which IMHO violate the Ninth Amendment. Sadly, it has been a long, long time since 'this should not be done because it violates the Constitution' has been persuasive.
The Constitution's not perfect, but it's better than what we have now.
Also almost all immigration restrictions like work and residency visas are unconstitutional, as the constitution only grants the Federal government power to determine rules for naturalization.
To quote Justice William Rehnquist: “one of the greatest 'fictions' of our federal system is that the Congress exercises only those powers delegated to it, while the remainder are reserved to the States or to the people. The manner in which this Court has construed the Commerce Clause amply illustrates the extent of this fiction. Although it is clear that the people, through the States, delegated authority to Congress to 'regulate Commerce ... among the several States' (Commerce Clause), one could easily get the sense from this Court's opinions that the federal system exists only at the sufferance of Congress."
Thank you for writing to me to share your concerns about law enforcement access to encrypted communications. I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.
I understand you are opposed to the “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020” (S. 3398), which I introduced with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) on March 5, 2020. You may be interested to know that the Senate Judiciary Committee—of which I am Ranking Member—held a hearing on the “EARN IT Act” on March 11, 2020. If you would like to watch the full hearing or read the testimonies given by the hearing witnesses, I encourage you to visit the following website: https://sen.gov/53RV.
The “EARN IT Act” would establish a National Commission on Online Sexual Exploitation Prevention to recommend best practices for companies to identify and report child sexual abuse material. Companies that implement these, or substantially similar, best practices would not be liable for any child sexual abuse materials that may still be found on their platforms. Companies that fail to meet these requirements, or fail to take other reasonable measures, would lose their liability protection.
Child abuse is one of the most heinous crimes, which is why I was deeply disturbed by recent reporting by The New York Times about the nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported by technology companies last year. It is a federal crime to possesses, distribute, or produce pictures of sexually explicit conduct with minors, and technology companies are required to report and remove these images on their platforms. Media reports, however, make it clear that current federal enforcement measures are insufficient and that we must do more to protect children from sexual exploitation.
Please know that I believe we must strike an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public safety. It is helpful for me to hear your perspective on this issue, and I will be mindful of your opposition to the “EARN IT Act” as the Senate continues to debate proposals to address child sexual exploitation.
Once again, thank you for writing. Should you have any other questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at feinstein.senate.gov. You can also follow me online at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and you can sign up for my email newsletter at feinstein.senate.gov/newsletter.
"Please know that I believe we must strike an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public safety."
Why do you believe that, Dianne? Do you disagree with the spirit of the Fourth Amendment? Are invasions of personal privacy only justified by probable cause, or is that not the case? What is your standard for the "appropriate balance"?
----------
Is it even worth assuming sincerity with somebody like Feinstein? Child pornography is a heinous crime, but not nearly as heinous as using child pornography as a lever for industrial scale human rights abuses. Frauds and/or useful idiots.
What's more absurd is the assumption that they can stop child porn or sharing of anything "subjective" in the sense that it's a bunch of bytes difficult to distinguish from other bytes without manual filtering. You just can't automate distinguishing between legitimate porn and child porn. Even if you could, you'll just drive sharing of such content underground, while trampling all over the personal rights of those doing nothing wrong.
If they really want to address child pornography as a problem, they would treat it as a social ill/disease and go after the users instead of the platform. The goal should be reform that minimizes recidivism because it makes it easier to find those partaking in this content. At least with something like Facebook, they have a shot at identifying those sharing such content. Make it impossible to share on a widely used and understood service like Facebook and people will migrate to platforms that are much much harder to police.
I bet she has advocates in her office all the time with heinous pictures and stories. And I imagine over time that is more convincing than abstract arguments for privacy.
I think she's making the wrong call but I can understand the process by which she made it.
An old (90s) parable Perry Metzger came up with - point being, they'll always use "heaven forbid, the children" as the final arbiter in removing all privacy rights.
"Meanwhile, the wise man talked one evening to his friends on how all of this was making a sham of the constitution of Ruritania, of which all Ruritanians were proud. "Why", he asked, "are we obligated to sacrifice all our freedom and privacy to make the lives of the police easier? There isn't any real evidence that this makes any big dent in crime anyway! All it does is make our privacy forfeit to the state!"
However, the wise man made the mistake of saying this, as the law required, in Ruritanian, clearly and distinctly, and near a microphone. Soon, the newly formed Ruritanian Secret Police arrived and took him off, and got him to confess by torturing him. Torture was, after all, far more efficient than the old methods, and had been recently instituted to stop the recent wave of people thinking obscene thoughts about tomatoes, which Dorothy Quisling noted was one of the major problems of the new age of plenty and joy."
It seemed absurd at the time but it's becoming a reality.
Note: I had to use Qwant to find that. Just sayin'
Thank you for sharing this. That website is a gem of the past. Check out the home page:
> Some agencies of the United States Government (notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)), want to prevent the deployment of encryption technology. They want either encryption so weak that just about anyone can break it, or they want a copy of every key used with strong encryption. This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house).
> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988, who referred to them as "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc." when discussing the reasons for limited civilian use of cryptography tools.
From "CypherPunk FAQ" [1]:
> 8.3.4. "How will privacy and anonymity be attacked?"
> ... like so many other "computer hacker" items, as a tool for the "Four Horsemen": drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles.
Best practices for companies? What about best practices for the people who actually enforce the law? Why doesn't law enforcement do it's actual job instead of trying to bypass the Constitution? You know, go undercover and catch people like the good old days. I'm supposed to give up my privacy because they are lazy.
It blows me away that California keeps sending probably the worst Senator in the Democratic caucus to DC every single election. Y'all need to kick her to the curb already.
This is the perfect counterpoint to all the grandstanding about calling your representatives. I tried calling both my Senators' offices when one of the "big issues" was going around. (I don't even remember what it was now.) In both cases, I got some aide who 1) couldn't or wouldn't tell me my Senator's position on the bill, and 2) couldn't possibly care less (despite what they said) about my opinion on the matter. I mean, I'm sorry to be pessimistic about it, but on that day, I learned that the average person does NOT, in fact, have any influence in what's going on in Washington. Influencing legislation is a right reserved for campaign contributors. Until we get serious about "getting money out of politics," that will be the case.
Yeah I dont even bother with the whole "call / write your senator" stuff. Total just get these condescending auto-responses telling you why they're right and you're wrong.
> Influencing legislation is a right reserved for campaign contributors. Until we get serious about "getting money out of politics," that will be the case.
I dont even think its just that. I'd wager than whenever a case like this comes up, the bill is either popular in the congressperson home state or people are widely just ignorant about it and what it entails. These two things probably help contribute to some of the most unpopular senators nationally are constantly re-elected and have been for decades.
Fully agreed. Exactly the same response AND same attitude from our representatives. The attitude part of it was the worst- it's specifically designed to be unrewarding, to make you leave them alone .
There are technical solutions coming down the pike at our benighted lawmakers that are going to change the balance of power and force them to be more attentive and truly represent their constituents. That's all I can say for now.
Pelosi and Feinstein DO truly represent their constituents as far as I can tell, it has to be said. I don't particularly like either of them, but then I don't particularly care for the people they represent either.
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So what? If the supreme Court refuse to heard the case, like they have with the Patriot Act and pretty much every similar case since Sept 11th, nothing will stop it.
I like to see legislation as similar to computer code, where the "computer" is society & the courts.
There are a lot of parallels: the actual laws that are passed often look like diffs explained with words (insert this word here, remove this sentence, etc), every concept has to be explicitely defined, and you have to think of all the corner-cases otherwise you get unforeseen consequences, etc.
Unfortunately, most bodies of law have amassed a huge amount of technical debt, and nobody seems interested in solving it.
The fact that most legislators are actually terrible coders doesn't help at all either.
I used to think about law that way. Then I became friends with a number of attorneys and a couple of judges. Talking to them made it abundantly clear that much codified law and judge-made law functions more as rough heuristics and less as "code".
I've also heard the "technical debt" you're speaking of as being described as a feature, rather than a bug.
Sure, it's an analogy, and analogies are always imperfect. It's true that the "computer" isn't a conventional computer at all, and behaves a lot differently.
As a non-lawyer with a bit of interest in understanding the law, though, I'm strongly opposed to that technical debt. While it sure does keep the lawyers employed, it makes it _very_ hard for the lay citizen to understand what we can or cannot do.
This analogy is commonly drawn by programmers. Like many analogies it's imperfect.
Law in the Common Law countries (the UK, US, Australia, Canada, NZ etc) has two main sources: case law and legislation. They are both the law. Case law derives its power from precedent, legislation from declaration. But they are both the law. Legislation read in isolation will not give you a correct understanding of the law.
More specifically:
> Unfortunately, most bodies of law have amassed a huge amount of technical debt, and nobody seems interested in solving it.
Reform acts are passed all the time, often consolidating caselaw, or consolidating legislation, or both. Just as often there's a process of cleaning up the attic and finding old legislation that needs to be repealed. Where I studied law, the Law of Property Act 2000 (NT) included repeals for Acts going back as far as 1266[0].
But a legislature has limited bandwidth. Within this bandwidth there is a fat tail distribution of attention. Contentious issues frequently absorb legislative time and effort out of proportion to their size or complexity. This is not a matter of legislation-as-code, this is a matter of the economics of public choice and bargaining.
> The fact that most legislators are actually terrible coders doesn't help at all either.
Legislation is typically drafted by professional drafters working for the legislature. Some comes from "model acts" provided by lobbyists, these too drafted by professionals. Drafting legislation is as hard or harder than coding. There are no debugging tools, no test suites, everything is done live in production with potentially unlimited consequences. Those drafters work with immense care and often under absurd deadlines.
> Drafting legislation is as hard or harder than coding.
I agree, and it's mind-blowing to me that no effort is being made to improve that process and the tooling that goes around it.
I recently read "You have to remain innocent" by James Duane (of "never talk to police fame"), and it's truly chilling how nobody can even tell what is or isn't a crime anymore.
It varies according to the case. Whether courts create law or whether they merely discover law is a matter of serious scholarly debate. Patching or reconfiguring is closer to creation and legislatures jealously guard that privilege. Courts must apply the implications of existing laws applied to novel circumstances. Code can crash, but a court must always provide an answer, even if that answer is "you have wasted the court's time".
It's the EFF's job to advocate for a strong position on this kind of stuff, but it's a little hard to square those strong 4th Amendment claims with the existence of the third party doctrine.
Let's say a service builds a system with end-to-end encryption, such that the service provider itself is unable to decrypt and read any messages sent using the service.
How would the third party doctrine apply to that scenario? I haven't voluntarily given any decrypted information to the service provider. Instead, I specifically avoided voluntarily giving them that information.
So, at least in the context that the EARN IT act may threaten end-to-end encryption (or may attach significant civil liability to adopting end-to-end encryption) I'm not sure I understand how the third party doctrine applies. Can you expand on that?
The trouble is that the argument isn't that pressuring providers to eliminate end to end encryption itself violates the 4th Amendment, but that, in the new scheme required under EARN IT, that when a provider does scan your information, that will violate the 4th Amendment.
So at the time this argument applies, you have provided them readable information and the doctrine would apply.
To be fairer to EFF in the light of the morning, their argument actually does account for the third-party doctrine: it instead rests on the theory that courts would find EARN IT so coercive that the service providers should be effectively treated as an arm of the state. I take a pretty dim view of the likelihood of such an argument's success, but it's a game attempt.
The 1st Amendment case is probably stronger, especially given the tendency toward maximalism in that area by the Supreme Court lately... but I wouldn't call it very strong. Defeating this politically is a much better bet.
> So at the time this argument applies, you have provided them readable information and the doctrine would apply.
Ah, yes, that tracks.
Basically: The customer doesn't have a strong 4A argument because for the customer to be impacted the provider is already looking at your data, so the third-party doctrine applies.
The company probably doesn't have a strong 4A argument because they are making the choice (albiet a potentially coerced one) to eliminate end-to-end encryption. The company itself isn't suffering any undue search or seizure.
Thanks for explaining! With that clarification I'm totally with you. I agree that the 4A argument that the coercion is sufficient to treat the service provider as an extension of the state is colorable, but much less strong than the 1A argument.
This only holds water actually if you accept a program run on someone's computer is not 'theirs'.
I.e. it going into an encryption routine as part of the software package does not constitute me accepting the service provider's access to meta information about the transaction or to the contents of the original stream.
That's like saying putting something in a Post Office envelope/box is to accept that the post office can open and inspect it will. Which is patently ridiculous.
The legal system needs to come to terms with the fact that the usage of a program to transfer or transform information to the ends of achieving communication is in and of itself A) an act of speech, and B) qualifies as letters, papers, etc on light of the 4th Amendment. Further, the Court needs to do a better job at holding companies to account for informing when their tools are built in such a way that Third Party Doctrine applies. Furthermore, the implementation of that communication that Third Party Doctrine applies of should not be tolerated if it turns into some traditional template document that everyone tucks into something no one is going to read if we really care about civil rights at all.
It's worthy of ridicule the way we've let legal doublespeak undermine our fundamental civil rights.
The trouble is that there's already a significant amount of precedent here holding that the Constitution doesn't treat this kind of information passing through intermediaries the same as letters through the mail. Congress had to pass the Stored Communications Act to provide any sort of halfway-reasonable protections for email stored on third-party servers, for example. And it can be pretty un-reasonable itself.
Encryption changes things substantially, at least for practical purposes, but the whole idea of EARN IT is to coerce services to disincentivize the kind of encryption that would matter.
The Court has made some baby steps in the direction of fixing the more "core" deficiencies of the 4th Amendment's protections given the realities of the modern world, but they're not showing any signs of rushing to go further.
The third party doctrine arises from an era where much less information was held by third parties. It obviously can't be claimed that information I share with integral service providers, e.g. when sending an email to my daughter, carries no expectation of privacy. Third party doctrine is therefore highly problematic, and it is already seeing a small number of court decisions picking away at it. It inevitably has to be reworked.
I agree with you that the third party doctrine is itself a problem, particularly as more and more of daily life is recorded and conducted through such "third parties."
End to end encryption is one way of fighting back against that regime: if the third party has nothing it can use to respond to a subpoena then that's that.
Of course we see here that the government quite likes their access (and sees encryption as standing in the way even of warrant-based access) and so they're stirring to action. I suppose I'm just a pessimist about the prospects of courts stepping in here to "fix" their mistakes (or prevent the legislature from making new ones).
No, the third party doctrine allows for compelled disclosure (through warrants) of a user's data which the service acted as a carrier for. That's why law enforcement can send warrants to Google (or your ISP) to get the contents of your email account, rather than having to serve you a warrant.
The part that is often cited as being "voluntary" is that you decided to volunteer your information to a third-party (even if the service requires you to do so, and thus you actually had no meaningful choice in the matter) and thus you have "no reasonable expectation of privacy".
It's funny (to me) that people are surprised that Feinstein is so willing to trample over Constitutional protections while blithely ignoring the objections of the citizens she (in theory) represents.
For years, this has been her approach to the 2nd amendment, and to be honest, most geeks have either remained silent, or applauded her actions.
Now she's coming for the 4th amendment, and geeks are up in arms (humour intentional).
Many people believe the second amendment is wrong and it does not require protection, but they still care about the 4th. The only thing I always think about when I see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
The Second Amendment was probably a bad idea when it was written. Its proponents made a bunch of assumptions that look laughable in hindsight. Today in the hands of a Supreme Court increasingly disconnected from reality it's interpreted as an excuse to let people who clearly shouldn't have guns at all have as many guns as they can buy.
"First they came..." is about people not about ice cream flavors, or video games or constitutional amendments. Changing laws is a normal function of society. It is an anomaly (and a grave defect) that the US has become unable to even think of changing these particular laws, to the point where many of its people enshrine them as holy principles rather than recognising they are just laws of men.
It has been forever since America had judges brave enough to argue that something can't be lawful because it is evil, and so the EFF is obliged to frame things as "unconstitutional" instead. In a way that's America's legacy, the observation that slavery was evil pre-dates its founding as a country built on slavery, so it has always been necessary to its function to pretend that it's somehow important to allow evil if it's legal. In such an environment any potential judge with strong moral character could only be discouraged.
How do you propose the People should resist a despotic government. Supposing, as we must, the government literally becomes tyrannical, how do propose people resist it at that point?
That is the whole reason we have a 2nd Amendment. That's what it's about.
We went in with everything to Iraq and Afghanistan and did we subdue them? No. Why not? Because they had guns, and with guns, they acquired further weaponery to fight us; No other reason.
So you remove all the guns from "people who shouldn't have them" and how do you propose people should resist a tyrannical government?
Because the easy way to rule over people is to convince them it's a good thing, not to force them. If you find enough people to agree with you and to vote, they will vote ever worse (the worst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power)
>We went in with everything to Iraq and Afghanistan and did we subdue them? No. Why not? Because they had guns, and with guns, they acquired further weaponery to fight us; No other reason.
But how were they able to have guns and resist the US if they didn't have a Second Amendment?
Is anyone really asking me this? Do you know the history of Afghanistan? The recent history post 1978?
Everyone had guns to answer your question directly.
Are you suggesting we can all have as many AKs as we want forever in exchange for the 2nd Amendment? Because unless you are, you're either ignorant of things you choose to comment on, stupid or trolling me.
>Are you suggesting we can all have as many AKs as we want forever in exchange for the 2nd Amendment? Because unless you are, you're either ignorant of things you choose to comment on, stupid or trolling me.
>I'll take all three for 500, Alex.
Wow... you really get triggered if someone questions your cherished principles, don't you? I'm either ignorant, stupid or trolling? No, I'm just examining the assumptions behind your argument, something you seem either unwilling to do, or incapable of.
Your thesis is that it's impossible for the American people to resist a despotic government without guns, and that it would be impossible to procure those guns without a Second Amendment. Yet, you've given at least one (of many) examples of a regime which has successfully led an armed revolution (against the US, no less) without having a Second Amendment.
Now, the question of whether the Second Amendment is necessary to resist the American government has already been answered by you - it isn't, because it historically hasn't been. In fact, historically speaking, of all groups resistant to American tyranny the American people have proven the least effective of any.
There's also a false equivalence in assuming that all American gun owners are members of a militia in readiness for action against tyranny. Most American gun owners are collectors, hunters, or merely concerned with protecting their family against intruders. That every American gun owner would be ready, willing and able to rise up against their government is a fantasy. Half would side with the tyrants, depending on the nature of the tyranny. Many wouldn't fight, most would probably just try to defend their homes.
As for "suggesting we can all have as many AKs as we want forever in exchange for the 2nd Amendment?" that's absurd on its face given that we can't "all have as many AKs as we want forever" to begin with.
The more reasonable form of your question would be "are you suggesting that it is possible to own guns without the Second Amendment?" And given that gun ownership exists in other countries, and that a black market for guns also exists in countries where it doesn't, the answer to this question is also, obviously, yes.
1) There is no American tyranny against Americans- that's hyperbole you shouldn't indulge yourself in.
2) The fact that Afghanis had AK47s and RPGs just everywhere in Afghanistan before America invaded in 2002 and without a 2nd Amendment is not evidence that Americans don't need a 2nd Amendment. It's evidence that America armed the Afghanis in the 80s when they were fighting the Soviets with RPGs and AKs.
3) The point of the 2nd Amendment is to legally preserve an armed population. Afghanistan proves that an armed population can resist an invading government. Americans are not interested in rolling the dice with their Liberty at stake on some future, hypothetical blackmarket. Thanks.
4) Anyone reading this exchange who was undecided can come to the clear conclusion that you yourself admitted only an armed populace can resist tyranny.
5) Americans don't think Men gave us our Rights- including our Right to resist tyranny; we think those Rights come from our Creator and men have nothing to say about them and men who think they do are tyrants who need resisting. The 2nd Amendment is an expression of that fact- a discovery about reality, not an free invention of men's minds.
The GDR was toppled without guns. The Maidan revolution didn’t have guns. None of the Arab spring revolutions involved violent overthrow using guns. Apartheid ended without guns. All of the color revolutions were nonviolent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
Meanwhile, armed revolutions: Syria, Venezuela
Plus, you know, democracy: every election is a chance of nonviolent revolution. And democratic countries do tend to stay democratic, no weapons needed.
Changing laws is a normal function of society. Removing rights is not. That is why I am worried about any discussion about changing any law that grants citizen rights, even if I am not at all affected - I live in Europe, Romania, a country with virtually no guns, we never had a second amendment and we were always either conquered by others (Turkish empire, Austrian empire) or got Communists with the help of the Russian tanks.
"First they came" is not about people, it is about the idea of giving up, one step at a time, until there is nothing left.
It's amazing that people in the freest nation on earth have to be battled by their own citizens to not give up the rights and tools that keep them that way.
Well, since you brought it up, actually, the rule of men and not laws is exactly what we're afraid of.
To you it's a feature, to us it's a bug. The number of people killed by their own governments in the 20th century proved us right once and for all.
We don't think our Rights come from Men. They didn't come from Men and can't be removed by Men. They are inalienable Rights we were born with.
We don't care what the government d'jour thinks it can do. We had these Rights before there was an America, and every person everywhere has these Rights as well. That's what "endowed by their Creator with Inalienable Rights" means.
Whether or not people choose to stand up for them is another topic.
Just so you have a clear idea where we're coming from and what the words, "from my cold, dead hands" mean.
Allowing the Office of the Attorney General wide discretion to regulate speech seems like it wouldn’t square up with “smaller government” ideals favored by a Republican Supreme Court, especially when the AG could be a Democrat in less than a year.
I think "small government" principles can be set aside when it's expedient to do so. See how small government advocates at the Federal level try their best to override state laws on marijuana legalisation - such businesses still have difficulties getting a bank account.
Reagan, the arch-priest of the small government cult did it too. He bullied states into changing the minimum drinking age by withholding Federal funding.
I think you're confusing people who want small government with Republicans in general and people who just care about low taxes (or intentionally building a straw-man but I'll give you benefit of the doubt).
Small government advocates do not remember Reagan fondly because of his drug policy and how he screwed the second amendment.
Small government advocates haven't been a fan of federal drug policy for a very long time. I remember seeing bumper stickers with quips like "I dream of a world where men can smoke pot with their husbands" in the early 1990s.
Thanks for clarifying.
I think your parent's point was that if you vote for a party because of perceived small government ideals, you would watch those ideals vanish when the party as a whole wants to impose certain ideals on the smaller governments.
Ultimately if you delegate power and decision making enough, a few people with the consolidated power call the shots no matter how many smaller governments/powers exist. OP cited Regan as an example of that
> I think you're confusing people who want small government with Republicans in general and people who just care about low taxes (or intentionally building a straw-man but I'll give you benefit of the doubt).
That would be in-part because those two groups you mention like to advertise themselves are proponents of small government, when most often they are not. Hell I'd even wager many libertarians are less small-government than they claim and I've even heard many of them complain about too many Republican-lite types associating themselves.
Small Government is a euphemism for a system that looks the other way while Powerful People rob us blind, either through poorly thought out government contracts, or lax enforcement of laws protecting the financial interest of the public.
People rarely use the Small Government argument to combat items like excessive military expenses. It's always to do with taxes, privatizing (profitable) government functions, or criticizing consumer protection laws.
I respect that you believe that and you can meaningfully connect the rhetoric of small government to specious criticism of consumer protections laws.
Just realize that to a significant part of the thinking public, it's NOT about that. It's about the government controlling everything from the size of your soda to your toilet seat size to the way your kids are educated to how you get your healthcare.
A significant part of the public does NOT believe if it's a good idea, and there are bad consequences to someone not following the good idea, it therefore ought to be a law. It's not cynical on their part at all.
Just trying to share with you the perspective of these people.
>It's about the government controlling everything from the size of your soda to your toilet seat size to the way your kids are educated to how you get your healthcare.
I see these things as falling under "consumer protection laws." There are lots of areas where the free market creates perverse incentives and society has created regulations in order to address these issues. We have food regulations because companies used to lie about the food they were selling, we have building codes because companies were constructing unsafe buildings, we have education regulation because schools were failing to provide a base-line education, and we are pushing for healthcare regulations because the private sector has fucked healthcare industry so badly that most of us feel that we should nuke it from orbit.
You might not agree with my take, but I assure you that we are talking about the same thing. You may not think the public agrees with these things, but regulations like this didn't appear out of thin air and private companies certainly didn't put them in place. What happened was the public got tired of dealing with these problems and elected politicians who did something about it.
The phenomena you're refering to is real. I acknowledge that this set of things exist. There also exists a set of regulations and administrative agency issued laws which are fundamentally political- coersive towards a political or social end and not a safety or public-good end, except in the expansive vision of the annointed who created them. People get pursued and punished over this set of regulations.
Anyone can convince themselves that such a set must exist just by answering the question - are there likely to be people in administrative agencies who had the specific ambition to put themselves into those positions to achieve a purely political, not "good public policy", ends?
In otherwords are there crusaders in the adminstrative agencies?
It's like asking if some politicians are crooked or if some people are criminals.
That's why it's an error to dismiss the cries of foul play when they're raised. We know those people are there somewhere.
If the ruling voting to overturn on these grounds were 6-3 I'd guess it was 4 repubs, plus Soto and RGB. If it were 8-1 I'd guess it was 4 repubs + 4 dems, with Thomas dissenting. Edit: Well, nah, it'd be some breakdown with concurrences in part.
idk. It might be less about republican policy and more about republican ideals (less government action) that gets this overturned. I would at the very least expect Roberts to maybe jump the aisle.
What is it about weak encryption that has these politicians convinced that using it won't lead to higher incidents of hacking and identity theft? We're already dealing with one blow to our economy, should we bracing for a second?
Like the EFF cares about free speech. Like they have showed up even once to campuses across the nation to defend the Constitutional rights of their ideological opponents.
Everyone knows the EFF and the ACLU are thinly camoflaged shells of their former selves, tactically pushing for whatever will advance their quest for power. Yeah, we know that if we want help defending our Constitutional rights, we go to non-psychopathic organzations like FIRE and Judical Watch and Project Veritas.
They defend strong encryption because it's a tool their side still needs, for now. Defending the Constitution and free speech is just a temporary tactic for them until they get more power, the sort of power they now wield openly on campuses across this nation and which you use to silence anyone who disagrees with them.
After that, they'll start talking about how old the Constitution is, how its from another, quainter time, and how it needs now to be put aside.... and how important it is the government oversee people's speech lest someone utter hatespeak .....and consequently we must ban strong encryption.
I like falsifiable predictions. So you predict that the EFF will turn around 180 degrees and support a ban on strong encryption. Would you like to predict a date for this to happen, to make the prediction absolutely falsifiable?
A good prediction includes not only a date on which to judge the prediction, making it falsifiable, but also a subjective probability, to account for genuine random chance. After all, there are few things in life we can be 100% certain about. For example, you may think the polls show such overwhelming support for a candidate that they will definitely win an upcoming election, but there is always a slight chance that they die of a heart attack, or be scandalously revealed as taking bribes from the opposition to be their puppet.
Here’s an example of a well-formatted prediction, from https://slatestarcodex.com/predictions-bets/: “Gay marriage will remain legal throughout a Trump presidency [confidence: 95%]” (prediction made 2016-11-15). That page also has some more detail on the theory of making predictions.
For this situation, david_w could give a prediction like “I think there is a 90% probability the EFF will support banning strong encryption by 2021-07-01.” Then, if the prediction turns out to be false, it either means David was wrong and he should have been much less confident, or he was right and encountered that unlucky one-in-ten unusual situation. And you, the observer who would personally estimate a different probability of that prediction coming true, could calculate the probabilities of those two situations being the case by using various formulas, including Bayes’ theorem. (David himself could also calculate the probabilities of those two situations, and use that to decide whether to change any of his views on the EFF.)
The EFF didn’t change. You just went off the deep end. They don’t care about your pet issue of alt-right 4chan stars not getting rooms at universities because there just is no right to get meeting space at public universities.
(And what a surprise that what bothers you most is the EFF supporting a woman)
I'm not sure whether the EFF changed, but the ACLU certainly has.
Once upon a time, the ACLU believed so deeply in the First Amendment that they fought National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie all the way to the supreme court. You may remember the plaintiffs from the Blues Brothers movie, perhaps? The Illinois Nazis? Skokie, the town, was deliberately chosen because it had a large Jewish population, and many Holocaust survivors, yet the ACLU went to court to fight for these bona fide Nazis, and won them the right to wear their Nazi uniforms and their swastikas when they marched, carrying their hypocritical signs about "white free speech."
The former President of the ACLU has decride the current positions taken by the ACLU. I believe she wrote a book on it.
I actually remember the Skokie march. We were kids. I loved the ACLU and so did everyone else I knew. They were like Free Speech super-heros. They were an institution, a force, feared and respected.
Why are we so shocked when politicians don't listen to us? We act like petulant children -- small bursts of outrage, but with no consequences for the people in power.
[+]: Most posts were published either a day or two before it passed through the House of Reps, and some were posted during the day of the Senate discussion and passage. I did submit comments during the comment period, but we all know that had zero effect on their decisions.