Re: [EFGA] WE won our court case!! (fwd)

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At 04:57 PM 6/20/97 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh@efga.org>
>>To: action@efga.org
>>Subject: [EFGA] WE won our court case!!
>>
>>EFGA was granted a preliminary injunction in our court case 
>>against the state of Georgia.  Details and press release to follow.
>
>Yee-hah!  If you ignore CONgress, we've had a good week, between
>this court and the New York CDA courts doing the right thing
>and the DES crack finishing.
>
>>Let's meet somewhere tonight to celebrate!
>Obviously y'all should meet in the Atlanta Underground, wearing masks :-)
>(though I won't be there, since it's a bit far from the West Coast...)

I find messages like this to be interesting.  I assume that there is some 
void in the souls of some that cannot be filled and they look elsewhere for 
that spark that will bring them what they are looking for.  I regret that 
when they look to me, they do not find it.  That I am not the answer does not 
surprise me.  That anyone would think I might be the answer is what is 
surprising.

What is EFGA?  It is an unfunded group of Georgia based internet users who 
have an interest in privacy, free speech, and the free use of the internet.  
For about six months or so, we grumbled about how bad things were.  Then, a 
few of us got the idea that if only we tried to change something, we just 
might do it.  Eighteen months later, we won a case in federal court against 
the state of Georgia.

"Yee-ha"?  Is this meant to be a derisive comment?  No money.  No legal 
training.  Not a lawyer to support us.  What were we to do?  We went to the 
ACLU and they told us the case had no standing - they couldn't help us with 
the Georgia law.  We got no better treatment from EFF.

This message was not sent to this list - cyberpunks or remailer operators.  
It was only sent to an internal EFGA list of people who made a claim that 
they wanted to find out more about EFGA.

Me?  I'm a software developer.  I don't work for EFGA.  I just founded the 
group, and participate in it's running and policy.  No one works for EFGA.  
As I said we are unfunded. We have no offices, we have no staff.

Obviously this is a victory for free speech.  This is grassroots activism.  
This email message I see is not unusual.  Why do so many people who would 
presumably be on the same side as EFGA and myself do what is apparently 
trying to pick at us?

What is the difference between someone in EFGA and someone else on this list? 
 If I can read the federal register when I get home from work and call up the 
Social Security Administration and ask to speak on a panel they are having, 
then anyone can.  If a group of people with no financial or legal resources 
can call themselves EFGA and sue the state, then why can't someone else?

Yee-ha?  Meet in Underground Atlanta wearing masks?  What kind of comments 
are these?  I spent gasoline, time, and three dollars for parking today to 
meet with the CIO of Georgia to speak with him about PGP & encryption.  He 
met with me because I called him on the phone and asked.  What are you saying 
here?  Are you suggesting that change is wrong?  Are you, like others on this 
list implying that you can't afford the three dollars or you just don't know 
how to dial the phone?

I didn't post the original message here.  If you would like to trade insults, 
I'll be happy to do so with you.  I'd rather just go up to D.C. on a cheap 
flight and sit in a congressman's office for 45 minutes until a staffer can 
speak with me.

Reasonable men adapt to match the world around them.  Unreasonable men try to 
adapt the world to themselves.  Therefore, only unreasonable men bring about 
change in the world.  I may be unreasonable, but I'm not pathetic.


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  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key

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At 09:05 PM 6/20/97 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Well, in some places, it's an expression of excitement, and it was intended
>as such here.  I guess some things don't translate well to ASCII,
>given that you seem to think I was picking on you?
>
>The Georgia law was a bad one, and needed overturning.
>I hadn't realized you were running EFGA on that small a scale, 
>so I'm even more impressed that you succeeded.

OK.  I misread your intentions.  It's just my first couple of postings on 
cyberpunks were not received well.  I finally attributed it to the apparent 
mistaken belief that EFGA was something more than smoke and mirrors.  Of 
course some of it is the fact that I am still learning about this stuff.

Remailers is a very appropriate mail group.  Our press release stated that 
with the law out of the way, we can now set up an anonymous remailer, which 
we have done.  (anon.efga.org)  EFGA has just won a censorship lawsuit, set 
up a PGP keyserver, started a remailer and nym server, and have a lot of 
things on our plate.  I almost long for the days when we sat around 
complaining how powerless we were.  Now that the people in charge are 
listening to us, I'm not sure we know the answers any longer.

The battle against this law was a difficult one.  At first we had the 
standing issue.  Since it was such a ridiculous law, and for various other 
reasons, we were told we would never get into court with it.  Though almost a 
year has passed since we filed the case, I was still wondering if the judge 
would throw this out as of yesterday.

When EFGA was first formed, we had public meetings at the local ACLU offices. 
 We had hoped they would mount a legal challenge to the law for us.  I don't 
have the exact numbers, but the local ACLU gets about 300 requests per month, 
and only is able to work on about three cases each month.  Ours just wasn't 
strong enough according to them.  Mitchell Kaye, one of the co-plaintiffs in 
the suit is an elected Georgia House of Representatives member who had spoken 
out against the law, so we invited him to a meeting at Denny's.

Mitchell did some checking and found an attorney who would talk to us.  We 
had a series of meetings, and became the first group to sign on as a 
plaintiff.  In fact, we incorporated just so we could become a plaintiff.  
Also, after Scott McClain of Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore had done some pro 
bono work, we were able to take this back to the ACLU and get them involved.  
Later the national ACLU got involved, then the lawsuit finally got real.

We really had some good breaks along the way, but we put a lot of hard work 
into it as well.  If the ACLU hadn't been willing to take it on and 
underwrite the cost, we never would have gotten anything done.

Now we have taken on the task of pushing strong crypto and privacy on the 
State.  I've demo'ed PGP at various places and we have some gov't agencies 
thinking about using PGP as a cost savings business tool.  If we can't win 
the crypto debate in congress, will win by going in through the back door.


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  -- Robert Costner                  Phone: (770) 512-8746
     Electronic Frontiers Georgia    mailto:pooh@efga.org  
     http://www.efga.org/            run PGP 5.0 for my public key