ACLU: ICE and CBP Are Secretly Tracking Us Using Stingrays. We’re Suing
aclu.org
aclu.org
I should increase my monthly donations after I get a job, $15 / month is too low for somebody in software. Maybe $50 / month.
We're getting to a point where claiming it's "a matter of National Security" is pretty much a meme and it erodes legitimate uses of this privilege - and that erosion will cause a lot of harm over time as legitimately sensitive material is forced out early... but, at the same time, being overly aggressive with punishment over borderline cases of withholding information may also have a chilling effect over properly exercising those rights. So maybe we need to leave a pretty wide grey zone.
The thing that damages national security is keeping secrets.
National secrets are a thing, there are legitimate details about government employees that are good to keep secret - so I don't think your blanket statement is really all that valid.
I could do without some of the phrasing of the press release though, it comes across as needlessly inflammatory, deliberately written to paint ICE and CBP as some sort of anti-immigration evil league of evil. As an example, take the scare quotes around the term "unlawful-reentry". Here, I use the quotes to mark the word as a word under discussion, apart from the meaning the sentence would have were it not quoted. There, the only common use of quotes that makes sense to me is to mark the use as sarcastic. Sarcasm isn't helpful. If you enter a country without going through a port of entry, that's unlawful entry. If you go back to a country without going through a port of entry, that's unlawfully reentry. That holds true at every national border on this planet, and isn't some anti-immigrant invention of ICE or CBP.
This sort of thing makes me sad, because that kind of sarcasm and disingenuousness makes it easier for people and groups who actually are actively opposed to rights for various other groups to paint the ACLU as acting in bad faith. Don't give your enemies free ammunition. Stick to the facts, and leave the emotionally inflammatory remarks for personal social media accounts.
In other words - we don't know who they even are. Just that they're furtive and evading authorities.
The unlawful entry in itself is bad, but what exactly they're doing, which could range from a scheme to dodge customs fees, unfairly circumvent immigration procedures our democratically elected congress put into law, to drug running, to spying, to hurting people.
Every country identifies its entrants. Why are people so eager to make light of such a fair procedure?
There is a serious national security rationale backing identifying an "unlawful entrant" ASAP. I hope the law gives the government maximum authority and upgrades their tools so they can keep us safe.
I wish places like ACLU would be good examples and be candid. By the way they talk in this letter - it's not like they disagree with a law - it's like they're against the concept of the most basic principle of international travel: Getting your passport stamped.
Is this kind of partisan dog-whistling really necessary? The ACLU does good work at the end of the day, but this sentence makes their stance on border control loud and clear.
And I call it dog-whistling because it does nothing but detract from an otherwise reasonable stance on surveillance abuse, for the sake of a wink and a nod.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family...
>However, The New Yorker spoke to lawyers and advocates who said there is no formal process or clear protocol for tracking parents and children within the system and that chaotic systems and inadequate record keeping make it difficult even to know which facility a child might be kept at.
Nevertheless, suing these agencies to prevent unwarranted surveillance is justified.
Have a look at the ACLU website... their position is quite clear.
Many people who are left to on their on recognizance never show up to their court dates.
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/26...
Many implies a majority. In fact, far from it. ICE and CBP already have tools to deal with people they deem a flight risk including but not limited to ankle monitors, etc.
It's both of the major parties that have inconsistent stances on this, which can largely be summed up as "civil liberties for me, but not for thee". That's why the ACLU tends to get flack from both sides of the aisle. Both parties try to define one group of people as their "tribe" and maximize their own liberties, while defining another group as an outgroup and trying to deny their liberties. And it works: there's nothing quite so motivating as an outgroup. But I'm glad that there are organizations that take a principled, logical stance toward freedom without discriminating against who gets that freedom.
Civil liberties do not include the right to enter another sovereign country without that country's consent, so yes, the liberty of free movement into and within a country is something that citizens and legal residents have that other people do not.
This is not a simple problem that lends itself well to the kind of pithy soundbites I complained about in the OP.
Except the right to bear arms, of course.
https://reason.com/2019/04/12/the-aclu-defends-the-rights-of... has some discussion of this.
The ACLU is rather consistent. It’s you who just happens to believe there are some people undeserving of civil liberties.
A civil liberties Organisation that only acts on behalf of groups enjoying broad sympathy is useless.