In all seriousness, though: civil liberties are one of the very few areas where libertarians and liberals (I presume "statist" was meant to be a jibe) can agree. Liberals were in fact among the groups pissed off about the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al, during the Bush years.
By this point, nearly a decade later, I'd resigned myself to the fact that nobody cared. I can't decide if I'm pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised that this is finally getting more attention.
Yes, civil-liberties advocates have been on this particular horse since before the term "libertarian" even came into widespread usage. Various kinds of attempts at dragnet surveillance, at various scales, have been an active issue of controversy going back decades (e.g. in the McCarthyist era), and civil-liberties groups like the ACLU have been pretty consistent in opposition.
In all seriousness, though: civil liberties are one of the very few areas where libertarians and liberals (I presume "statist" was meant to be a jibe) can agree. Liberals were in fact among the groups pissed off about the PATRIOT Act, FISA, et al, during the Bush years.
By this point, nearly a decade later, I'd resigned myself to the fact that nobody cared. I can't decide if I'm pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised that this is finally getting more attention.