Color of Change helps you tell the FCC to force local police departments to suspend their use of Stingray devices and come clean about how they've been using them thus far. What are Stingrays? They're devices that mimic cell towers, but police use them to spy on other people's cell phone traffic, without a warrant and without anyone's consent. A Stingray could be a useful tool, I suppose -- if they were used in accordance with the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, not in violation of it. Anyone else think the old method of keeping close contact with the people you serve and then getting warrants to investigate trouble was good enough for a free people? If you don't, I think you have a moral obligation to explain why, without pointing to the mere fact of police being more out of touch with communities than they'd like, or the mere fact of governments moving away from warrant-based investigations, as proof. I mean, that would be lazy, and that wouldn't help us solve problems. We solve problems here -- if you just want to perpetuate your rage, you need to go elsewhere.
Meanwhile, both CREDO and Battle for the Net help you tell the FCC to defend net neutrality by stopping the "zero-rating" schemes of the big telecom corporations. What is "zero-rating"? "Zero-rating" is an admittedly clever way of getting around the FCC's net neutrality orders, which mandate that corporations treat all network traffic neutrally: the telecom puts an arbitrary data cap on your phone, and then exempts some websites and apps but not others from those caps, meaning you pay less to access some websites or use some apps than for others. That means big telecom corporations are, again, exercising control over where you go and what you see on the internet, when the only person who should have that control is you. And, needless to say, "zero-rating" favors the big internet content producer over the small one, when the big content producer, frankly, already has enough of an advantage in the marketplace, and doesn't need more advantages. And certainly not in the name of "freedom"! When will Our Glorious Elites learn that freedom is for all of us, and not just their preferred business partners?
Finally, the ACLU helps you tell the Michigan legislature to amend the state's freedom of information law so that it no longer exempts the Governor's office, or the various offices of the state Legislature. Why? So we can learn more about how Flint's water got poisoned. We know that the Michigan state government appointed an unelected "Emergency Manager" to make decisions affecting the welfare of Flint's citizens, and we also know that said "Emergency Manager" (sorry, it's a made-up, unelected, undemocratic position, so it gets the full ironic quotes treatment) took Flint off of the relatively well-kept Detroit water system and put it on poisoned Flint River water, failing to take into account that the chemicals used to clean up the Flint River water would corrode Flint water pipes and put lead into their drinking water. But we still need to learn more -- like whether Michigan's actually-elected officials ignored the warning signs of Flint's drinking water pollution, and whether they can be prosecuted for it. After all, they have no inalienable right to get away with poisoning the people they serve.
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