Get FISA Right

By: Harry Waisbren

I think we have a lot more work to do determining how we can best leverage the media in our efforts.  I commented in the strategy section of the JUSTICE Act Organizing wiki page that we need to start thinking about this, and I also posited that a Twitter campaign targeting media members could be particularly helpful at this early juncture.

The importance of media became even more self-evident to me while contemplating the earlier post about Get Fisa Right’s size. That post notes that it’s hard to say how big we are right now, especially given the difficulty of leveraging particular services to efficiently reconnect us with past participants. However, a missing aspect here is that as we start achieving media coverage reaching out will become dramatically easier and focusing on achieving new members will quickly become more important.

Last Summer we had the phenomenal success of helping to directly change the national discourse. However, the role of achieving mainstream media attention must be acknowledged here if we are to repeat the success. Fortunately, the constituency of our community remains chock full of new media entrepreneurs—some of whom are amongst the most adept in the world of leveraging new technologies to break past older filters that close down democratic discourse.

Media doesn’t control what we think…but they do control what we think about. This is why we must use media to help the country think about civil liberties again!

Things are expected to move quickly in the Senate; I’ve heard that the SJC may report a bill out as early as October 1.  So that’s likely to be where a lot of the action is.  Center for Democracy and Technology’s Patriot Act Sunsets Should Prompt Re-consideration of Anti-terror Powers ends with a useful section on What’s next in Congress for the Patriot Act?

In the short term:

• 11 a.m. Tuesday, September 22,  House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and
  Civil Liberties hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act, chaired by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).  Speakers include Suzanne Spaulding and Michael German of the ACLU, former GOP Representative Tom Evans, former GOP Representative from Delaware, and former DOJer Kenneth Weinstein.
• 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 23: Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Also, for those wanting to know more about the JUSTICE Act, here are various organizational endorsements:

Read the rest of this entry »

Here it is.

Thanks to Julian Sanchez for posting it, and Ben Masel for the info.  Julian’s blog post PATRIOT meets JUSTICE ends with

Obama’s Justice Department has called for the renewal of the expiring PATRIOT provisions but declared itself “willing to consider” possible “modifications” that would enhance accountability and due process. Now let’s see if the folks who held Obama’s feet to the fire when he reneged on his promise to filibuster the FISA amendments will push him to throw the weight of his office behind JUSTICE.

Hmm.  I wonder who he’s talking about?

We’re working on a talking points page on the wiki … thanks to Chip Pitts for kicking things off.  More here.

jon

How big is Get FISA Right?  Hard to say …

• President Obama, please get FISA Right Organizing for America (formerly MyBO) has 23,198 members.   Of these, about 2570 subscribe to the mailing list; we don’t have a good way of getting in touch with the others
• Change.org idea: has 12796 supporters; we don’t have a good way of getting in touch with them.
• Facebook group: 2023 members.
• Wetpaint wiki : 165 members.
• Twitter account: 148 followers.
• Google group: 139 members.
• MySpace page: 78 friends (but nobody knows the password)
• Facebook page: 61 fans

Shortly after the Obama Administration announced its general support for renewing three sections of the USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and six others today introduced the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act.

It’s aimed to “reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, while preserving the powers of our government to fight terrorism,” according to Feingold’s office.

— Norman Oder, Library Journal

Julian Sanchez at Cato@Liberty and Kevin Bankston at EFF have more.

I’ve already been contacted by a reporter asking what Get FISA Right will do.

Suggestions?

Read the rest of this entry »

The notes from the “birds-of-a-feather” session I led at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy are written up on the CFP Wiki.  Alas, we didn’t get the online aspects to work; still, we had a dozen people there in person, including Get FISA Right members Thomas Nephew and Chip Pitts.  It was a great discussion.  The opportunities we identified include

• building a broad, diverse coalition
• focusing on cost, dignity, and human rights issues as well as privacy and the constitution
• using anti-corporate activism against the companies supplying equipment and profiting from surveillance
• involving the technical community and domain experts

and a lot more.  We also discussed some of the tactical issues about the upcoming PATRIOT Act vote: the need for an accurate vote count; a pressure campaign on key Congresspeople like Jane Harman, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, and Harry Reid; and the importance of powerful visual images.

Check it out!

jon

Ari Melber’s The People’s Press Conference in The Nation introduces Ask the President, a project where people can suggest and vote on questions that will potentially be asked at a White House press conference.   Other sponsors include The Nation, The Washington Times, Personal Democracy Forum, Change.org, Democrats.com (Bob Fertik, whose question continues to lead), and Jack and Jill Politics.

President Obama’s next press conference is at Tuesday, 8 PM Eastern (Facebook event here).

Wouldn’t it be great if somebody asked about FISA and the Patriot Act?

Please vote for our question

Before you were elected, you committed to having your attorney general review domestic surveillance policy. What are your plans and timeframe to get FISA right?

at http://p2pt0.wetpaint.com/page/Ask+the+President/

Also, Bob Fertik of Democrats.com has a question as well, asking President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor.   During the Ideas for Change competition, we overwhelmingly voted to endorse Bob’s special prosecutor proposal, so please consider voting for his question as well.

Bob’s currently in #2 overall at a net of +254 votes.  We’re currently at a net of +31.  Our approval rating is over 90%.  Very cool!

The wiki page has various suggestions for promotion via email, Twitter, etc.    One thing we could really use is for people to  blog about this and include the handy embed widget like Bob has.  If you do, please leave a link in a comment here so that everybody can see it.

The best way to follow updates is here, via the @GetFISARight Twitter account.  If anybody wants to provide updates on the blog here, please let us know in a comment.

Thanks!

jon

Jared Allen reports in The Hill:

More than a dozen of the GOP’s most conservative members on Thursday introduced a bill to reauthorize controversial Patriot Act provisions set to expire later this year.

The group of House Republicans – who include Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Judiciary Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) – want to extend for an additional 10 years the ability of national security agencies to conduct “roving” wiretaps, have access to library patron information and greatly expand the reach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Those provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire this year.

Earlier in the year than we had expected …