Get FISA Right

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!

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…

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 elaborated on the “ask” we will give in our transpartisan outreach, and have come to an agreement that coalitioning and collaborating with the BORDC on their model ordinances campaign is the way to go. Shahid explained that these ordinances combine limits to protect against intelligence collection with preventing racial profiling. This jibes perfectly with our transpartisan mentality, as we hopefully will be able to connect with like minded civil libertarians working in good faith who are not driven by a nativist animus…
• Mark discussed the problem of having disparate efforts between many civil liberties organization with far too little connection between them. There is a need to connect these groups along a “21^st century civil rights agenda” as he put it, which is a framing that I am particularly a fan of!
• Following up on Mark’s point, we discussed how the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference may be the perfect venue to built such a coalition. Get FISA Right will have a presence during a session on online activism, and there are also various potential working sessions and an unconference which we are discerning how we can best be involved in—with a focus of coming out of it with tangible progress.
• I brought up the very positive development that the American Freedom Campaign has been folded in to the BORDC, as I am especially a fan of Naomi Wolf and her seminal work The End of America, which she followed up with the book Give Me Liberty. Video of Wolf explaining her important, and frightening, premise below:

• An impromptu discussion followed up from Wolf based on the role of religion within what is going on today, as I described my conversations with my Rabbi (I had given him a copy of The End of America, and it impacted him as it likewise impacted me), and Mark emphasized how Joe Lieberman’s effort to strip Americans of their citizenship is particularly anathema to the lessons from the Holocaust. I emphasized further how, today, it appears Jews have forgotten the true lesson within our wide-spread clarion call of “Never Forget” in relation to the Holocaust. Shahid as well cited his Muslim faith’s impact on these issues for him, amidst his larger desire to continue these important, and all too rare, conversations while further relaying them in writing.
• Per a suggestion from Thomas, we discussed Elana Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination and potential GFR actions in response. Thomas suggested utilizing Leahy’s letters, as they are potentially a visible demonstration of Kagan’s “unitary-lite” thinking. He further cited how Larry Lessig defended it to Glenn Greenwald in a fantastic bloggingheads.tv discussion. Shahid also mentioned BORDC’s upcoming activism on Kagan, which Get FISA Right will be proud to support.

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.

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…

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:

• Jon brought up engaging in the upcoming Computers Freedom and Privacy conference (which he co-chairs), and suggested an online hour long brainstorming session during it in order to reach out more broadly. Moreover, Shahid will be there as well, so hopefully it will represent an opportunity to brainstorm around coordinating on their model ordinances campaign as well.
• Mark discussed the webcast on OFA David Plouffe and Mitch Stewart where they emphasized the importance of face to face discussions to get out the vote. We all found ourselves in agreement in this regards, and view the goal as merging the in person with the social networking to be “really cooking with gas” as Jon put it.
• The discussion of OFA strategy, especially their targeting of first time voters amongst young people, African Americans, and Latinos, made way into our analysis of the Tea Party, which does largely fall outside this spectrum being largely older and white. However, Sally brought up how she is a policy person over a party person, and many on our call (and our constituency at large) seem to have a similar foundation in the issues at hand rather than the particular political vehicles to getting there.
• Before we lay any groundwork for expanded engagement, however, we do need to discern what we are engaging around and who we are trying to engage with, along with a clear message of what we want people to do. This is a turn, as a focus on Democratic primaries would not jive with this aspect of a transpartisan strategy, but BORDC’s model ordinances campaign could be a sweet spot.
• We further assessed the specifics of the ‘who’ for our engagement, reaching clear agreement that Ron Paul Libertarians seem to be natural allies for us. We debated a more expanded outreach amongst the Tea Party set, and Ben did report that he received a positive response when he took his ‘stop government spying’ sign to a Madison Tea Party rally.  However, the key comes down to who we can work with in good faith, and there was disagreement in regards to how deep Fox News’ and the GOP’s control of Tea Party is, and how mitigating it can be for coalitioning.
• Jim mentioned that he had a contact who was amongst the original modern Tea Party members who dumped tea (at least for show) into the Boston Harbor in 2007 as part of the Ron Paul campaign, and he offered to reach out to them.
• I broached the fact that there was fantastic conversation occurring all over the email list, and that many of those kinds of posts could easily be turned into blog posts. If anyone does want to have their words put in a more permanent location, I have an open invitation to send me material (or work with me however you wish) to get it out there with full attribution, especially since the public nature of a blog makes connecting with those outside the closed architecture of our email list that much easier. On top of that, there were suggestions of commenting in the blogs of organizations like Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty in our own names and identifiably as GFR members (providing that we do so level headedly), while also attempting to guest blog in such forums as well. Jim, Sally, and Mark have plans to follow up on a blog project that could combine these strategies.

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…

We’ll be holding our latest Get FISA Right conference call and online chat May 4 at 6 pm PST. Here is the meeting page, and if you can please say hi in the chat and/or provide any ideas you have for goals or agenda items!

Call 1-219-509-8111, Access Code: 705723

Energy has been very high on our Organizing for America (previously MyBarackObama.com) email lists, and it bodes for quite a call to harness that passion as we strategize for the fight ahead.

By: Harry Waisbren

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has a new report on the broad yet ideologically diverse coalition of over thirty organizations that has come together to put a stop to this blatant example of “security theatre”.

They have already filed a formal petition with the Department of Homeland Security, and the timing is especially important as evidence comes to light showing that the privacy safeguards don’t work while the devices just are not very effective.

The organizations contend that the body scanners are not effective and are not designed to detect the type of powdered explosive that was involved in the December 25 incident. They also say that the privacy safeguards do not work and that the body scanners violate sincerely held religious belief.

Margaret Fung, Executive Director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), said: “The use of full body scanners, without any clear alternative procedure, has violated and will continue to violate the civil rights of Muslims and other religious groups. We hope the Department of Homeland Security will reconsider its policies and act quickly on this petition.”

The groups contend that body scanner systems are “uniquely intrusive” and subject all travelers to an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They also say that the Department of Homeland Security failed to comply with the Privacy Act when it did not inform the public about this new system that would collect personal information. And they say that the Chief Privacy Officer violated the law when she approved the program.

Chip Pitts, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), said “The program should be suspended. The body scanners don’t work for the purposes claimed and actually harm true security by diverting scarce resources and offending allies and populations critical for genuine intelligence.”

Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, said, “The government’s use of invasive imaging technologies strays beyond both the limits of what is constitutionally permissible and the agencies’ representation of their own capacity.”

The 30 organizations who have signed this petition include the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), the Center for the Study of Responsive Law (CSRL), the Liberty Coalition, and Public Citizen.

Certainly a very worthy effort, as “security theater” encompasses far too many of the privacy degrading policies our government has enacted—a Bush administration course that we continue to encourage President Obama to change.

I find it particularly unfortunate that Pitts’ point on how body scanners do not  “work for the purposes claimed and actually harm true security by diverting scarce resources and offending allies and populations critical for genuine intelligence” could be very easily applied to oh so many controversial civil liberties infringing policies.

Our country deserves actual security, and we just can not afford this sort of harmful stage play.

UPDATE: audio is now available here.

By: Harry Waisbren

Today, Chip Pitts, a human rights lawyer and President of BORDC, is presenting on technology’s threat to privacy at UT Dallas as part of National Library Week. This kind of expert commentary is absolutely vital to educating the citizens of our country, and the promotional material alone is valuable as Pitts clearly explains just how much is at stake:

We are getting to the point in history, with powerful, miniaturized surveillance cameras and other storage devices and databases, where our lives are continuously surveilled in secret and the data is copied, stored, shared and used with few constraints. The resulting power and control raises unprecedented risks of true totalitarianism even beyond anything in Orwell’s 1984.

It is quite daunting to even contemplate how much “surveillance, social networking and targeted behavioral marketing all put privacy under attack as never before.” However, it is quite comforting for me on a personal level when I receive confirmation that people like Pitts understand that this issue, more than any other perhaps, is as transpartisan as one could possibly be:

The truth is that privacy and other fundamental human rights transcend ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’ ideologies and are the mark of open, prosperous, safe, secure, and successful societies. This presentation will be nonpartisan and should appeal to attendees ranging from Tea Party supporters to progressives, as well as readers, librarians, business people and the general public.

The notion of appealing to Tea Party supporters may be particularly controversial to progressives and Obama-supporters in general, yet when it comes to civil liberties it is an integral one to be addressed. The Tea Party is not a monolith of an organization, and despite the myriad of reasons to be cautious about engagement, the Libertarian Ron Paulian contingent especially holds promise to be good faith partners in preventing unwarranted government intrusion into the private lives of American citizens.

I will be writing more about the Tea Party with a focus on these Ron Paul supporters soon enough (did you know they held the first tea party in 2007 after literally dumping tea into the Boston Harbor?).  For now, though, I want to encourage everyone to show support to people like Pitts that bring this Patriotic message to as broad an audience as possible.

If Orwell’s 1984 is upon us, surely the entire country should be warned at least, and it is absolutely essential for us to bring as many good faith partners into the fold to fight back as we possibly can…

UPDATE: video of Pitt’s lecture, Privacy and Technology: Protecting Autonomy in a Transparent World, available here.

By: Harry Waisbren

Big news on the FISA front and to civil libertarians at large, as District Court Judge Vaughn Walker concludes that not only was the NSA wiretapping program illegal, but that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) “should be given more weight than the state secrets privilege.”

Walker ruled that government investigators illegally wiretapped phone conversations from the Islamic charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, and two American lawyers. Marcy Wheeler explains:

Walker is basically saying, “Well, government, if you won’t give us any evidence to prove you legally wiretapped al-Haramain, and given all the evidence they’ve presented proving they were wiretapped, then they win!”

Marcy provides further analysis explaining why the Department of Justice is likely to accept Walker’s ruling, extrapolating on why she thinks he “crafted his ruling to give the government a big incentive not to appeal the case.”

If this ruling stands, al-Haramain will get a ruling that the wiretapping was illegal. The government will be directed to purge any records it collected from its databases (I’ll explain in a later post why I think this will present some problems). And it’ll be asked to pay a fine, plus legal fees. But the fines, at least ($100 per day per day of illegal wiretapping) might end up being a relative pittance–tens of thousand or hundreds of thousand of dollars. Sure, there will be punitive fines and legal fees for four years of litigation. But the government was happy to settle Hatfill and Horn for millions, why not have this be done for the same range of millions?

What al-Haramain won’t get–unless it litigates some of the other issues in the case, which likely canbe dismissed with State Secrets–is access to what the government was doing. Or details of how it came to be wiretapped illegally.

I’m betting that the government will be willing to accept the ruling that it illegally wiretapped al-Haramain in exchange for the ability to leave details of how and what it did secret, leaving the claim of State Secrets largely intact.

Hmmm, doesn’t seem like precisely the sort of accountability-inducing victory that true civil libertarians from across the political spectrum are hoping for. Then again, it certainly does seem like a positive step on the whole, and we have had far too few of those lately!

For more analysis, you can check the clip of Keith Olbermann interviewing James Risen of the New York Times about this below:

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest Patriot Act and FISA call and online chat went very well as we further discussed how to set up our foundation for the long haul, and what we need to strategically do to become increasingly effective.

In that vein, Sally published a post on our new mission and vision statements that is very worthwhile to check out, and you can find other key takeaways from the call below:

• Mark discussed the resurgence of Organizing for America during the healthcare fight, and he has continued to keep us updated as far as they go. He was very impressed with their recent work, and generally has received the impression that there is a recognition about the mistakes made in regards to the social network. We’ll continue monitoring this as closely as we can, and would love ideas (and especially help) to ensure our OFA presence (or whatever social network they move to) thrives!
• Mark also got a hold of staffers for both Judiciary committees and was told to expect nothing legislatively until the next couple of months, if ever, before the election.
• Bob brought up the pending retirement of one of the FISA fight’s earliest champions, Sen. Chris Dodd, and questioned whether his concluding senatorial career and desire for a lasting legacy could be leveraged into an even greater level of championship in his dwindling time in office. Mark is researching Dodd’s FISA speeches from the senate floor, and generally this could be something we pay increasing attention to as we strive for new proponents with backbones and guts on this issue!
• Bob also relayed a report from the ACLU on data mining that “indicates the NSA has effectively revived the Orwellian Total Information Awareness domestic-spying program that was banned by Congress in 2003.” Clearly, something for us to keep in mind as well…
• We discussed the Tea Party movement and the recent slew of racist tirades and series of threats and acts of violence that have followed the conclusion of the health care debate. Jim also provoked discussion of this within the OFA mail listserv, and it is something for us to take very seriously given our continuing efforts to reach across the aisle to likeminded libertarians. The key for us is to find those who we can work with in good faith whose primary concerns relate to civil liberties and the constitution, but we must not be naive to the existence of the radical elements that have become increasingly empowered and enflamed who do not share our democratic values of liberty for all.
• The connection of equality to civil liberties could especially come to ahead given the diversified coalition the BORDC is working to establish through their local initiatives. We need to ensure we are welcoming to any and every ethnicity and demographic group in general, which is why I personally am so excited to see the next steps from the BORDC!
• Lastly, post-meeting, Bob wrote a few comments asking questions about the future of Get FISA Right and citing the Facebook meeting stats of attendees vs maybe attendees as a rationale for dissolving our organization in the name of pragmatism. To this point, although we all should recognize the degree of disillusionment that has flourished in the wake of Obama’s capitulation both before the election on FISA and this past winter on the Patriot Act, I disagree wholeheartedly with the suggestion that we look for other organizations to take us in and that there are any irredeemable signs of organizational weakness. This is because, more than anything, we are a community, one that began on the MyBO list serv but has since been spread across the spectrum both in terms of our communications structures as well as the diversity of our differing ideologies. We are a community that has been meeting consistently and continually progressing, all while staying on the cutting edge of new media activism to do anything we can to push this issue into mainstream political discourse—-as we did before! Our numbers have ebbed and flowed in terms of participants and effort extended to the cause, mostly reflected by the legislative calendar, and although I completely understand Bob’s frustration, I think we should remember why Get FISA Right is a different organization from the other ones doing fantastic work, take stock in what we have achieved, and strategize for the fights ahead accordingly.

Thanks to Bob and Mark for joining the meeting, to Salli for posting our mission and vision statements, and Jim for instigating post-meeting conversation on the list serv, and to the entirety of our community for your attention, perseverance, and support in this effort!