Well, here we are.

May 26, 2011

Down to the wire.  I am as guilty, or guiltier, than anyone reading this.  Yes, I have been active on some issues.  Yes, others have fallen through the cracks.  When the final vote is taken, if it is not over as I write this, it will in part be my fault.  If there is still time,   CALL! WRITE! E-MAIL!  I will be doing so later tonight.

We had three months.  It is virtually gone.  Support Russ FEiongold for senator or governor, should there be a recall election, support Al Franken on virtually everything he does, and even thank Rand Paul for being a holdout on this.  There are some things that Libertarians have absolutely right.

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Posted by sallijane

PATRIOT Act Update: After a successful call-in day, the focus shifts to Congress

April 11, 2011

Thousands of patriots fought their way through jammed White House phone lines on April 5 to call on President Obama to keep his campaign promises by vetoing any PATRIOT Act extension unless it includes substantial new protections. The timing was perfect, just a day after he launched his re-election campaign. Now, the focus shifts to the House and the Senate.

EFF logo“All day long, we received reports of phone lines being flooded with calls, so that people couldn’t even get through,” says EFF’s activism director Rainey Reitman, “In the coming weeks, we’ll look to harness this energy into future actions in the fight against overbroad government surveillance.”

The two-week Congressional recess from April 18-May 1 is a great opportunity for “in-district” meetings with Representatives. Several clauses of the PATRIOT Act will sunset unless Congress extends them by May 27.  Most Democrats support reform, and more and more Republicans are coming out against overbroad legislation, so it’s a great opportunity — but on the other hand, there’s also the risk of a permanent extension. So now’s the time for action.

Executive Director Shahid Buttar of Bill of Rights Defense Committee explains, “With the Obama White House pushing a Bush administration policy, the next step is for Congress to check & balance documented executive abuses under the PATRIOT Act — and for We the People to press our congressional representatives to do their jobs.”

BORDC has some great suggestions about how to set up and prepare for a meeting — including “you don’t have to go it alone”, “outline your interests”, and “follow up”. They’ve also got a couple of optional preparation phone calls scheduled for next week. sign up on their web site if you’d like to be notified. ACLU’s Congressional testimony hearing has some great talking points, and so do Downsize DC, EFF, and BORDC.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by jdp23

Take Action! On April 5, call the White House to demand PATRIOT Act reform!

March 30, 2011

EFF logo

On April 5, 1792, President George Washington vetoed a bill — the first time in U.S. history that the presidential veto was exercised. On the anniversary of this day, we’re calling on Barack Obama to exercise his presidential powers to veto any PATRIOT Act renewal bill that does not include powerful reforms to safeguard civil liberties.

— EFF’s action alert

As a candidate, Obama repeatedly promised to reform the PATRIOT Act.  He also promised Get FISA Right, in his response to our open letter, that he’d ask for “recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”  With the battle in Congress over key clauses of the PATRIOT Act heating up again, now’s a great time to ask him to live up to his campaign promises.

The legislative situation is very fluid.  Legislation in the House is likely to drop soon.  In the Senate, Leahy’s S. 193 will be the basis for a floor debate, with amendments likely to be proposed by both sides.  The Obama Administration supports S.193, but many privacy and civil liberties organizations support the JUSTICE Act’s much stronger protections, including better oversight of the use of national security letters (NSLs) as repeatedly recommended by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, more effective checks on “sneak and peek” searches , and roving wiretaps, and revising the “material support” standard to require that prosecutors prove that defendants knowingly intended their support to further violent extremism.

By taking a strong stand for civil liberties, Obama could help shape the upcoming Congressional debate.

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Patriot Act reauthorization passes the House — on to the Senate!

February 14, 2011

Tonight, members of Get FISA Right joined to watch live coverage of the debate on HR 514, extending 3 controversial provisions of the misnamed (to editorialize) PATRIOT Act.   The bill passed 275-144, with 27 Republicans voting no.  We were saddened by the outcome, but saw some encouragement as a number of representatives rose to speak about the necessity of preserving constitutionally-protected civil liberties, especially those protected by the first 10 amendments to the constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights.  EFF’s action alert has more details.

Now the debate moves to the Senate, which is expected to vote on Feinstein’s S.289.  Sen. Feinstein’s bill would, without introducing any new reforms, reauthorize the PATRIOT Act until 2013. Please contact your Senators and urge them to oppose S.289, and to support the reforms in S.193 (Leahy’s bill) and the JUSTICE Act (S. 1686 from the last Congress).

As always, we welcome discussion here as to what further actions we should take as a group.

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Posted by sallijane

We heart civil liberties: February 14 Patriot Act Update/Action Alert

February 14, 2011

It’s Valentine’s Day! And tonight at 6:30 PM Eastern, the House is once again voting on HR514which extends the PATRIOT Act until December of this year without introducing any reforms. There’s an hour of “debate” scheduled at 2 p.m. Eastern.  Julian Sanchez’ Now what? is a good overview of the issues and The Heritage Foundation on the PATRIOT Act demolishes the arguments for extending it unmodified, and GOP Rep: I made a ‘terrible mistake’ in last year’s PATRIOT Act vote highlight that civil liberties is a multipartisan issue: libertarians, progressives, tea partiers and more and more conservatives and moderates are saying “enough!”.

Please urge your representative to no, and ask her to support reintroducing the JUSTICE Act instead.  Phone your representative at (202) 224-3121, use POPVOX to say “vote no on 514“ and demand JUSTICE, and weigh in using email via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC.

Get FISA Right will be getting together online during the debate and during the vote.  There’s also a Day of Action on Facebook and elsewhere.  Details on all of this coming soon — watch the blog!

Despite our best efforts,  HR 514 is expected to pass easily.  Key questions to watch: how will tea partiers vote?  What about the 66 dems who voted for reauth?  what about the three potential senate candidates the Hill wrote about?   Contact your representative now, use POPVOX to say “vote no on 514” and demand JUSTICE, via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC

After tonight’s vote, action shifts to Senate.  The odious clauses have to be reauthorized by the end of February or they sunset, and I believe Congress is on recess last week in February.  There are 3 bills, none of which match the House.  I’ll put the details in a comment for those who are interested.   Right now though, it’s the House.  Call your representative now, use POPVOX to say “vote no” and demand JUSTICE, via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC

Help get the word out!

We are finally seeing a lot more media coverage of the PATRIOT Act: Fox, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, and Al Jazeera but a lot of people still don’t know the deetails of what’s going on or how they can make a difference.   So please help getting the word out.  Here’s how

  • email this info to people
  • share it on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter
  • leave a comment on any blog posts, articles, Facebook groups, and message board threads discussing the PATRIOT Act and make sure to include the link to the POPVOX page at: http://bit.ly/oppose514 and BORDC’s Demand JUSTICE campaign at http://bit.ly/demandjustice
  • and if you’re on Twitter, tweet early and often using hashtag — some suggested tweets in the first comment

Get FISA Right will be having a chat during the debate vote on Monday — watch our blog at https://getfisaright.wordpress.com/ for updates.  Please join us!  You can follow the PATRIOT Act discussions on Twitter at http://getfisaright.twazzup.com.    And please:

jon

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Posted by jdp23

Demand JUSTICE, not the PATRIOT Act!

February 11, 2011

It’s time to go on the offensive!  Here’s the action alert Bill of Rights Defense Committee just sent out.   Please help by using POPVOX to support the reintroduction of the JUSTICE Act, and getting the word out widely in email, via Facebook, and on Twitter.  The House is expected to vote again early next week so now is a critical time to make some noise!

– jon

Ten years after passing the USA PATRIOT Act, Congress is again debating this enormous expansion of government power. With three provisions set to expire at the end of this month, and Tuesday’s revolt in the House against fast-track reauthorization, there has never been a better time to insist that Congress restore constitutional rights.

Take action now. Demand that your congressional representatives support meaningful reforms through the JUSTICE Act.

A law so extensive that many members of Congress admitted to having never read it, the USA PATRIOT Act has been in place for too long—and there has been too little debate on its dramatic expansion of executive power—to allow a reauthorization without debate.

Millions of Americans from across the country—and the political spectrum—have already raised their voices calling for limitations on PATRIOT powers. Although he now supports extending the PATRIOT Act, President Obama himself joined this chorus of opposition during his presidential campaign.

Several reauthorization bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, but none of them would put meaningful limits on any of the PATRIOT Act powers that have been repeatedly abused.

Raise your voice today! Insist that your members of Congress check and balance the Executive Branch by introducing and supporting the JUSTICE Act, instead of rubber-stamping PATRIOT powers.

Thank you for helping defend our nation’s most fundamental values.

Shahid Buttar

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Patriot Act organizing call: 4 p.m. Eastern/1 p.m. Pacific

February 9, 2011
1-213-289-0500 passcode 869727
Our goal is to come out of this with a rough plan that’ll take us through the weekend.  Here’s the draft agenda:

4:00 Introductions and celebration. w00t!
4:05 Landscape going forward
4:15 Strategy. More here if you have a few moments
4:30 Tactics: launch, “take action day”, media outreach, social network volunteers, ?
4:45: POPVOX
4:55 Action items and next steps
5:00 Twitter training for those who want to stick around. If you’re new to Twitter and Using Twazzup have more.

Before the meeting, please try to read Shahid’s short post on the People’s Blog for the Constitution.  If you’ve got a little more time, Strange Bedfellows Block Patriot Act has Julian Sanchez’ insightful observations, and my draft strategy post has links off lots of several other good analyses.

We’ve also set up a chat room — hopefully it’ll work well enough.  Longtime Get FISA Right’ers will recognize this as the Qworky prototype we used for meetings a year ago.  If you get an error message when you visit the page, try hitting refresh a couple of times.  Did I mention it’s a prototype?

If  you can’t make it to the meeting, please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Talk to you soon!

jon

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Posted by jdp23

Bring JUSTICE to the PATRIOT Act: 5 ways to help on Twitter

September 27, 2009

The JUSTICE Act would reform the PATRIOT  by limiting the use of sneak-and-peak warrants and National Security Letters, and hold telecom companies accountable for past abuses.  If you’re on Twitter, here’s how you can help.

This week, we’re going to be to be doing activism on Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere to pressure Senate Judiciary Committee members to adopt the JUSTICE Act’s strong reforms during their markup session on Thursday.  We’ve got a blogger call Tuesday at 3 p.m. Eastern.  For now, we’re laying the groundwork.  Please join us!

Here’s how:

  1. Follow @justiceact, watch for updates, and retweet
  2. Thank Senators Russ Feingold and Tom Udall for sponsoring the JUSTICE Act using the act.ly petition at  http://act.ly/kn or by retweeting

    3. @RussFeingold and @SenatorTomUdall: thanks for introducing the JUSTICE Act http://act.ly/kn

  3. When you see articles and videos about the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, tweet them using the hashtag
  4. Follow the #patriotact hashtag, and retweet early and often
  5. Let people know about this post!

    6. Bring JUSTICE to the PATRIOT Act: 5 ways to help on Twitter (via @JusticeAct) http://is.gd/3ITyE

Our next step will be to put pressure on some specific Senators … please let us know who you think we should target.  Stay tuned for more!

jon

PS: If you’re also on Facebook, please share this link — and join the PASS the JUSTICE Act group!

About Get FISA Right

For those of you who don’t remember the “Senator Obama, Please Get FISA Right” MyBo group, it started by growing organically, and then a group of volunteers worked to help it go viral in 2008 — and bloggers were instrumental in that effort.

Once the MyBo group had a huge following, we used a wiki/collaborative process to create an open letter to Obama. Thanks to a huge amount of blog coverage, and ultimately spillover MSM coverage, Obama responded to the group.

Although we lost the legislative battle, and Obama’s response left much to be desired, the group certainly got Obama’s attention and successfully opened up a direct line of communication with him. Now, with PATRIOT ACT reform coming up, many of us are back.

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Posted by jdp23