As America is taking time this week to remember Senator Kennedy, I wanted to share this tribute from our national office, which reminds us of his commitment to the First Amendment, civil rights, government accountability, immigration reform and abolition of the death penalty. I did not know that Senator Kennedy had been a sponsor of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and mention of that sent me into the archives of the hearings on that bill (which included witnesses Morton Halperin and John Shattuck, then staff members at the ACLU), where I found these words from Senator Kennedy: “The abuses of Presidential power in the surveillance area reached their zenith under the Nixon administration. . . Both the importance of wiretapping, and the dangers inherent in such surveillance—governmental intrusion into the private lives and conversation of Americans and interference with the Constitutionally protected rights of privacy, association and speech—dictate that Congress take quick, effective action.”
