Hysteria at the ACLU

Townhall ^ | May 29, 2006 | Jeff Jacoby

[AliVeritas]

There was something missing from the full-page advertisement that the American Civil Liberties Union ran in newspapers around the country last week.

The ad kicked off an ACLU campaign called "Don't Spy On Me," which is aimed at pressuring federal and state regulators into investigating the phone companies that supplied domestic call records to federal intelligence analysts.

Subtle the ad wasn't. "IF YOU'VE USED A TELEPHONE IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS, READ THIS," shouted the headline in end-of-the-world-sized type. "AT&T, Verizon, and other phone companies may have illegally sent your phone records to the National Security Agency." The ad went on to charge that "millions of Americans" have had "their privacy invaded" by an "illegal secret arrangement" that allows "instant government access to every single phone call." It raised the alarming specter of Bush administration officials prying not only into the phone records of "political opponents, news reporters, and potential whistle blowers," but even into *your* calls to "friends, family, associates, lovers."

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

Well, if the other side would connect the dots, they'd put out a full-page ad against the ACLU. Tell America they are a communist organization...DUH!

[litehaus]

"other phone companies may have illegally"...

In other news it has been said the ACLU may have been founded by communists and other folks inimically opposed to the OPEN practice of RELIGION!

[Gritty]

If the ACLU is so concerned about "spying", why do they sneak all over this country spying on people who pray outside of a church building?

[khnyny]

Apparently, the ACLU has aligned itself with CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). They really don't like the NSA data mining, hmmm...

http://capwiz.com/cair/issues/alert/?alertid=8769261

[Pompah]

The ACLU has much to fear. And I will go on record stating that I would support any,and all spying efforts by Government or any other scorce on the very Anti-American ACLU.

The results would be very damning I'm sure.

[AliVeritas]

Stop the ACLU has a few times. You can check out their take here (scroll down):
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/

[AliVeritas]

I second that.

[khnyny]

If the ACLU is taking out full page ads in the NYT (and elsewhere) in oposition to the data mining of phone numbers - obvious question?

Where are they getting the money?

Follow the money trail and see who is really funding ACLU. That would be fun.

[rhema]

. . .To anti-Bush partisans, the administration cannot possibly have any legitimate interest in domestic telephone records, and it was an outrage for Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T to have supplied them. "We cannot sit by while the government and the phone companies collude in this massive, illegal, and fundamentally un-American invasion of our privacy," the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, thundered last week. Funny -- that wasn't the way he spoke 18 months ago, when the ACLU itself was discovered to be using sophisticated data-mining to secretly amass information about its own members and donors. (Some ACLU board members were shocked by the revelation and publicly condemned it. "It is a violation of our values," board member Wendy Kaminer said at the time. "It is hypocrisy.") To be sure, the two cases are very different. The ACLU's data-mining was part of a fund-raising effort. The NSA's is part of the war effort.