Fronts

The ACLU has started a consumer action, demanding that the FCC and state utility commissions investigate the telcos' handing over of our private calling information to the NSA and order the phone companies to stop this information sharing at once. From their public statement:

We must not allow the government and the phone companies to collude in this massive illegal attack on our privacy and our trust.

And we certainly can’t wait for Congress to act, or for the phone companies to reverse course.

Join us in telling the FCC that we won’t take no for an answer -- they must investigate. And don’t let the states follow the FCC’s wrong-headed example. We are simultaneously filing 20 actions across the nation TODAY.

(Click the image to see a larger version of the ad they're running in papers today.)

They're a little more optimistic than I am, with that bit about "telling the FCC we won't take no for an answer"--the FCC isn't selling much besides no these days, when it comes to protecting our rights to information and expression. Still--and this is something most people miss and the ACLU-haters studiously ignore--the ACLU is fundamentally an optimistic organization. It exists because its people believe that the Bill of Rights gives us the tools we need to defend the Bill of Rights.

Nevertheless, this is a fight that has to be fought on all fronts: Hearing rooms and city streets. Follow the link and consider adding your name to the cause.

Hey, it's not like there's not already a file open on you, right?

Update: Hats off to Sen. Ron Wyden, one of three members--three! only three!--of the Senate Intelligence Committee who voted against confirmation of General Michael Hayden, architect of the NSA domestic surveillance plan, as head of the CIA.