I had the pleasure of meeting Stefan nearly a decade ago during the legal challenge to the Communications Decency Act, which began in Philadelphia and in which he was deeply involved. He will be missed. http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-20/stefan-presser.html -Declan -------- Original Message -------- From: John Morris <jmorris@private> Date: October 11, 2005 1:17:17 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave@private> Subject: Stefan Presser Dave, I thought it would be appropriate to send to IP a brief remembrance of Stefan Presser, the former Legal Director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. The Internet has lost a good and long-time friend with Stefan's passing, at age 52. See the obit at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/10/national/10presser.html Although Stefan would have been the first to disclaim a deep knowledge of the inner workings of the Internet, he played an instrumental part in Internet free speech cases for as long as there have been such cases. Stefan was on the ACLU's legal team in the 1996 legal challenge to the Communications Decency Act, resulting in the seminal Reno v. ACLU decision by the Supreme Court in 1997. Stefan continued as the ACLU's local counsel in the critical Internet free speech cases filed in Philadelphia following the victory in the CDA case (including the still on-going challenge to the COPA statute). Most recently, I was privileged to be co-counsel with Stefan in the 2004 CDT v. Pappert case (involving the blocking of 1.5 million innocent web sites in a misguided Pennsylvania effort against child pornography). That case would prove to be the last that Stefan tried -- his diagnosis with and initial treatment for cancer occurred toward the end of the 13 days of evidentiary hearing spread out from January to June of 2004. Stefan's work reached far beyond the Internet, and addressed some of the most fundamental human rights. Among his successes over his 25+ year legal career, for example, was a landmark restructuring of the care provided by the City of Philadelphia to abused and neglected children. But Stefan worked equally hard in cases not expected to be seminal or landmark -- cases that involved a single injustice, or that vindicated only one person's rights. He took great pleasure, for example, in an early victory against the Transportation Security Administration -- in that case, an 18- or 19-year old college student had (with no justification) ended up on the TSA's watch list, and she had been repeatedly detained at airports while attempting to return home for the holidays in the middle of a year of study abroad. Before she flew back out of the country, Stefan prepared a complaint and motion for a temporary restraining order against the TSA, and then without even filing the lawsuit he convinced the TSA and the Department of Justice to back down. The end result was that a DOJ attorney personally went to the Philadelphia airport to ensure that the student was able to board her flight without delay. The Philadelphia stories give a richer flavor of Stefan and his work, at http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/12857056.htm and http:// www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/12863484.htm. With his passing, Stefan joins two other other great lawyers -- Bruce Ennis and Ron Plesser -- who made important contributions to the protection of rights on the Internet, but who died far too young. As with Bruce and Ron, Stefan will be sorely missed. John Morris -- ---------------------------------------- John B. Morris, Jr. Staff Counsel Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 (202) 637-9800 (202) 637-0968 fax jmorris@private http://www.cdt.org ---------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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