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From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Sophistication of federal investigators
Message-ID: <1991Jan10.142235.17473@eff.org>
Date: 10 Jan 91 14:22:35 GMT
References: <1991Jan7.165650.14066@ariel.unm.edu> <1991Jan10.023821.15346@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1991Jan10.035939.26587@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lines: 65

In article <1991Jan10.035939.26587@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes:
>
>Len Rose, Craig Neidorf, Rich Andrews, Dr. RipCo, and others deserve nothing
>less.  Those of you at the EFF have the money and the names in this industry
>to do the job right -- take the government to the task, educate the public, 
>and STOP the outrageous abuses our government is currently persuing.  
>
>Assisting one person in a fight against the government is good.  Don't 
>misunderstand my intentions here.  But the root of the problem isn't one
>case, or even a dozen.  It's a government mad with power, and a populace
>that doesn't understand the implications.
>
>If you're in this for some free press, and a good name for yourself, you're
>doing no one any good at all.  You're really harming the cause -- by 
>deflecting debate and attention from where it belongs.  That focus belongs 
>on the destruction of checks and balances in the legal system, not on 
>individual cases that you feel have "merit".

Our legal strategy is built upon the fact that we need to pursue
individual cases to establish the rights that should apply to everyone.
Right now, the government is taking very little notice of the 
First and Fourth Amendment rights of BBS operators and participants,
and of computer users in general. In order to lay the groundwork for
anyone to sue the government in these kinds of cases, we must
choose some key cases in order to establish these rights.

The federal court system requires that we follow the Article III
restriction that our litigation be of a genuine "Case or Controversy."
Hence we must begin by working with individual plaintiffs and defendants
until the rights in question are well-recognized by the judicial
system.

For in-depth discussions of the limits on access to the federal courts,
see THE LAW OF FEDERAL COURTS, 4th Edition, 1983, by Charles Alan
Wright. (This should be available in any legal bookstore.) For a 
discussion of how a litigation strategy builds the groundwork for
establishing legal rights, see SIMPLE JUSTICE, by Richard Kluger,
which is a readable historical account of how the NAACP legal division
laid the legal groundwork for an end to segregated school systems.

As we have noted in previous publications and in our first newsletter,
we are also active on the legislative and educational fronts. We do
not assume that a litigation strategy by itself will establish the
kind of rights for computer users that we want to see established.

I think you'll find, Karl, that the references I have cited here go
a long way toward explaining why the EFF *must* choose individual 
cases at this point. If you have further suggestions about how to 
modify EFF's legal strategy, please feel free to contact me at the
phone number in my .signature.

Thanks for your feedback.



--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnemonic@eff.org            | every thing would appear to man as it is,
Electronic Frontier         | infinite."
Foundation                  |                 --Blake