Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[1] states that in any bureaucratic organization
  there will be two kinds of people:

  First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization.
  Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many
  of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some
  agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective
  farming administration.

  Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples
  are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of
  education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff,
  etc.

  The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep
  control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions
  within the organization.

I like to term the Second class that generally predominates in large enterprises, normally termed "middle management", the "Middle Management Machiavellis" for whom life is nothing but budget boundary assault/defense, and the assassin's game of angling for promotions.

I am thankful programming jobs paid pretty well such that it was roughly equivalent to several levels up the ladder in other professions without nearly the same soul-crushing view into the venality of mankind.

But this, I think, is a temporary thing. I look at the shockingly low salaries of ACTUAL ENGINEERS that went to ACTUAL ENGINEERING SCHOOL like chemical engineering, nuclear engineering, civil engineering, and they make much less than programmers.

The thing that’s hard to intuit is that salary isn’t a reflection of the difficulty or importance of your job. It’s a reflection of economics. The skill set of a software engineer enables a better business model than that of a civil engineer. These superior economics get reflected in better salaries, even if the two people are equally skilled in their respective fields.

A construction company will need to spend cash on machines, permitting, raw materials, labor, and more to earn money. A software business needs to pay for compute and labor.

I imagine that, as a prospective donor, I would certainly much prefer if there were some form of legal assurance that the Dog-Grooming Union that I would be giving money to will continue advancing the cause of well-groomed dogs tomorrow, rather than deciding that it would instead rather fight for the cause of creating salons for cats, or even completely turn around and say that it will now fight against human intervention in the natural phenotypical fur-styles of dogs.

(As a concrete example, this feeling of incomprehension always makes me wonder about "GPL vN or later" licenses. If the ACLU can start agitating against free speech, what would stop some future societal development from inspiring the FSF to release a GPL v4 that says "this source code is exclusive property of Microsoft to use as it sees fit"?)

How many pet-owning PETA supporters actually know that PETA believes that pet ownership is equivalent with slavery, wants to abolish it and that its shelters have the highest euthanization rates because they consider killing domesticated animals to be a mercy.

Support your local SPCA.

Finally the reason it has the highest euthanization rates has nothing to do with mercy, but because it never refuses to take in any animals, period. Other shelters, especially no-kill shelters, achieve their objective by refusing to take in an animal when they reach capacity and they avoid reaching capacity in the first place by refusing animals that are unlikely to be adopted such as those that are aggressive, or old, or are injured.

PETA never refuses any animals and as such people go to PETA often as a last resort when no other shelter will take their animal. In cases where PETA comes to the same conclusion that a no-kill shelter will come to about the prospects of an animal finding a suitable home, and after PETA confirms that no other nearby shelter will take in the animal, instead of simply refusing the animal which often results in dumping, or further neglect of said animal, PETA euthanizes it. Consider that there are over 60 million stray dogs in the US roaming about compared to about 3 million dogs living in a shelter. It's simply not possible to shelter all abandoned animals, so either PETA euthanizes them, or the animal lives out in the wild where it ends up reproducing and introducing or exacerbating negative effects to its environment.

All of these are positions that you may disagree with and criticize without exaggerating or misrepresenting them.

In the no-longer-circulating Statement on Companion Animals, PETA said: "As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves."

John Byrant's book was published by PETA. He writes: "Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles--from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it."

PETA's cofounder, Ingrid Newkirk, states: "Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do."

You may agree with such positions, but please don't lie about it. I misrepresent nothing.

And if you think any of this is radical, you haven't even heard what they've had to say about human beings yet.

Also, John Bryant, while being an animal activist who you quote as opposed to animal domestication, was never a member of PETA. I also doubt his book was published by PETA as it predates their founding. It looks like the publisher is Fern House.

Your quote from Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's cofounder had nothing to do with pets. I agree that PETA does compare certain forms of animal captivity to slavery, for example circus animals, animals used for experimentation, those used for factory farming, but not pet ownership in general.

Dark times ahead.

I don't think there's anything "modern" (or religious) about the fact that there's a wide range of opinions on how to treat others.

But we living in modern or /post+/ modern times. When there is knowledge about natural reactions then someone can do meta-action - abuse knowledge for some purpose. Like ad-business do all the time. Like politicans do. Or like seduction manuals describe. Heck, what sects do, there is even term "conventional brainwashing" !

And that "fake" activism have scale too - from personal to goverment and intelligence services doings.

So with humans knowledge and intelligence progression everyone should be caution for "mixed signals". Or just common scams like "Nigerian prince want your help" or "grandson in troubles".

Or "Green Party care for ecology" - actually brings anarchy to your country and such "activists" just look for easy living from "donations". Or even actively supporting some businesses, like described in that sub-thread...

But yes, there was a better times when captured soldiers give a word that they do not escape and they hold to it. Sometimes even they was allowed to keep theirs saber while being captured. But that natural honesty ended with communism in Russia and spreaded almost everywhere else.

Also there is strange following of ways of looser that as idol had other murderous idol (looser too), Machiavelli...

Edit:

And here are my gripes with psychology - useless like reading/writing before common education. People fall to sects where there are well know mechanism how they work and psychologians are straight guilty of neglecting to protect very often most volnerable parts of our societes, like kids. Big words but psychology basics should be learned in basic schools, IMO. Sadly psychologians are too busy with pushing bullshit on all fronts... Or making money from wasting time on listening or straight "improving" sport performances... Or deeppening movie scenarios.

O, btw: you hear about that "Maslow Pyramid" ? Someone even wrote how to apply it to software projects ! Looks damn usefull to explain eg. how poor peoples behave and how to help or self-help in such situations. But you know what ? I talked once to psychologian about Maslow pyramid and imagine my surprise when she look strangely on me and say: but, but modular programming is outdated ! Yep, exactly like this just insert Maslow Pyramid there... And modularity comes from 60's, predates very outdated "structural programming"... And such is psychologians lag in helping others.

    We at PETA very much love the animal companions who share our homes, but we believe that it would have been in the animals’ best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed. The international pastime of domesticating animals has created an overpopulation crisis; as a result, millions of unwanted animals are destroyed every year as “surplus.”

    This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering, which results from manipulating their breeding, selling or giving them away casually, and depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. They are restricted to human homes, where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to.

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-peta-responsible-deaths-...

It's interesting though -- all of this is easily searchable online. If you really read into their own literature and statements of people behind PETA, you'll find some real radical takes. People hear all this, but still choose to disbelieve and not do their own research. They don't hide anything. They're open about all of it.

So that, by itself, doesn't really convince me of much. I do appreciate the links, however. Thanks.

> all of this is easily searchable online.

Searchable, yes, but only within an ocean of hot takes, tabloids and tweets.

I’m not convinced they’d be better off if they’d been born in the wild.

Because if they did, and the charter could not be amended, then a change in the opinion of people who support the mission on the optimal mechanism kills the organization and requires the costs of building a whole new organization.

The same reason why the whole of the law of a nation isn't fixed for all time out the outset.

I don't see why a non-profit can't work just like a legacy trust---fulfil the mission left behind by its founder, and manage its monies to do that and only that.

If a non-profit's mission is successful, it can disband. It doens't need to pivot with its current supporters to find new things to do. Additioanlly, it need top change to suit the whims of its supporters. The supporters can simply support someone---anyone else (non-profits are far more numerous and easy to start than a new country). The original non-profit will die on the vine.

To you, maybe. It is manifestly not to most of the people actually involved or they would do it more often. It's not like the space of degrees of flexibility has not been well explored.

> I don't see why a non-profit can't work just like a legacy trust---fulfil the mission left behind by its founder, and manage its monies to do that and only that.

It can, but real people founding them don’t usually want that because its not a legacy trust; the people making it are alive, know that they have evolving views of the precise parameters of the mission and the optimal mechanisms for pursuing it, and don't want the burden of inflexibility.

Feel free to start your own rigidly programmed NGOs if you want.

'We do longer believe in our founding principles, therefore we will dissolve and form a new entity and will evangelize according to this new set of principles, if you agree, come and join us. Those who believe in our old principles are free to re-form around the cause'.

Imagine a non-profit that believes in abolishing the death penalty. It has a change of heart at the top and decides it's for the death penalty. I think this deserves dissolution and forming a new non-profit or PAC, whatever.

It usually is for real people putting real resources in toward real efforts, which is why outside of exceptional things like campaign committees, people don't usually found orgs with purposes that are narrowly circumscribed and inflexible, and even when they do they don't narrowly and inflexibly prescribe the acceptable means of pursuing the purpose.

Nothing, but the "or any later later version of the GPL" clauses have protection against this scenario. Section 14 of the GPLv3 contains the nice sentence "Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.", which is essentially legalese for "if it differs in the spirit of the license, it is not considered a new version of the GPL and the upgrade clause does not apply".

This is particularly dangerous because in the anglosphere, open source licenses are by default bare licenses -- they do not have the force of contract, meaning they can be revoked at any time. An organization which released any code under the GPL or any open source license can revoke the right to use that code on a whim (yes, the GPL'd code itself, not future revisions of that code), meaning a hostile FSF can prevent use, distribution, or -- critically -- forking of Emacs.

Projects such as Linux without a CLA requirement are better protected against this because of their patchwork ownership. A single contributor has less to gain, and more to lose, by revoking their license to their contributions. That's not to say it's perfect protection but it does help.

Any example where this happened to back up this claim?

Because as they grow they become interesting for people with an agenda: 3 letter agencies, lobbyists. See how Greenpeace has evolved for example.

But another reason is that organization would probably just stop being funded when it upheld its hard-coded mission in ways that were unpopular. If the mission is that you must advocate for providing speech/payment platforms for someone who is saying heinous things, people will just stop donating to you. The org has to survive to execute its mission, and it needs to adapt to survive. That will always result in drift, decay, and death.

And the powers that be would not let such an organization gain enough ground that it could become independently wealthy.

Although I doubt this could successfully prevent slow drift in the mission of an entire organization (as we're seeing with the ACLU).

They can hardcode their nonprofit mission into their corporate charter, and many smaller nonprofits do.

He's widely credited as the source of the famous aphorism "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

-

The EFF has routed around John Gilmore now.

In the same way that being very rich generally gives you effectively much more power than having a single vote, and so is a corruption of democracy, I think we see a similar thing with online discourse, where those with extra resources are able to essentially "flood the zone" and dominate the discourse.

So the question is what should be the effective response? Those pushing the censorship/free speech framing argue that removing voices is wrong -- banning, deplatforming, etc. That may be right, but it's also incomplete as it doesn't address the dynamic of the well-resourced voices overwhelming everyone else.

I don't know what an effective solution _is_ here, but I know what it _looks_ like -- all voices with equal access. I don't think the censorship/freedom framing gets us there.

Now that the Net has devolved into a political battlefield, how do you draw the line between a censorship regime and a spam filter? Was there ever a difference?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic

It's a good point, but the loud voices that have been driving this "anti-free speech" shift are also a loud minority. The people who got Alex Jones banned everywhere, got YouTube to start demonetising videos, got Trump banned from Twitter, were essentially a small group of influential Twitter users (some of whom also had jobs in the media, giving them huge platforms to put pressure on these companies). It's a "natural law" of human societies that the 1% are disproportionately loud, on any issue, and drive what the other 99% hear and think; not just a feature of online spaces. When you think of a liberal, or a conservative, or a college student, for example, whatever you picture in your head is just the loudest, most visible portion of that group, but is likely a tiny minority of that group. Whatever opinion you have on science, or nutrition, is driven by a very tiny loud minority, whether that's lobbyists, or a few influential individuals (maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson, maybe Al Gore, maybe a prominent scientist, or maybe the Coca Cola company). Without them, the popular mind might think quite differently.

Ergo; the "censorship shift" isn't about giving the minority their voice, it's two warring minorities struggling for control of the Overton window.

In a public physical venue, it's much easier to allocate one person, one time slice to present their views. There are exceptions (lobbying is a huge hack on this, and indeed, there's a reason many see lobbying as anti-democratic). But in contrast: online speech is dominated by whoever has either the most leisure time to toss at an online forum or the willingness and resources to sock-puppet up and turn their one voice into an echoing hydra. Factor in state spending on those hydras and the situation turns pretty un-democratic pretty fast.

John's attitude is so old school. Shaping the attitude of the populace through selective amplification is now.

b) As far as I can tell, Gilmore was not trying to censor anyone. It seems more like the EFF has put Gilmore on the other side of their firewall.

The irony is that the EFF routed around Gilmore's presumed obstruction.

For the record, I'm increasingly of the view that free-speech absolutism is very badly flawed. If my reading of the situation is correct, then I'd agree with the action. That said, I'm as much in the dark as anyone whose information is the Register piece itself, so don't read too much into what I'm saying.

What I'm evolving toward is a sense of interrelated, and often opposing, rights and obligations around communications.

Free expression, a right to truth, privacy in general, though some obligation for disclosure in public interest or concern, freedoms of and from association or expression, among others.

The benefit to this is that it gives a unified scope for looking at what have been a set of distinct and discrete rights. The disadvantage is that there's no simple or clear guidance, only trade-offs. Though (another benefit) at least those trade-offs are made clear, explicit, and the relationships are established.

I've found a few others thinking along similar lines, with some work out of the Berkman Klein Center (at Harvard) and UC Berkeley, the latter specifically addressing a right to the truth. I can dig up specific names if requested.

The very earliest advocates for free speech, most notably Milton, excluded established powers from its protections, notably the Catholic Church:

I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled.

-- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.

It's sort of vindicating to start seeing others feel the same way finally.

Can you elaborate on why you've stopped supporting EFF? I'm just curious as I've basically been a blind supporter of them for years, and this removal has reminded me that I should actually pay attention to what's going on in the organization if I'm going to donate to it.

The Bill would make the Register of Copyrights position accountable to both the legislative and executive branches of government and selected by committee. It also established eligibility requirements to hold the position. Currently the position is appointed directly by the Librarian of Congress with no oversight (effectively only accountable to the executive, in the sense that the President can order the Librarian to select a new Register or risk the Librarian's job).

The EFF is extremely buddy-buddy with the Library of Congress and from what I can gather lobbied hard against the Bill to protect their friends from diluted political power.

It's a position that's completely opposed to principals one would hold if they wanted a transparent, accountable government. It's not a position that I thought made any sense for the EFF to support.

I challenged Katharine Trendacosta on their Activism Team who sent out the fear-mongering mailer and was given the brush off.

It looks like there is subtext that there was a contentious issue they couldn't agree upon, I wonder what it is.

Judging from what's happened with many similar activists, I'm guessing a hard-line anti-censorship mindset isn't compatible with today's social/political landscape in which rampant misinformation on the internet has direct effects on meatspace.

Of course, this is purely conjecture. It could be completely unrelated.

That's what makes an anti-censorship stand relevant and important. Nobody would censor if there were no physical impacts.

censorship is messy and complicated and usually involves a dangerous concentration of power, sure...

but truly free and anonymous speech that can originate from places that are immune to it's effects or can be falsely attributed for the purposes of subversion can also result in a dangerous concentration of power.

what's the difference between a censored truth and a chorus of convincing lies originated anonymously that buries the truth?

In other words, at some point every concerned individual needs to let those insistent/destined to fail to do so, and let others learn from their mistakes.

Everyone's gotta stop trying to save everyone else.

If there is a force actively working towards this as a goal, do you not think that force should be actively opposed?

The only difference is that one side has staked their existence on upholding free speech, to never silence the other, but not vice-versa. It’s not a fair fight.

I always think: “how do you get to Hitler’s Germany”. And it doesn’t come from the group that upholds free speech.

It comes from the group that says censorship has become an unfortunate necessity.

We should respect those that hold true to principles that do a disservice to themselves.

For this hypothesis to be valid, you'd require a population which:

a) had decent critical thinking,

b) consumed reliable information from reliable sources,

c) wasn't targeted by bad actors who hijack information channels to saturate it with disinformation,

d) wasn't radicalized to the point where even basic health and safety precautions are attacked as being partisan politics.

What we have been seeing for the past year or so is that the system is unable to self-correct if attacked hard enough. Also, we also that the system indeed has some capacity to self-heal if the volume of disinformation is actively tuned down.

This is a feature, not a bug. The purpose of internet censorship as well as the entire "misinformation" discourse is to make sure the propaganda from your side wins.

This is particularly important when you have a grievance culture -- it very much depends who is getting the sympathy. The lens of concern needs to be focused with laserlike narrowness on the approved victims, and not on other victims, and outrage must be focused on approved perpetrators. This is a key part of Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model in Manufacturing Consent

Take the very different coverage of Antifa, BLM and Capitol riots. All three attacked government buildings and two of these were nationwide and resulted in multiple deaths. One of them caused billions of dollars in property damage, mass arson, etc.

But the coverage was very different. No one called the Capital riot "mostly peaceful". If they did, they would no doubt be accused of spreading "misinformation". So to merely call this "sloganeering" is to hide the coercive nature of the misinformation discourse.

I thought the Federalist Papers were published anonymously.

I understand that you said "anyone in the world". I'm certainly not a scholar of American history, but surely there were European influences being exerted (and likely anonymously, too) on the Colonies around the time of the Federalist Papers.

Far-reaching anonymous political speech isn't a new thing. The speed and ease of disseminating speech is new, for sure.

They were not. They were published by three well-known political figures under a pseudonym that was widely known among their peers. Everyone knew it was one of three, and in most cases everyone who mattered in the discussion knew that Hamilton was the most likely author of most of them.

yeah i suppose you're right, foreign intelligence operations designed to influence local politics have existed long before the internet. i think maybe the difference is, it can now be done at scale on a grassroots level at substantially reduced cost.

mix that with massive populations that are naive to common internet discussion traps and well, here we are.

You are probably thinking of the Anti-Federalist Papers.

My point was that anonymous political speech in the United States has a long history.

It could be the individual consuming the news (which is hard work, and requires consciously counteracting confirmation bias as well as overt attempts at information manipulation).

Or it can be some centralized authority (social media companies, the government, etc.) and you have to ensure that the interests of that authority are aligned with the public interest.

The last several years have illustrated the downsides of the former approach but I'm not at all convinced that the latter is less brittle.

Ethically? Not unless they make is very clear what they are doing. Well I mean, how clear it has to be I guess would vary with the level of restriction?

The child looks at the forest and sees the forest. The adult looks at the forest and sees all the trees and plants and wildlife and features of the land. The old person looks at the forest and sees the forest.

It's possible to lose sight of what really matters when overwhelmed with nuance.

Any argument that appeals to fear and relies on boogeymen is trying to short-circuit the logical, rational parts of your brain. They're trying to make you part of the mob. You would do well to take such arguments and their prophets and burn them with hot coals. Literally tar and feather them and run them out of town.

And the story of USENET since then might be educational... USENET itself, and the infrastructure running under it, are hard to censor, but many of the individual service providers that ran USENET endpoints and provided them for their customers went "This is more trouble than it's worth" and stopped providing that service. It's harder to get on USENET now than it was in the days AOL offered it.

The Net interprets censorship as damage, but a critical mass of service providers concluding something isn't worth the resources can have the same effect as censorship.

Whose freedom? And what is freedom?

Market dynamics support corporations which can generate the largest numbers of ad clicks. You can't run an organization which doesn't ultimately conform to market dynamics. That leads to polarization, hate, and misinformation. Do we want to go down that path?

Are corporations people? Should corporations have freedom-of-speech? Should corporations be free to lie? Should government employees? Should corporations be free to engage in speech which is known to actively harm people?

I really don't know.

I do feel like some forms of intentional lying should be illegal. If a government employee says something, or an academic does, I should be able to trust they're not being intentionally untruthful. Where does that line lie? I don't know.

I also feel like individuals should have real freedom of speech. Not just freedom from government prosecution after speech, but freedom from economic prosecution, and to some extent, social ostracization.

I feel like we need a serious discussion here, though.

The government? Tech companies? ISPs?

All are in some ways restricting certain freedoms, while enabling others.

And what freedoms are you afraid of being taken that have not already been taken in some form?

I'm absolutely not disagreeing with you. I support full and absolute internet freedom. I have the ability to put absolutely anything I want on the internet with zero restrictions, but depending on what it is and how I put it there, there are many ways it may then cause me to lose freedom in some way.

Which one should lead to war?

A commenter on The Reg speculated that it's because (according to this commenter) Gilmore has lately veered into arguing publicly for legalising marijuana, and the EFF doesn't want to be associated with that.

If he has, that feels more plausible a cause than him being "an old-school internet freedom activist" per se.

Are board minutes considered private? What is the logic behind not posting the constitution, that sounds odd...

But I can't find any bylaws or board meeting minutes. I'm a bit disappointed.

Yes.

The non-profit whose board I'm on does, I believe, have bylaws filed with the state we're incorporated in. And I know board member names (or maybe just the executive board) are filed as well. But we definitely don't have to make board minutes public.

EFFs transparency is regulated by it being a 501c charity. It has full right to demand transparency from governments while not being any more transparent than strictly required by law themselves. You may wish for them to be more transparent if you want to support them - it's your choice - but that has no bearing on their advocacy at all, because it's completely irrelevant. The reasons why governments should be transparent simply don't apply to entities that are not governments, because they don't hold the power that governments do. The worst thing that may come from lack of EFF's transparency is my curiosity not being fed with board minutes, possibly causing me to restrain from supporting them in the future - which is hardly comparable to how my country's government influences my life.

Although, removing Gilmore isn't a good look.

So the EFF has also departed from its mission. We learn (https://www.eff.org/de/pages/effs-diversity-statement):

"Diversity of life experiences makes a big difference in how we identify and litigate cases, design privacy-enhancing software, and organize our activism."

Another institution has been taken over. I can't find the donor list, it would be interesting.

Jacobs: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14868600/25/todd-v-love...

Todds: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14868600/24/todd-v-love...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28962841

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28985369

That is a bit strange.

But I hope I am wrong.

Thank you for your organization. Bye!

I also remember him defending stallman so maybe this played a role?

The glibc stewards are seeking input from developers to decide if the project should relax the requirement to assign copyright for all changes to the Free Software Foundation,"

I do not, and have never, had an assignment in place (it's a running joke that my patch contributions have been all-minus-signs)," wrote glibc contributor Rich Felker, "but given recent behaviour by the FSF board, I am completely unwilling to assign copyright to them in the future, so not making this change may affect my ability to contribute.

ACLU, OSI, now EFF. Expect your freedoms to erode further.

If you honestly think that the OSI were ever the "good guys", then do I have the news for you...

Like, when shit of this magnitude happens you cannot expect to get off with a ‘this is a personnel matter’.

Have you considered that your values might've changed? Or their values of "what's right 100% of the time" has changed?

(alternate links to the article: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06... / https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/...)

[1]: see https://pontifex.substack.com/p/links-13-nandy-and-aclu-cont... , last item on the page.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment

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.

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.

EDIT: Not just speech, but also other basic rights they have stood for, such as legal representation and rights of the accused.

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]

[1] https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621AC...

[2] https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1063456843706585089

[3] https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1046826766017466370

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/opinion/letters/aclu-free...

1: https://archive.md/tL7Rj

Of course, this is just one case. But it at least shows they're not opposed to defending those they may otherwise disagree with.

They went from defending Nazis to calling people Nazis.

I’ve always hated Nazis but I’ve also always wanted speech to be free, and the ACLU is the one who changed their tune.

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.

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...

[0] https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine (Ctrl/Cmd+F "Buying Silence" to skip the intro portion)

Here's a current example [0]. The message is basically "don't scan our phones, respect our privacy". Sounds okay, but it has practically no details. Nothing about what exactly would be scanned, why it would be scanned the, how it would be scanned... nothing.

Judging by most HN'ers conversations on the topic before, most would even support EFF's message on the issue! But look at their methods. They should be doing an information campaign. Instead, that reads as propaganda campaign.

[0] https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-activists-lead-protes...

Sloganeering is actually critical for mass movements for political change.

I am confused what is perceived as actually missing and why that missing content is somehow an indict on EFF

Don't get me wrong, this isn't the way all of their stuff reads. But it happens from time to time,and I expect better from the EFF when a simple extra paragraph would do the job and they're an organization that I very much expect to do a better job at providing information than this.

Perhaps those who consider themselves to be part of the educated class find sloganeering distasteful and thus contrary to the goals of the movement? After all, it's likely those part of the educated class that are going to do the real groundwork on these important matters of policy.

Perhaps if it was a good slogan, it wouldn't need discussion.

All of these are possibilities.

How essential are slogans, in your view?

Parkinson's Law doesn't really apply when pointing out hypocrisy.

They are a corporation aren't they?