A.C.L.U. Allies Start Web Site to Rebut Critics of Leadership

Posted on October 22, 2006

Supporters of the leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union have created a Web site in response to one started last month by critics of that leadership.

“This Web site came about because those of us who know the A.C.L.U. very well were very disturbed that a few unhappy people were attacking the organization at a time when the A.C.L.U. is doing such a great job — and is greatly needed,” said Laura W. Murphy, a former director of the organization’s Washington office and a leader behind the new Web site, voicesfortheaclu.org.

Ms. Murphy said the critics were “simply dead wrong, and we are saying enough is enough.”

Ira Glasser, a former executive director of the civil liberties union and a founder of savetheaclu.org, the Web site calling for a change in the organization’s leadership, said his group had no complaint about the A.C.L.U.’s work or the growth of its membership and financing.

“The disagreement,” Mr. Glasser said, “is over whether those achievements excuse or justify the betrayal of fundamental principles we’re complaining about on the Web site. About those complaints, they have said not a single word.”

That site was started last month by more than 30 longtime supporters of the A.C.L.U. who say that actions taken by the executive director, Anthony D. Romero, and supported by the board have violated the organization’s principles. For example, they questioned the extent of the organization’s use of data mining to collect information on donors, a proposal to monitor employees’ e-mail messages and efforts to control board members’ access to staff members and information.

As Ira Glasser notes, and unlike the headline alludes to, a look at this new website offers absolutley no rebuttals to the accusations made by save the aclu. Many of these accusations are quite serious charges. One such serious charge is the ACLU secretly collects massive amounts of private information about its donors.

The American Civil Liberties Union is using sophisticated technology to collect a wide variety of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort that has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders’ commitment to privacy rights.

Some board members say the extensive data collection makes a mockery of the organization’s frequent criticism of banks, corporations and government agencies for their practice of accumulating data on people for marketing and other purposes.

Wendy Kaminer and Ira Glasser have an extensive list of charges in the vein of hypocrisy on the current ACLU posted at the savetheaclu.org website. The charges include failure to disclose and comply with a legal decree, secret approvals of agreements limiting speech and association in order to obtain funding, cover-ups, silencing dissent on the ACLU board, data mining practices targeting donors and members, and silencing and spying on the ACLU Staff to the point of requiring them to acknowledge that they were subject to monitoring of all emails; explicitly violating the ACLU’s own policy on privacy in the workplace. Read the entire thing.

So far the new website countering savetheaclu.org has absolutely nothing rebutting any of these accusations. We will keep an eye on it, but I doubt we will see anything of much significance. I think it will be difficult to rebut the truth.