Re: White House swaps stand and decides to invite ACLU after all

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 23:05:15 -0400
From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir@vtw.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu
Cc: barrys@aclu.org, beeson@aclu.org, privaclu@aol.com
Subject: Re: White House swaps stand and decides to invite ACLU after all

Some obvious problems with this bit:

At 3:28 PM -0700 7/15/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>[Two hours after the ACLU issued this press release and journalists
>started to call, the White House reversed its stand. Now it says the ACLU
>is permitted to come to the meeting tomorrow after all. --Declan]

I know people who received their invites late this afternoon, so it's not
obvious that the ACLU wasn't invited, just that they got their invitation
later than everyone else.

>From aclu press release:
>"The Court's decision was clearly written to protect individual online
>users," said the ACLU's Haines.  "They, not industry giants, are the people
>the ACLU represents, and they are the people who are being denied a voice in
>this meeting."

As a hard working member of the net civil liberties community I find it
inappropriate that the ACLU assumes that even though other civil liberties
folks will be there, including myself, that we don't represent Internet
users.  I don't think any of us has the right to say who solely represents
the Internet community.  To say that even though VTW and CDT and ALA and
others will be there, that the net community is still not represented is
pretty out of line.

And though I'm not defending the fact the White House's actions, I wonder
if it occurs to anyone that the reason they were left until last is because
when the White House started moving away (in the Magaziner paper) from the
CDA the week before the SC decision, the ACLU dissed them in the press.

Perhaps the reaction to that shouldn't have been to trash them in the
press, but to say encouraging things while saying "Actions will speak
louder than anything".  It's not as if the White House can't modify their
position on this issue, they've moved around on others before.  Shouldn't
we make that work for us for once?

To diss them, regardless of what they do, violates the "carrot and stick"
principle of politics.  If they say stuff we agree with, like "no
legislation please" and then we diss them, why will they bother to stick up
for the net anymore?

-S