Posted by Orin Kerr:
ACLU Approves Of Overwhelming Majority of Patriot Act:
One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even
its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part
of the Act; the overwhelming majority of the statute is
uncontroversial among the fairly small number of people who understand
what's in it. As best I can tell, this has been a well-kept secret for
the last 3+ years mostly for tactical reasons: If you want to get the
public very worried about a topic to help advance your cause in future
legislative debates, you can't very well admit that your objections
are actually quite limited.
In light of that, it's good to see that ACLU President [1]Nadine
Strossen apparently has admitted that the ACLU approves of more that
90% of the Patriot Act. As live-blogged at [2]Ex Parte, from a recent
address by Nadine Strossen at the annual Federalist Society student
symposium: "[ACLU President Nadine Strossen] notes that the ACLU only
has a few objections [to the Patriot Act, covering] about 12 of the
160 elements of the Patriot Act." While it's too early to know whether
this live-blogged report is exactly accurate, note that the statement
echoes the view of ACLU Executive Director [3]Anthony Romero in early
2004 that "much of the Patriot Act is neutral legislation for civil
liberties," and that only "about a dozen provisions" are objectionable
to him. If anyone has a transcript of Strossen's remarks or a video,
please send it on to okerr [at] law.gwu.edu.
References
1. http://www.aclu.org/About/About.cfm?ID=9320&c=187
2. http://exparte.powerblogs.com/posts/1109442647.shtml
3. http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=14750&c=206
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