Get FISA Right

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

By: Harry Waisbren

Tomorrow, 12:30 PM EST, is the much anticipated markup of  H.R. 3845, the “USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009“. The event will be webcasted and we will be holding a live “tweetchat” in our Patriot Act Action Hub to aggregate any coverage and to facilitate acting upon what happens.

During this tweetchat, you will find the latest on what is going on at the hearing as well as what others are saying about it on twitter (everything tweeted to #patriotact will show up in the chat). However, we encourage those on twitter and not on it alike to comment directly into the chat room, as our goal is to foster as much conversation and collective action in response as we can.

No matter what happens tomorrow, we want to help spur “flash actions” via Twitter and other new media services in response. Even if things go very poorly for civil liberties proponents (and the country at large) yet again, it will feel good to do something about it—even if it is as little as a chat comment or a tweet!

Update: if you are a blogger, here is our blogger resources page to facilitate writing about the markup and tweetchat and/or embedding the chat itself on your blog.

By: Harry Waisbren

Today’s organizing call went quite well, and it is clear that we are building momentum! The chat log transcript is available here, and we are looking to act on our conversation swiftly in anticipation of Wednesday’s 12:30 PM EST markup.

First off though, thank you to Amy, Shahid, Brandon, Jim, Rebecca, Soren, Korkie, Mark, and Jon for participating on the call (and to anyone following along online). Our group’s strident enthusiasm for the cause is contagious, and if you have yet to join in on one of these organizing calls I couldn’t advocate it enough!

Now, onto the key takeaways from this week:

• We will be holding a live “tweetchat” during the Wednesday 12:30 PM EST markup. This will take place in the Patriot Act Action Hub, and you can participate both via Twitter or in the communal chat room (where tweets will be aggregated). Much more to come on this soon!
• Jon Pincus will be leading online Patriot Act Social Network Activism Trainings, the first two of which are tomorrow 10 AM PST and 5 PM PST
• The key legislative update is the upcoming HJC mark upon HR 3845 this Wednesday, 12:30 PM EST. Yet Reyes, Hastings, and Rupperburger have also introdced HR 3969 into HPSCI. It supposedly largely mirrors the SJC bill but may be weaker in some areas. In the Senate, in addition to the amended Leahy/Feinstein SJC bill (S. 1692), there’s also a Sessions/Lieberman/Bond (S. 2236) bill that would reauthorize with no additional safeguards. Brandon pointed out that the absence of library protections in this new senate bill (originally included by Leahy) could be a “canary in the coal mine” for its general adherence to civil liberties concerns.
• We will be taking steps to improve the “inside/outside” nature of our effort by working dramatically more with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. They are helping individuals and organizations push for civil liberties on a local level, and Shahid explained on the call that they are already “standing by with resources”, including this Community Ordinances Tool Kit and this Model Legislation for Local Government.
• We also are pushing forward on Amy’s initial idea of targeting individual stories pertaining to how people have been affected by the degredation of civil liberties. There are difficulties, however, considering the legal hurdles preventing those who have been spied upon from speaking out, but there were some extremely constructive ideas on the call for ways we can still bring this issue to a much more personal level.

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest organizing call is today at 1 pm PST/4 pm EST, and you can participate by calling in (dialin number: 1-219-509-8111 Access code: 705723) or by following the call’s live blog in the communal chat room.

It should be quite a call, as we will be emphasizing short term actions we can take in light of the upcoming markup this Wednesday amidst the larger transition in our efforts as we increasingly dig in for the long haul.

One area in which we have progressed in light of last week’s call–and will be going over–are our efforts to increase our coalition’s size while further diversifying our constituency both ideologically and demographically. In particular, we will be discussing launching interactive “tweetchats” through our Patriot Act Action Hub which will aggregate tweets on Patriot Act and FISA reform while simultaneously facilitating participation through a communal chat room.

Such a Twitter-centric strategy to foster communal action is important in light of what Jon Pincus and Tracy Viselli “have been hammering away on all year (1, 2, 3): Twitter is a place to engage with women, people of color, migrant rights groups, and others who are marginalized from other forms of activism.” Jon goes into much more details on such principles in his post Social Network Activism and the Future of Civil Liberties that I could not recommend enough, and his recent coordination with the Privacy Coalition on online training sessions for Patriot Act activism should be a boon for our effort as well!

This strategy would presumably encompass another key takeaway from last week through its capacity to foster communication with those ideologically different than us on issues aside form civil liberties. Furthermore, it could also act as a launch point to propel Amy’s idea of searching for and incorporating “personal stories of individuals whose privacy has been violated.”

Much more to come—-I predict another inspiring call and, hopefully, an even better week for the fight to reform the Patriot Act and FISA!

By: Harry Waisbren

The ACLU has an online campaign that we have added to our action listings on the Patriot Act Action Hub. This effort pushes the House of Representatives to pass a strong bill that would genuinely reform the Patriot Act.

You can help out by asking your representative to co-sponsor the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009 by plugging in their information to send them the following letter:

I write as a concerned constituent. Government surveillance of the communications and activities of innocent Americans has increased exponentially since the events of September 11, 2001. I urge you to support investigations of, and amendments to, the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws that have fundamentally diminished the rights of Americans. This is the best chance to rein in the out-of-control government powers embedded in the Patriot Act since it was enacted.

H.R. 3845, The USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009, protects constitutional speech and privacy rights by:

*   Amending  the national security letter statute to ensure that the government obtains financial, communication and credit records only of people believed to be terrorists or spies;
*   Requiring the government to convince a court that a national security gag order is necessary;
*   Ensuring that the so-called “library records provision” does not authorize collection of library and bookstore records if they contain information on the patron.

As you can imagine, the bill is not perfect. It leaves the Patriot Act’s so-called “material support” provision intact, permitting prosecution of those who work with or for charities that give humanitarian aid in good faith to war-torn countries.  Please support adding a provision that would limit prosecution to those who actually intend to support terrorist-oriented actions.

I urge you to co-sponsor the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009.  It’s time that our government stop violating the rights of everyday people who have nothing to do with terrorism.

I look forward to your response on this important matter.

It doesn’t take long at all to write in your information, so act now on this important cause!