---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 23:05:15 -0400 From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir@vtw.org> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>, fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Cc: barrys@aclu.org, beeson@aclu.org, privaclu@aol.com Subject: Re: White House swaps stand and decides to invite ACLU after all Some obvious problems with this bit: At 3:28 PM -0700 7/15/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:

[Two hours after the ACLU issued this press release and journalists started to call, the White House reversed its stand. Now it says the ACLU is permitted to come to the meeting tomorrow after all. --Declan]

I know people who received their invites late this afternoon, so it's not obvious that the ACLU wasn't invited, just that they got their invitation later than everyone else.

From aclu press release: "The Court's decision was clearly written to protect individual online users," said the ACLU's Haines. "They, not industry giants, are the people the ACLU represents, and they are the people who are being denied a voice in this meeting."

As a hard working member of the net civil liberties community I find it inappropriate that the ACLU assumes that even though other civil liberties folks will be there, including myself, that we don't represent Internet users. I don't think any of us has the right to say who solely represents the Internet community. To say that even though VTW and CDT and ALA and others will be there, that the net community is still not represented is pretty out of line. And though I'm not defending the fact the White House's actions, I wonder if it occurs to anyone that the reason they were left until last is because when the White House started moving away (in the Magaziner paper) from the CDA the week before the SC decision, the ACLU dissed them in the press. Perhaps the reaction to that shouldn't have been to trash them in the press, but to say encouraging things while saying "Actions will speak louder than anything". It's not as if the White House can't modify their position on this issue, they've moved around on others before. Shouldn't we make that work for us for once? To diss them, regardless of what they do, violates the "carrot and stick" principle of politics. If they say stuff we agree with, like "no legislation please" and then we diss them, why will they bother to stick up for the net anymore? -S