Civil liberties advocates lost a Senate stalwart Tuesday night when Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) was defeated by Ron Johnson, a little-known plastics manufacturer whose shibboleths against health care reform and government spending tapped into populist anger.

For years, Feingold was one of the few – and sometimes the only – voice in the Senate skeptical of the government's increasing demands for domestic surveillance power and control of the internet. He was one of 16 Senators who voted against the Communications Decency Act of 1996, an internet censorship bill later struck down by the Supreme Court, was the only Senator in 2001 to vote against the USA Patriot Act, and he introduced a measure to censure President Bush for his illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

"Senator Feingold was a true champion of civil liberties," said Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, D.C. "He spoke out against the Patriot Act and the dramatic growth of government surveillance programs when many other Senators stood by silently. His voice and his commitment to the Constitutional rights of all Americans will be missed."

In 1997, before many Americans were online, Feingold set out to repeal the CDA, which criminalized sending "indecent materials" to minors on the net, even before the Supreme Court heard the case.

"One can be a speaker, a publisher and a listener using the internet," Feingold said, years before the term Web 2.0 became trendy. "The threat of the Communications Decency Act is its undeniable ability to stifle this free-flowing speech on the Net."

Feingold was a maverick in his own party, strongly opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and voting against the TARP bank bailouts. Unlike many Democrats, however, he embraced his vote on health care reform, saying there was nothing wrong with helping to get the uninsured health care.

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, echoed Rotenberg.

"We'll miss him," Tien said. "He was one of the few to stand up against the Patriot Act and telecom immunity."

Feingold and retiring Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) attempted to filibuster a provision that provided legal immunity to telecoms that helped the Administration spy on Americans' internet and phone use without warrants. That provision, along with expanded government surveillance powers, eventually passed in July 2008 with the support of then-Senator Barack Obama, who promised to revisit that law, but has not.

UPDATE: The New York Times's Katharine Seelye has an excellent analyis of how independents turned on the independent Feingold.

Photo: Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, makes his concession speech to his supporters Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010, in Middleton, Wisconsin, after loosing to Republican challenger Ron Johnson for the Wisconsin U.S. Senate seat. (AP Photo/Joe Koshollek)

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