Get FISA Right

By: Harry Waisbren

Out latest call has illustrated that we are successfully building momentum. We have been making major progress on our open letter to Obama in particular, and are soliciting preferred times for our final call this Thursday before we launch this letter to president.

Please let us know when you can make it.

In the meantime, you can read through the call transcript or check below for other key takeaways:

Legislative situation

• There have not been any alerts regarding the scheduling of the Reyes amendment in the House Intelligence Committee, which is reason to believe it will once again come down to the wire.

• The Patriot Act’s sunset is December 31, and a bill must pass the house, senate, through conference, and back before it can be made into law.
• Strategically, this means we are confronted, once again, with a looming deadline.

Open Letter

• We highly encourage anyone/everyone to provide their input ASAP, as the time before Thursday’s call is the last opportunity to do so (for this letter at least). Thanks to Mark for jump starting conversation.
• The launch is scheduled to commence Monday. Afterwards, we will need everyone’s help to spread the letter as thoroughly as we are able. Special thanks to Jessica of Care2 for offering to coordinate efforts and to Amy who has volunteered to take the lead in organizing a press conference!
• Tuesday we are holding a launch event in the form of a tweetchat regarding the nature of our current surveillance laws, including a variety of expert participants from across the ideological spectrum. Jim Burrows has started this conversation on the techie side of getting it right, and we will be providing an update on this soon as well.

Bipartisanship

• As Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee emphasized on the call, the burgeoning coalition we are developing constitutes many of the independent voters that Obama had previously wooed, yet who have become disenfranchised due to his civil liberties track record in office. Special thanks to Chip as well for offering to host the letter and facilitating signatures through the BORDC!
• Our message is positive, as we want Obama to get this right, and we intend to show him the way back to the views expressed by the Obama from the campaign trail on this integral issue.

• Considering our president’s overt focus on bipartisanship, and his recognition of the political rewards to be reaped from maintaining the support from independents, we hope he will be inclined to listen to the collective voices of those of us attempting to transcend partisanship and ensure that democratic and republican politicians alike may not abuse the constitution or subvert the rule of law.

Thanks to Chip, Jim, Jessica, Jon, Mark, Amy, Korkie, and Soren for joining. We’ve made some major ground but are just getting our largest initiatives revved up. Much more to come!

By: Harry Waisbren

We have made a lot of ground on some of our final conceptions for our open letter to the president, both during our November 10th Patriot Act and FISA organizing call and through messages voiced to us through a variety of communications channels aggregated in the comments section of our last update.

We can use this post and its comments section to go through and discuss some of the broader changes and additions to consider as we take our final steps to edit and launch the letter:

Need for a crisp call to action

We have long been going over the need for a crisp call for action. On our last call, we decided on focusing on transparency from Obama and ending the back room deal making that have defined this debate since the beginning.

Our ask is simple: we want him to speak out about his position more clearly, and then act in accordance with it.

If he does this, then it removes the need for back room deals in the first place…

Broadening the scope

This was another topic broached on our last call in light of a desire to focus more on the larger principles behind the matter rather than on specific, more temporary legislation.

The Patriot Act and FISA are both aspects of a much larger debate about civil liberties in our society that has been going on since the founding of the country. Focusing on the broader issues at hand, such as the role of intelligence in our society, could be prudent.

Tone

Linda Young discussed the benefits of emphasizing working together and avoiding an overtly combative tone. This has long been considered a proof point for GFR, as both our original letter and his response were polite in nature, and clear aspirations towards a civil discourse have been cited as an instigator for his engagement with us.

However, this most definitely does not mean that we must restrict our passion or mask our disappointment. We must be frank and open about how we feel, especially since that is our primary ask from him.

Editing for length

Craig Nazor pointed out that we should edit this letter down to avoid any redundancy. This makes a lot of sense also in terms of being conscious of the length in order to maximize the chances for it to be read.

This project is collaborative by design, so please do let us know what you think (especially if you disagree with the broader changes discussed).

Our open letter has already reaped the rewards possible only through harnessing the power of a crowd, so keep it up!

By: Harry Waisbren

Various news items out to report. Thought this would be a good time to aggregate them, and if you see any others please put the links in the comments section:

Chris Strohm of GovExec.com writes about the Democratic impasse in regards to the Patriot Act.

Declan McCullagh of CBSNews.com writes about the implications to privacy and news as DOJ asks for visitor lists from news sites as they did for indymedia.us.

Julian Sanchez of the CATO institute posts a clarifying post about how The Patriot Act ‘Lone Wolf’ provision is irrelevant to Fort Hood.

Marcy Wheeler cautions us about Sen. Lieberman’s potential exploitation of Ft. Hood to eliminate the Lone Wolf provision, extrapolating on  Julian Sanchez’s definitive piece about Lone Wolf.

Spencer Ackermann posts about the failure of our already expansive surveillance apparatus from preventing the Ft. Hood massacre.

an investigation is necessary to determine if the intelligence agencies did, in fact know about Hasan and why his murderous attack nevertheless succeeded. At this point “radicalization” in the armed services — a surely minute and peripheral concern, even after Hasan — is less important than determining why it was that the architecture of surveillance, pushed on the public so heavily as vital to preventing precisely what happened at Ft. Hood, failed us.

Marcy Wheeler has more analysis about Nidal Hasan and Ft. Hood.

Chip Pitts relayed this article about complaints from lawyers about a “second class” judicial system being developed through military commissions.

By: Harry Waisbren

We once again had a very exciting Patriot Act and FISA reform call with some major action items before us. We’ll have much more to report about where we’re heading soon enough with a myriad of opportunities for participation, but for now you can check here for the call’s transcript/chat log notes or below for some of the key takeaways:

Legislative situation

• The Reyes amendment will be marked up in the House Intelligence Committee within the next few weeks
• We have to make sure that it is the House Judiciary Committee bill and not the House Intelligence Committee bill that is the template when it does come to the floor
• Rep. Nadler has introduced H.R.984 – State Secret Protection Act of 2009, which correlates to our work in terms of the opaqueness to how privacy and civil liberties issues are dealt with.
• Secrecy remains a major unifying concept here, and runs specifically counter to Obama’s promises of transparency

Upcoming Tweetchats and Open Letter

• There is a growing bipartisan concern for this lack of transparency, and we are pushing forward on utilizing the format of our highly successful tweetchats last week to coordinate with an increasingly ideologically and demographically diverse constituency
• Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute endorsed this strategy and agreed to participate, and we will be working with him in particular as we pursue conservatives and libertarians who care about these issues
• Jim Burrows discussed the difficulty of truly getting FISA right, which prompted the idea of utilizing a tweetchat to engage the technical community to share information about what is really going on amidst such secrecy
• We will be utilizing a tweetchat to launch our open letter to President Obama. We will be making final edits to the letter over the next few days (with more integral help from Amy), and are planning on launching next week.
• However, we most definitely could still use any of your input as we race to the finish, so please chime in with any/all of your ideas!

Thanks to Julian, Jim, Amy, Mark, and Jon for joining the call. We have a whole lot in motion, so stay tuned!

By: Harry Waisbren

Today has been a great one for the fight for civil liberties! The House Judiciary Committee met to finish their markup of the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009, and low and behold, we receive a big win as the HJC voted 16-10 to send the bill to the floor with most of the major reforms left intact.

The hearing had began inauspiciously as an amendment by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) to preserve the “lone wolf” provision was narrowly defeated 15-15. However, apprehension gave way to appreciation as we saw civil liberties champions emerge as Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced a House version of the JUSTICE Act (which would fix the Patriot Act while also repealing telecom immunity) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) proposed and passed an amendment that requires the declassification and periodic review of FISA and NSL programs.

With these victories in hand, we need to ensure that momentum does not wane as we gear up for the fight ahead. We are already planning for our next organizing call for this upcoming Tuesday, so please let us know what times you can make it.

In the meantime, our suggested tweets provide a variety of options to send, but we are focusing on the following tweets in a carrot and stick approach to these legislators in particular:

@RepTammyBaldwin congratulations on your amendment passing. Thanks for supporting the constitution! http://act.ly/Rh0 #patriotact

RT @eff: thx to Rep. Holt for intro’ing House version of JUSTICE Act to fix #PATRIOTact & repeal telco immunity! http://eff.org/r.5b2

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for temporary security. How un-American! http://act.ly/Res Pls RT #patriotact

Furthermore, we are pushing forward on our Open Letter to President Obama in a big way, and are striving for as much input as we can get for this crowdsourced effort. We have been making some major progress, but definitely want as much help as we can attain for this 21st century grassroots effort.

Lastly, the two days largely spent tweetchatting away in the Patriot Act Action Hub have been an enormous success. The conversation contained important opinions from experts and lay people alike, and the swift actions and information sharing fostered through the hub are clear examples of the very best qualities that the medium has to offer.

Rounding thank yous to Amy, Kevin, Julian, Jim, Brandon, Rebecca, Jon, Korkie, Jeff, and Brishen for chiming in the chat log, to the myriad of tweeters whose tweets were aggregated in the feed, and to anyone else who followed along. The democratic discourse we engaged in over the past few days is a sort of which our founding fathers only could have dreamed!

Update: even more great news–the HJC referred the State Secrets reform bill to the House floor.

By: Harry Waisbren

Below you’ll find our latest tweeting points we’ve been trying to relay:

@RepTammyBaldwin congratulations on your amendment passing. Thanks for supporting the constitution! http://act.ly/Rh0 #patriotact

RT @eff: thx to Rep. Holt for intro’ing House version of JUSTICE Act to fix #PATRIOTact & repeal telco immunity! http://eff.org/r.5b2

Come help us craft our open letter to President Obama about the #patriotact: http://bit.ly/2fDWDb

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for temporary security. How un-American! http://act.ly/Res Pls RT #patriotact

Thanks to Reps Conyers, Nadler, & Watt for standing up for the Constitution at today’s #patriotact hearings!

@RepJaneHarman thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct reform, please also sponsor H 3846! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R1a

As always, thank you so much for any help amplifying the message!

By: Harry Waisbren

We are making some major progress on our new open letter to President Obama. However, this is a crowdsourced effort, and we are seeking out as much input on it as we can!

Make sure to let us know what you think of this open letter and/or what you would do differently. We suggest posting any ideas/suggestions/edits/anything else in the comments of this blog post or through any other communication method you prefer.

We had a short conference call earlier to go over the letter, and Amy mentioned that our last blog post like this one about the open letter was what inspired her to begin working with us in the first place. It’s quite gratifying to hear that, and I know that the more participation we get the greater degree to which such positive impressions about this effort will be proven true!

Update: Below you’ll find our current version–thanks to Amy, Jim, and Jon for their editing tonight!

Dear President Obama,

In July 2008, in your response to our previous open letter, you committed to have your Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all current surveillance programs while making further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse. You also told us of your intent as President to run “a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.”

With USA PATRIOT Act and FISA reform once again before Congress, now is the perfect time to follow through on this commitment. 

Two bills that were the subject of Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee Patriot Act hearing specifically deserve your attention and support. HR 3845 contains a substantial number of significant new checks and balances to the government’s spying authorities under the PATRIOT Act. HR 3846 would prohibit the “bulk collection” of Americans’ emails and phone calls under the FISA Amendments Act, and it would repeal the Fisa Amendment Act’s telecommunication immunity provision — a provision that you voted to repeal as a Senator.

When Senators Feingold and Durbin introduced similar legislation in the Senate last month, Attorney General Holder flatly stated that there is “certainly a conversation that can be had about do [certain Patriot Act provisions] need to be re-examined, do they need to be modified in some way to be more sensitive to civil liberties concerns.” Disappointingly, much of the conversation happened in a classified briefing. Even worse, published reports say that your administration worked behind the scenes to introduce a package of amendments to strip privacy and civil liberties protections that you had voted for in the past. //BleuZ00m: This is excellent!

As the debate continues in Congress, we ask you to work for changes to the Patriot Act and FISA to preserve our civil liberties and reestablish checks and balances. Please support HR 3845 and HR 3846 and the amendments that restore similar protections when they are introduced into the Senate.

We also ask that you and Attorney General Holder discuss the issue more transparently. While closed door sessions and private briefings that respect genuine security issues may be necessary, we, the people, need to know that you are still our ally on civil liberties. We ask again that our private information be held in confidence. Further, can we, the people, expect that we will remain innocent until proven guilty?

In today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Representative John Conyers restated your quote,
“As a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on [the Constitution’s] enduring principles for expedience sake.”
// citation: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-On-National-Security-5-21-09 check the flyover. speech at the National Archives. ///
“I’ve studied the Constitution as a student, I’ve taught it as a teacher, I’ve been bound by it as a lawyer and a legislator.  I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.”

In contrast, Representative Lamar Smith today repeatedly sought to defend National Security Letters and 215s for any and all, without scrutiny, targeting people who are not terrorists. Sir, we are not all terrorists. Yes, we are listening and, as this letter professes, we do care about security and civil liberties. As you stated to us in your July 2008 response to our letter to you, ““In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited.” //citation: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rospars/gGxsZF/

The proposed reforms in HR 3845 and HR 3846 do not take any powers away from law enforcement; they simply introduce stronger checks and balances, measures that you have supported in the past. Respectfully, why do you argue against these now? We would appreciate hearing the reasons for your change in position. If there is new information that has changed your outlook, please share it.

Many of us were among your strongest supporters as you ran for the Presidency, and we celebrated when you were elected. You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and we had every reason to believe that you — as a professor of Constitutional law — would honor that pledge. We hope you do not betray our trust.

As you requested, we’re doing our part to shape our country’s destiny. We kindly ask again that you do yours. Please replace the politics of fear with a restoration of our Constitutional rights.

Signed,

…

By: Harry Waisbren

First off, there has yet to be a final vote on the House Judiciary Committee markup of the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009.  Markup continues tomorrow morning at 10 a.m, and we’ll be back in the Patriot Act Action hub aggregating and relaying news and action items through our tweetchat once again!

For analysis of today, Kevin Bankston of EFF is a good place to start:

So, a mixed bag so far as we head into our second day of the PATRIOT mark-up. The supporters of reform have so far done a good job of beating back bad amendments from the Republican camp, but we’re also starting to see Chairman Conyers and other Democrats working to weaken their own bill in a number of ways at the request of the Administration

Marcy Wheeler also has a great recap, where she explains why this is currently a better bill than the Senate side, despite the fact that it still allows for data mining of Americans. I agree with main highlight she cites from it as well:

The highlight of the hearing, though, was a speech that Mel Watt made. He talked about how, in the days after 9/11, he thought, “Well, if AG Ashcroft is protecting me from terrorists, who’s protecting me from AG Ashcroft?” He went on to bemoan the fact that there was no one like Bob Barr left on the Republican side. “I long for the day that somebody on your side of the aisle and remember that it was you that stood for individual rights at one point in your party’s history.”

The lack of Republican support for civil liberties was apparent throughout the markup, as Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute chronicled throughout his live tweeting. Rep. Lamar Smith in particular was egregious with his lies and distortions, which inspired our ongoing retweeting campaign relaying:

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for security. How un-American! #patriotact http://act.ly/Res

However, the main campaign response from the Get FISA Right side  is our decision to make some major headway on our open letter to President Obama. We will be collaboratively editing it together in a Google doc at 6:30 PST/9:30 PST tonight, and encourage as much participation as possible as we commence this crowdsourced project!

We will have much more to support as we further analyze what happened today and undoubtedly what happens tomorrow, so stay tuned—much more to come!

We did a couple of training sessions today on Twitter activism and the Patriot Act.  Thanks to Harry’s detailed notes, hopefully the information should be useful whether or not you were there.  Please check out http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter+activism+training.

If you’d like to see some of this activism in action, please join us in the Patriot Act Action Hub Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee hearing (12:30 p.m. Eastern)!

jon