[Think] Join and Support the Electronic Frontier Foundation (before it's too late...)

[Fen Labalme]

[Another forward from John Barlow, co-founder of EFF - I couldn't say it
 better myself.  -Fen, EFF #190]


JOIN AND SUPPORT THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE...)

Thomas Pynchon on bad acid couldn't dream up the paranoid nightmares
now pouring out of Washington.

Today we learn that the CIA has been given authority to kill any
American citizen who is *suspected* of terrorism. Say again? You mean
they *all* have a license to kill? And not just the other, but
us. Summarily. Without trial. Yikes.

Then there is John Poindexter's new Information Awareness Office -
about which I have much more to say in my next screed - which is being
extended authorization to combine and data-mine every database,
commercial or public, in a massive search for evil-doers and
behavioral patterns that match up with evil-doing.  Records of your
buying habits, your medical problems, the books you take out of the
library, your driving skills, your telephone calls are all available
to the Government without a warrant or a suspect.

The Pentagon is working on a new version of Internet protocols called
eDNA that would render digital anonymity impossible. (I'll write more
about this in my next spam as well.)

The Homeland Security Administration is being given a 150 billion
dollars, 170,000 employees and few legal constraints to become a
massive internal surveillance force with vastly streamlined access to
your electronic records.

Meanwhile, the Content Industry is working on redesigning the
architecture of both the Internet and your computer so that they -
and anyone else who might be interested - will be able to see what's
on your computer and control what can pass between it and any other
digital devices.

Fair use, the ability to share information with your friends, indeed -
the very right to know - is being criminalized. With these legally
ordained control methods, it becomes trivially easy to stop the flow
of dissent since it might contain copyrighted material.

The bats of Facism have left the cave. Against this cloud of
leather-winged horrors, there are few organized forces of opposition.

But the Electronic Frontier Foundation is there.  Indeed, we're
practically all that's there.

In a country where the corporations just bought the most expensive and
incumbent Congress in history, few are standing up for the rights of
the individual.

But the Electronic Frontier Foundation is still defending your
tattered liberties.

I suspect you feel scared, hopeless, and impotent against this
anti-patriotic betrayal of American principles. You can't register
your opposition. They ignore your demonstrations. You could send them
a letter, but the White House no longer opens mail because it might
contain anthrax. E-mails are utterly irrelevant to the them.

Much of what is being decreed is profoundly unconstitutional. But
nothing is unconstitutional until someone has proven it so in
court. Someone has to be willing to plead the case for liberty. This
is what EFF does. And we need to do it before the Judiciary has been
completely subverted by Bush/Ashcroft appointees. In 18 months it may
be too late.

This is why I believe it is very important right now that you join the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. I would say that even if I hadn't help
start the thing. There just isn't anything else like us out
there. Without our technically sophisticated interventions, the
Internet will become the most penetrating and through surveillance
tool ever conceived. Click right here  ->  http://www.eff.org   <-
right now and join.

More than that, consider investing anywhere from a hundred dollars to
a hundred thousand dollars in an open, free Internet for your
children. Why spend money on their educations if they will live in a
future where every aspect of their electronically recorded lives -
which is to say, every aspect of their lives - can be controlled,
scrutinized, and judged in a political environment where every single
person is a suspected terrorist? They'd be safer uneducated. At least
they'd be less likely to form fatal ideas.

Please, folks. Defend the possibility of electronic dissent. Defend
what little privacy remains. Join the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. Now.

-- 
Fen Labalme                 GPG/PGP key: <http://www.fen.net/pgpkeys.shtml>
http://www.OpenPrivacy.org
Choose my closing .sig quote from <http://www.fen.net/quotes/freedom.shtml>