I miss the times when the EFF and the ACLU would both do what's right 100% of the time, instead of doing what's fashionable. I think there's a trend here.
Can you please be specific about what the EFF is doing that you find objectionable? Especially if you can relate it to the article (as opposed to something generic), that would be great.
I can't speak for tpmx, but I'm fairly certain that my values have changed less than the ACLU's. They recently edited a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsberg in a very 1984-esque way[1], and my values have always been that 1984 is a warning not an instruction manual. I think that any organistion with "Civil Liberties" in its name should believe the same.
Ah yes, exactly like 1984. The Ministry of Truth was infamous for putting []s around the changes it made when quoting people on its own Twitter account.
I can't find anywhere in the parent comment or the parent's linked page where it was claimed that the ACLU's tweet of a modified false-quote-LARPing-as-the-actual-quote was "exactly" like 1984. The parent commenter appears to have used the adjective "esque", although perhaps it was run through the ACLU's false-quote converter first (in fairness to you, perhaps your comment was as well).
Might I suggest you edit your original quote ACLU-style and write something such as:
> Ah yes, [exactly like 1984].
Certainly, deliberate modification of words is fully acceptable as long as there are half-squares surrounding them.
I was critical of this at the time because it associated Ginsburg with a viewpoint that she may not have held, but there's nothing Orwellian about that. People smooth over the rough edges of their historical idols all the time. There's virtually nobody who quotes the US founders who is actually advocating for the precise same set of values and institutions those founders supported.
The problem isn't advocacy, but quoting. They did use [brackets], so I hesitate to call the quote outright falsified, but since brackets are intended only for clarification, their use in this case is definitely deceptive.
> People smooth over the rough edges of their historical idols all the time.
They shouldn't tell lies about history. If a particular historical figure said something, say what they said, and don't put false words in their mouth.
Do you not understand that what ACLU did was showing deliberate contempt for the idea of truth itself?
> There's virtually nobody who quotes the US founders who is actually advocating for the precise same set of values and institutions those founders supported.
Yes, and that's fine, provided they quote them accurately and not deliberately misquote them.
Any organization willing to put "Civil Liberties" in their name should be foremost concerned with the individual liberties of Americans. So it worries me that their position on the Second Amendment is:
> Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right.
Of course, they have their reasons. And they concede that there are some instances where the state goes too far with regulations and prohibitions. But I would want to see an organization which defends civil liberties to frequently err on the side of protecting the individual than the government.
The ACLU is supposed to defend free speech. Period. Even if we hate it.
Now they pick and choose, and that's not right.
Do I like people with hatred towards their fellow humans? Absolutely not. But I don't think we should muzzle them. One day, that'll come back and bite the rest of us.
Likewise, the EFF needs to focus on the incredibly important missions of keeping software accessible and our privacy paramount. They're getting distracted too.
edit: mistakenly mentioned FSF instead of EFF. I'm clear about the distinction, it was just a mistake. Thanks for pointing it out, mig39.
They are explicitly picking and choosing which speech they believe should be free - and it's not just selecting cases, but actively militating against some speech.
EDIT: Not just speech, but also other basic rights they have stood for, such as legal representation and rights of the accused.
One major one that seems to have set its course for the ensuing years is its response to the infamous Charlottesville rally, wherein they attempted to argue that they now considered liberties to have precedence among one another. [1]
Their response to reforms of Title IX to restore the rights of the accused was to intentionally lift up the rights of the accusers over and above the rights of the accused. Their statement regarding it dishonestly claimed that they were balancing the scales, whereas anyone who has examined Title IX can easily see it leaves the accused without their constitutional rights to due process. [2]
In a similar theme, they inserted themselves into the confirmation process of Brett Kavanaugh, taking a clear side on the issue instead of standing for principles of legal representation and initial presumption of innocence. [3]
There are other recent articles on continued churning against their prior positions, but unfortunately they are behind a paywall and I do not yet have access to read them. I may be able to find other sources later. [4]
Joe Rogan is the one who's polarizing. I don't fully know why myself, as I'm not really a fan of the interview format anyway. I've just observed that he seems to be.
It really hasn't been that long since the red scare, where people made comments just like yours, but warning about the dangers of those dirty pinkos towards god-fearing, decent Americans. The first amendment protects us from authoritarians of any political stripe.
ACLUs values have definitely changed. They no longer support free speech. One thing that turned me off, was when one of their lawyers tried to cancel Sandmann. Sandmann was the kid, wrongfully accused of racism, simply because he stood his ground. And one of the ACLU lawyers publicly said the college shouldn't admit the kids... Because, well who knows.
> They went from an org, defending free speech, even speech that people don't like.. to a dangerous organization.
From my perspective, they went from defending nearly all speech to excluding from their defense efforts a bit more speech that is highly likely to cause harm.
In other words, they expanded a bit what counts as the equivalent of "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater".
It doesn't seem too outrageous to say that Skokie and Charlottesville were far from equivalent, and shouldn't be treated the same.
In Skokie, the verdict was that a peaceful march couldn't be blocked no matter how hateful the speech.
In Charlottesville, the ACLU essentially made the same argument to a judge, despite evidence that the intent wasn't peaceful. The judge was persuaded, the march happened, and tragedy followed.
The ACLU has since come to the conclusion that they were wrong to make that argument. There was enough evidence (that the intent of participants was to provoke violent clashes with the counter-protestors rather than march peacefully) for the ACLU to have refused to defend the case.
Both orgs have absolutely done what's right many, many times, but 100% is a little high.
I'd highly recommend checking out All EFF'd Up [0] in The Baffler—it's quite long, but below is a relevant bit for both orgs:
> Leading EFF’s invasion of Washington, D.C., was Jerry Berman, who had been a top ACLU attorney and founder of ACLU Projects on Privacy and Information Technology ... Berman was a Beltway insider who in the 1980s was at the center of a push to turn the ACLU into a big business lobby and an ally of intelligence agencies and right-wing political interests. Among other things, the Berman-era ACLU defended Big Tobacco from regulations on advertising and worked with the National Rifle Association to fight electronic collection of arrest data by the Department of Justice for background checks to deny firearms licenses. Among Berman’s personal achievements: working with the CIA on an early version of a bill that criminalized disclosing the names of CIA agents—a law that was later used to prosecute and jail CIA officer John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the Agency’s use of waterboarding as a torture and interrogation technique.
> ... Berman also helped craft the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a controversial law that gave the government power to grab electronic metadata from cellphone calls, email, and other digital communications without a warrant, which is now routinely used to collect user data from companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook...
> Freedom to Surveil
> ...His signature achievement had been collaborating with the FBI to draft and rubber-stamp a law that expanded FBI surveillance into the digital telecommunications infrastructure. Known as the “Communications Law Enforcement Assistance Act”—or CALEA—the 1994 law required that telecommunications companies install specialized equipment and design their digital facilities in a way that made it easy to wiretap.
> ...
> When EFF’s role in crafting this surveillance law came out, outraged members of its cyber-libertarian base cried foul. EFF, they’d been led to believe, was created to push back against government control of the internet...
> ...
> In reality though, the outrage stemmed from a basic confusion about what EFF was created to do. EFF emerged as a lobby for the budding internet industry...
