I just donated $50 - to be honest, most of the stuff in your post is useless minutiae. I don't care how many dollars go to lawyer's fees versus court fees versus blah blah.
What I do care about though - how far in the appeals process will this take the case? Answer: $40,000 is not even 1/10th of what you'd need to make it to the supreme court, paying full freight. So assume there's going to be another fund raiser.
Should we just walk away from an opportunity to expose the demands of the FISA court in broad daylight at the behest of a superior court because they didn't present an itemized budget and an exact timetable dependent on a bunch of external circumstances beyond their control? Uhh, no - drop $5 and move on.
See, I care about where I donate my money to. If 40k is 1/10th of what's needed this fundraiser may be just wasted money - I could be better of donating the money to EFF directlyr. If the entity behind the fundraiser is lavabit, the US government could just shut down the company and freeze the funds, again wasted money. I'm not asking for an itemized list or a timetable, I'm just asking for a little information that goes beyond "we'll try and sue and we need money". I'm not assuming bad faith, but is that too much to ask for if somebody tries to collect north of 40k on the internet?
What I do care about though - how far in the appeals process will this take the case? Answer: $40,000 is not even 1/10th of what you'd need to make it to the supreme court, paying full freight. So assume there's going to be another fund raiser.
Should we just walk away from an opportunity to expose the demands of the FISA court in broad daylight at the behest of a superior court because they didn't present an itemized budget and an exact timetable dependent on a bunch of external circumstances beyond their control? Uhh, no - drop $5 and move on.