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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

> This lawsuit also marks EFF’s commitment to stopping the current trend that seeks to privatize aspects of the carceral system for profit as well as strip privacy away from incarcerated individuals.

Scope creep? [Clarification: Not the lawsuit itself, but the first part of this sentence.]

This is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 'The leading nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation'.

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Virtue-signaling messaging aside, do you feel that this _isn't_ a case that should be within the spirit of the EFF for defending "digital privacy"?

In my mind, there's a direct line from the government requiring someone to use a particular computer program for a particular purpose to the government requiring us _all_ to use a particular computer program. It would certainly be more cost efficient for the US Postal Service to stop delivering mail across the country and replace it by opening letters, scanning them, and making them available to me by email... but I would hope that the EFF would fight tooth and nail to prevent that.

Just as in so many things, these sort of technologies are tested first on those who can't easily say no—prisoners, students, the poor—before they are rolled out to us all.

The USPS will already scan envelopes en-route to you; I'm almost certain they could open them and do the same quite easily, maybe for a fee.

https://www.usps.com/manage/informed-delivery.htm

The rest of the sentence is relevant though (emphasis mine):

"This lawsuit also marks EFF’s commitment to stopping the current trend that seeks to privatize aspects of the carceral system for profit *as well as strip privacy away from incarcerated individuals*."

Since this is (by my count) at least the third time they've sued to block some kind of new surveillance by a for-profit prison, I think it's fair that they are calling out a pattern.

Perhaps I misunderstood it? Or it's poorly written?

I parsed this as two mostly separate commitments. Expanded the quote in the comment above.

To me this is still somewhat involved with “digital” freedoms. That freedom being the right to opt out or to not use “digital” systems.

The same thing applies to in other instances for example the move to a more cashless society I think the right to use cash is still important for a litany of reasons.

That right to opt out is important especially if it is even more invasive than the analog/real world equivalent.

The groups that are almost always going to be test cases for more involved surveillance or severe constraints on specific freedoms: prisoners, sex workers, government assistance recipients, disabled people. If they're doing it to one of these groups they want to be doing it to you too, and probably will be in a decade or so.

Here they're defending people from the electronic frontier, and this case would seem to be solidly within the scope of free speech. Specifically the freedom to express yourself without having to force your message through the sewer pipe of corporate authoritarianism.

What is the boundary between the analog and the digital if not the "electronic frontier". The EFF started by defending a physical book publisher that was accused of receiving a document about digital systems.

Well, prisons are a good testing ground for these things.

edit: I should clarify that I don't support what prisons are doing, I think it's good that the EFF is opposing this, because prisons are exactly where you'd roll out this kind of technology firsts.

Seeing as how no one else is stepping up to prevent abuse of prisoners, seems like scope creep can be justified in this instance.

The ACLU is clearly no longer the institution it once was. Glad to see the EFF is stepping up.

You’re joking right?

https://www.aclu.org/court-cases?issue=prisoners-rights

There’s 11 pages of just cases from 1999 to today.

If someone hints at a recent decline, 24 year old cases are not going to convince them otherwise.

can you please provide evidence for your statement here

See for example [0]. The core concern is that the ACLU is going through an identity crisis as its membership evolves, and it is shifting strategy from defending the right of free speech for all (including the defending the right of free speech for speakers and statements its members strongly disagree with) to defending the right of free speech for those aligned with its values. That is a shift many long time supporters of the ACLU view as a dangerous failing of the organization because the key free speech cases frequently involve abhorrent speech, but that is where the case law for the rest of speakers is determined.

After working, as it historically has, to defend speech its membership considers wrong or unpleasant in connection with a 2017 Charlottesville VA case, "Revulsion swelled within the A.C.L.U., and many assailed its executive director, Anthony Romero, and legal director, Mr. Cole, as privileged and clueless. The A.C.L.U. unfurled new guidelines that suggested lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.”[0]

Defending speech you don't like or agree with takes a strong stomach, but if you want to be a defender of free speech, those are the battles you must fight. If you let speech you disagree with be silenced, you give the government the tools it needs to silence speech, including speech you like and agree with.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html?...

good points and good link. thanks!

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