Our latest call will be next Thursday at 11am PST / 2pm EST. The number is 1-219-509-8111 and access code is 705723.
Here’s a link to the meeting page. We’ll be discussing BORDC/GFR coordination, the upcoming midterm elections, and more! Please let us know in the comments if you have any other suggested topics or ideas, and hope to hear you on the call and/or see you in the online chat!
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Posted by harrywaisbren
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee submitted a letter on behalf of 46 partner organizations to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday calling for more oversight over the FBI.
Shahid Buttar of the BORDC provided an update in the post about the hearing today, discussing the questions asked about how widely FBI agents had cheated on tests about their spying powers. FBI Director Mueller was pressed about racial and religious profiling, and he reportedly erred in his claim regarding whether agents are allowed to initiate surveillance only based on suspicion of wrongdoing at this time, while conceding that FBI surveillance is not limited by suspicion after the hearing within a note.
As usual, it appears that the BORDC is the place to go and the people in the know about this sort of civil liberties activism. Always our pleasure to help them out, and if we can swing it, our community should work to streamline social media strategies that can be utilized to support these projects and the issues at large.
Seems like another conference call would be at least one useful next step to take, and here is a doodle poll where you can let us know what times you could make it!
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Posted by harrywaisbren
Today we celebrate not the 234th anniversary of the birth of this nation, of our declaration of independence—that was two days ago on July the 2nd, the date that the Continental Congress unanimously passed Mr. Richard Henry Lee’s resolution of independence, the day on which the United Colonies of America became the United States of America. No, we celebrate the 234th anniversary of the publication of the formal text stating the reasons for that independence. We celebrate not the act but the explanation, not Independence but the Declaration. Today we celebrate the power of words, of ideas, of reasons and reason. The great acts were on April 19th, 1775, which is commemorated as Patriots Day only in the Massachusetts, our offspring state Maine, and for the past decade, the state of Wisconsin, and July 2nd, 1776, which is not to my knowledge celebrated, despite John Adams’ prediction.
The precise words of the Declaration and their history has been in the news lately as modern technology has shown what has been long suspected, that while writing the rough draft, Jefferson obliterated the word “subjects” and replaced it with “citizens”. This change along with several others shows how new the ideas in the declaration were, how even the authors of the document, among the most eloquent speakers and writers of their day struggled to overcome the linguistic conventions of the ideas and mindset that they were overthrowing.
Elsewhere in the draft we find a reference to George the Third that reads:
The History ofthe
his
^present
king of Great Britain
majesty
^
Jefferson was obviously having trouble shaking off the styles of monarchy, of thinking of, or at least referring to the King as “his Majesty” and the people as his subjects. His original phrasings presume that authority flows down from God to King to subject to slave, but the very words of the document declare that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, who in turn are “endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights” in the words of the draft. Jefferson and the Founders were in the process of standing the social order on its head. No longer did authority come from the divine right of Kings, but from the natural rights of the people, the governed. This was a whole new theory of rights, authority, government and law.
This mistake of thinking in terms of authority deriving from the inherent power of those who govern is still made today, in the pages of our newspapers, the seat of our government and the maunderings of our pundits. It was not long ago that the Attorney General of the United States made the deplorable assertion in sworn testimony before Congress that “there is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution” as if the Constitution grants rights to the people rather than ceding the power of the People to the government. How often do we hear the President referred to as “Commander in Chief of the American People” as if he has the right to command, rather than being the servant and tool of the people? How often do we hear that foreigners, immigrants or terrorists should not receive the “rights the Constitution grants citizens”? According to the theory that Jefferson was struggling to fit his words to, these questions and claims are nonsense. Nature or Nature’s God endows us with rights. The Constitution protects them, and grants limited power to the government that it creates, that it “constitutes”.
That theory is basically the same as that found in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, written a few months earlier, and derives in large part from the writings of John Locke, who crystallized the Enlightenment thinking that was evolving in the coffeehouses and the Freemason lodges and private clubs of England, Europe and the colonies. Here’s what Locke wrote in the second chapter of “On Civil Government”:
§ 6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontrolable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice to an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
Locke had two basic formulations that he used most often to describe the natural rights of man: “Life, Liberty and Property” and “Life, Health, Liberty and Possessions”. Jefferson uses a slightly different formula. In the draft he initially writes of “the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”, but he, or one of the others, shortens that to the pithier “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The difference is worth noting. According to the natural rights reasoning, life and the ability to enjoy it are fundamental rights, rights that we can deduce from the very act of Creation. The rights to liberty, health and property are essential rights because they provide the necessities for life and its enjoyment. All of these are inherent and inalienable, whether they are primary or secondary. And so, Jefferson replaces health and property with “the pursuit of happiness” and in doing so presages the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. (This makes Bentham’s mocking “Short Review of the Declaration” a little ironic.)
Interestingly, Jefferson didn’t see the inspirational second paragraph of the Declaration as being all that important. For him, the key purpose of the Declaration was to air and enumerate the grievances that forced the colonies to declare their independence. His first paragraph basically says that declaring independence is a drastic step and we owe to the world to explain why we take it. The last paragraph actual declares independence. The bulk of the document lists the causes, the grievances. The second paragraph is there simply to lay the groundwork for the list of grievances, to set forth the philosophical assumptions and reasoning. It is merely the background. And therein lies its tremendous value. It is a one paragraph summary of the revolutionary philosophical underpinnings of the birth of a nation, the first nation conceived in and dedicated to a philosophy, rather than being an expression of raw power.
The Macintosh comes with a service for summarizing any document or text. If you set it to summarize by paragraphs, feed it the Declaration, and restrict it to one paragraph, it chooses the last, but if you set it to two, it chooses—rightly—the second and last. The first is preface, the bulk just a list of complaints. The second is the philosophical grounding and the last is the concrete action.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
:
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
There is another whole section that was being reworked in the rough draft, but which was eliminated in toto from the final version of the Declaration, namely the reference to slavery, which read,
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
And while this section was removed, and slavery continued on for another four score and seven years, the words of that inspiring second paragraph, that all men are created equal, as the great modern orator Byron Rushing has pointed out became the property of others, of posterity and the law, and when combined with the legal reasoning at the heart of Anglo-American Common Law, ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery, as we could no longer deny that “All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” means just that—ALL people.
And so on this Independence Day, it is worthwhile to reread the Declaration of Independence, in all its drafts, to reflect on the text that is there and the subtext that is revealed as we study the context, the other writers, the other documents and the history of the times.
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Posted by Jim Burrows
By: Harry Waisbren
Well, I made it to Silicon Valley for CFP, and am looking forward to what will no doubt be both an intellectually stimulating conference and impassioned opportunity for civil liberties activism.
The Social Network Users’ #BillOfRights effort couldn’t be more exciting or timely, which Get FISA Right is proud to support. Furthermore, we will be presenting about Get FISA Right’s history and the road ahead in a joint power point with Shahid Buttar of the BORDC during today’s Activism and Social Networking: Advocating for Online Privacy panel which will be streaming at 1:15 PM PST.
You can find an embedded version of the power point below, otherwise, check out http://www.cfp2010.org for more details, and tweet to the #cfpconf tag as your tweets are displayed in real time to attendees!
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Posted by harrywaisbren
By: Harry Waisbren
RT @cfpconf: It’s time for a Social Network Users’ #BillOfRights http://is.gd/cEYpi
As excited as I am about representing the Get FISA Right community at the Activism and Social Networking: Advocating for Online Privacy panel, I am particularly looking forward to helping prove that the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference really is the perfect place to create a Social Network Users’ #BillOfRights.
Over the course of the conference, we’ll collaboratively draft a proposed Social network users’ bill of rights and circulate it broadly online for discussion and feedback. Panels like Privacy and Free Speech: it’s good for business, Privacy choices online, and Can an app do that? discuss the underlying issues, and the Unconference on Wednesday provides an opportunity to explore specific topics in more detail. We’re also adding a session to focus specifically on the bill of rights (probably on Tuesday afternoon); details TBD.
In a Birds of a Feather session Thursday night, we’ll finalize the wording, and ask for help translating it into different languages and posting it throughout the blogophere as well as on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, tribe.net, Buzz, and elsewhere for discussion. At the Friday afternoon plenary, Professor Dorothy Glancy will lead a session of debate and voting, streamed live over the internet with a Twitter backchannel.
So what rights do you think social network users should have, and what would you do to achieve them?
If you would like to help out, you can start by:
I’m heading out to Silicon Valley tomorrow for the conference, and will be back with more details and updates on all of this! Stay tuned…
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Posted by harrywaisbren
By: Harry Waisbren
I have to admit, I’m more than a little excited for the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference starting next week!
Much more to come about specifically how Get FISA Right will be involved, but for the moment, I’d like to involve our community on a particularly pressing matter, namely, the presentation I will be giving during the Activism and Social Networking panel on Tuesday.
I spoke with Jon (who is co-chairing the conference) the other day, and we have come up with some broad strokes for how it will work, but there are many details that we would love your help filling in.
We decided to conduct our portion in a back and forth exchange with Shahid Buttar of the BORDC , as we will utilize a joint power point presentation to lay out our past successes, and then bridge back to where we are going together—especially how we are combining on the ground and online efforts as part of the local model legislation initiatives effort they are leading.
Where I could most use help is discerning the specifics of both what I’ll be talking about and what will show up in the slides (which will be available in real time if you care to watch).
Assuredly, we’ll be focusing on the original My.BarackObama.com group gaining a large following, and how we collaborated to create an open letter, leading to our mainstream media coverage and Obama’s unprecedented response to the group. We will quickly discuss our recent efforts, as well as our trials and tribulations, and we can describe how we have dealt with communications challenges by employing a meeting-centric strategy (catalogued extensively through transcript-style notes) to keep the group together enough to lead similar efforts in the future. This is a point of pride, although we may not spend too much time on it, as there are no other current groups that can take the lead in doing what we do, and we all should be proud that we have maintained this capacity!
Yet, it is precisely this capacity that is such a key point of conversation, as we’ll be utilizing our credibility to make recommendations for where we go from here. In particular, we will go over the social media toolkit we are building to complement BORDC’s on the ground efforts, and we’ll have many more details on this (especially how you can help construct it) soon enough.
Get FISA Right by its nature is a collaborative enterprise, so please, let us know what you think—both about the broad strokes as well as the specifics. Let’s make sure this will be a panel to remember!
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Posted by harrywaisbren
By: Harry Waisbren
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has an open letter to Tell the Senate to restrain executive power which we couldn’t advocate signing enough.
This broad issue is the foundation affecting so many more of the central issues of our time, and the Senate Judiciary Committee should consider it with the upmost urgency as they debate confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
Regardless of who stands before your committee, we encourage you to vigorously examine any nominee to the Supreme Court, with a particular eye towards establishing his or her willingness to check and balance the Executive Branch when necessary to protect constitutional rights.
Areas of constitutional doctrine that have particularly suffered in the past decade include the First Amendment rights to freedom of association and speech, as well as religious free exercise; the Fourth Amendment rights to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; the Fifth Amendment right to due process; the Sixth Amendment’s assurance of trial by an impartial judge before a jury of one’s peers; and the Fourteenth Amendment’s commitment to equal protection under the law. Any nominee’s views of each of these doctrines should be carefully considered before granting a lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court.
Sign the letter, and tell your friends to as well! The BORDC is correct that our constitution is in tumult, and we need to make sure that any Supreme Court nominee will be on the right side of history on this central issue to the very fabric of our democracy before they are granted a lifetime appointment…
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Posted by harrywaisbren
By: Harry Waisbren
As usual, we have another fantastic call today, building off the energy from our last call focusing on the “who” we will engage, while this time discussing the “how” in much more detail.
You can read through the full transcript on our meeting page, otherwise below you will find the key takeaways:
We finished the call with a discussion of logistics, as we want to make sure to have something we can laucnh with a media release at CFP, concluding that a call within the next two to three weeks would be prudent.
Thanks to Mark, Jon, Korkie, and Shahid for joining the call, and for Thomas joining in on the chat!
Much progress was made, further getting the ball rolling on some exciting initiatives that will lead to a much higher level of progress as well.
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Posted by harrywaisbren
Our next organizing call and online chat is Tuesday, May 18 at 12:30 PST / 3:30 EST, and please join us in the meeting page to suggest goals, agenda items, or to just ensure your voice is heard!
Call 1-219-509-8111, Access code: 705723
We’ll be building off our last call, and pushing forward on determining how we can best coordinate with the BORDC on their local ordinance campaign as well as making ground on how we will be taking part in this year’s Computers Freedom and Privacy conference.
It should be quite a call, and we hope you can make it…
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Posted by harrywaisbren
By: Harry Waisbren
We had an engaging and productive call yesterday as we built upon the discussions flourishing from our email lists recently about transpartisan outreach. You can read through the call notes in the chat log from the meeting page for the most detailed account, otherwise you can check below for the key takeaways:
Thanks to Sally, Mark, Jim, Ben, and Jon for joining the call!
We decided that we should have a call in another couple of weeks to get a head on the time sensitive Computers Freedom and Privacy aspects especially, but please continue the discussion through whichever channels you wish in the meantime…
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Posted by harrywaisbren
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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
Get FISA Right 