Get FISA Right

First, the big news: Patriot act reauthorization will be voted on next week in SJC.

For today, the mark up of the Patriot Act reform bills conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee started in a disappointing fashion by way of an amendment–passed without any discussion– substituting Committee Chairman Leahy’s base bill with a Leahy-Feinstein bill watering down civil liberties protections.

EFF reports that there is somewhat of a silver lining, but there is still some bad news:

Intel will not be asserting jurisdiction over the PATRIOT renewal process and doing its own bill, which would ultimately be much worse than anything coming out of Judiciary. The bad is that the negotiated bill has even fewer PATRIOT reforms than the original Leahy bill, which already had much fewer reforms than the Feingold/Durbin JUSTICE bill. The reforms that the bill does contain, like the Leahy bill before it, only address PATRIOT and do not address reform of the FISA Amendments Act at all, unlike JUSTICE.

Glenn Greenwald relays an even more disappointing perspective by way of Mike German, long-time former FBI agent and current Policy Counsel at the ACLU, who notes that “There is still a chance amendments can be made to insert provisions of the Feingold bill, but the starting point is much closer to the status quo” [bolding in original].

The uphill battle against the status quo was evident in a failed Durbin amendment “based on JUSTICE, which would raise the standard for the issuance of PATRIOT Section 215 orders for business records.” A sneak and peak amendment from Feingold did pass though, changing the number of days the government can delay notice to a searched party to 7 from 30.

The mark-up ended rather abruptly, and confusion reigned in our chat as the webcast cut out. Shortly after though EFF explained:

The committee has moved onto other business without considering other amendments; Senator Leahy insists that any remaining amendments (Feingold says he has 2 or 3) and a vote on final passage of the bill should occur at next Thursday’s meeting.

No matter what happened today, we now have more time to help rectify the wrongs and push for a better bill. EFF emphasized their call to action again, as do we at Get Fisa Right.

This still remains our best chance yet for meaningful PATRIOT Act reform, and the fight for our civil liberties goes on!

—-Harry

The PATRIOT Act markup hearing starting in a couple of hours going on now is our best chance to influence the Senate legislation for significant reforms — Tracy Viselli’s post on Reno and its Discontents and Jessica Pielko’s on Care2 have background.  We’re going to try some last-minute Twitter  activism to kick things off.  Please help out if you get a chance by tweeting one or more of these over the next couple of hours.

If you’re not on Twitter already, what better time to start?  See our If you’re new to Twitter page for easy instructions and a guide for decoding what all this means.

@SenArlenSpecter Support the JUSTICE Act! Fix the Patriot Act and FISA http://act.ly/ln (please RT)

RT @getfisaright: please join us online today for Patriot Act activism at http://bit.ly/oct1hearing — and please RT!

RT @myrnatheminx: The JUSTICE Act: a chance to get FISA right. http://is.gd/3Qp0a #patriotact

RT @theseminal: Tomorrow, a chance to fix FISA and the PATRIOT Act http://bit.ly/hOrfm

RT @Hegemommy: Here’s how you can help end the PATRIOT Act http://bit.ly/3vSR6u

You can follow along at http://getfisaright.twazzup.com/ … and please join us for discussions and activism during the hearing at http://bit.ly/oct1hearing

We’ll be back with another round once the hearing starts.

jon

PS: if you’re also on digg, we’re trying to put these a couple of stories over the top.  Please digg here and here.  Thanks again!

Tomorrow’s showtime.  The hearing starts at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. The buzz on Twitter this afternoon was encouraging, with a lot of great tweeting going on about American Library Association, EFF, CREDO Action’s alerts — and ours, too.  The Facebook group continues to grow, although somewhat more slowly than Twitter; and we’re close to making ‘popular’ on digg.*   There’s definitely a lot of energy around the issue.  Will we be able to tap into it?

One big question is how much pickup we get overnight and early in the morning from bloggers.  The Wilshire and Washington folks have something on the Huffington Post; Jason Rosenbaum just posted on The Seminal; will others follow their lead?   Our Calling all bloggers post has simple talking points … if you know any bloggers, please pass it along to them.

One way or another, we’ll get together tomorrow during the hearing for activism during the hearing.   We’ll keep http://bit.ly/oct1hearing updated with the top-priority actions as we target specific Senators on the phone, Twitter, and Facebook.   And of course we’ll also be sharing them via Twitter.

Twitter activism is the fastest of any of the social networks, and so that’ll be where a lot of the action is tomorrow.  If you’re not a member already, please consider joining — it’s easy to sign up, and our If you’re new to Twitter page has getting-started information.   An extra 20 or 30 people will makes a big difference.

Other than that, tonight’s the night to get the word out.  Please pass the link to Jason’s post or my post on Pam’s House Blend.  Retweet early and often.  Share links on Facebook.

And get ready for tomorrow; with luck, it could be pretty wild!

jon

* Speaking of which, if you haven’t dugg yet, please do.  If you’re not a member, it’s easy to sign up.

Wthashtag’s stats for the #patriotact tag.
Ready to go viral?

Update: about 5 minutes after I made this post, Jason Rosenbaum’s Tomorrow, a chance to fix FISA and the PATRIOT Act went up on The Seminal.  More like that, please!

Last summer Get FISA Right’s growth on my.barackobama.com was fuelled by the blogosphere. The big blogs of the progressive blogosphere sparked things, and the the technology-in-politics blogs like TechPresident, Clickocracy, Wired, Slashdot started covering the activism story.   Since then, there successful blog-fuelled social network activism campaigns propelled by feminist, LGBTQ, migrant rights blogs.

So in the last-minute push to the Senate Judiciary Committee markup, it would be great to get support from bloggers of all stripes.  We realize it’s incredibly short notice and there’s a lot going on.  It doesn’t have to be a fancy post — something short and to the point is enough to make a difference.

If you get a chance between now and lunchtime on Thursday, please try to something up with three key messages for your readers:

• Now is the best chance yet to fix the PATRIOT Act and reform FISA
• Call and email their Senators
• Please join us online Thursday for activism and discussion during the hearing: http://bit.ly/oct1hearing

We’ve got lots more resources — links, embed code for videos and petitions — on our wiki at http://bit.ly/oct1bloggers.   Or heck, just copy the three bullet points above as an action alert and include the “Stop spying on Americans” image above .  One way or another, please try to find a way to help.

And if you do post about it, please drop a comment in this thread so we can retweet it!

Thanks,

jon

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup of the PATRIOT Act tomorrow today is a prime opportunity for activism.  The hearing’s webcast, so we’ll be able to follow along.  We can share links with each other via email, Facebook, and Twitter … and we can discuss and coordinate action.

Please join us!

We’ll be keeping http://bit.ly/oct1hearing up-to-date with the latest priorities and discussions.  If you RSVP on Facebook or Anyvite, we’ll update you tomorrow morning with the latest updates.

See you there!

jon

The hearing tomorrow seems like a great time to have free-flowing discussion on email as well as other places.  Usually we moderate the list to keep from overwhelming people with email.  Should we turn off moderation?

Thoughts?  Please vote yes/no and (if you feel like it) share your thinking in the comments.

Either way, if you’re interested in joining us during the hearings tomorrow, please RSVP on Facebook or Anyvite.

Below you’ll find a round up of Patriot Act and FISA reform news:

If you haven’t seen it yet, make sure to check (and digg) Jon’s post on Pam’s House Blend.

The newly released Coalition Letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Urging Adoption of JUSTICE Act Amendments During Markup of Senator Leahy’s Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill.

There are various “side by side” comparisons of the bills from Marcy Wheeler of FireDogLake.com, Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute, and the CDT.

The American Library Association sent out an action alert.

Ed Brayton from Science Blogs argues for the necessity to roll back the Patriot Act.

—-Harry

Mark Dorlester posted this to our Organizing for America list … interesting, so I wanted to share it more broadly  — jon

Being a long-time Maryland activist, I have had interactions with Sen Ben Cardin (D-MD), co-sponsor of the Leahy Patriot Act Renewal bill to undergo markup tomorrow (Oct 1).  I first met him more than 30 years ago.

In pressing his staff for Cardin to support incorporate the Feingold JUSTICE Act provisions into the Leahy-Cardin bill, I emphasized that, contrary to Bush and Obama assertions, the Constitutional oath for President (Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 8) says nothing about keeping the people safe.  It requires the President to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution), and hence urging a Senator to vote in Congress to violate the Constitution in the name of allegedly protecting the people is … unconstitutional.

I specifically mentioned the assertions of certain White House and DOJ staff who are pressing, e.g., Dianne Feinstein of the Judiciary Committee, to block JUSTICE Act provisions.

I got a rather good reception.  We’ll see tomorrow.

-Mark

My post Our best chance yet to fix the PATRIOT Act and FISA! is going to hit Pam’s House Blend front page later this morning.  Please check it out!

Here’s the “how you can help” section:

• On Twitter: tweet the link to this post. Then follow the action on the #patriotact hashtag and retweet early and often! Here’s three tweets to start you out:
  

  Our best chance yet to fix the #PatriotAct and FISA. Support the Justice Act! http://bit.ly/justiceact Pls RT

  @SenArlenSpecter Support the JUSTICE Act! Fix the #patriotact and FISA http://act.ly/ln (please RT)

  Call @SenArlenSpecter at (202) 224-4254 and ask him to Support the JUSTICE Act!

• On Facebook: share this link in your feed, and join the PASS the JUSTICE Act group.
• On the phone: call your Senators and ask them to support the JUSTICE Act. You can find our talking points here.
• On the web: CREDO Action, ACLU, EFF and DownSizeDC all have sites which make it easy to email your Senators.
• If you blog: repost these instructions

As always, any assistance is appreciated!

Tomorrow’s our best chance to fix the #PatriotAct and FISA. Help Support the Justice Act http://bit.ly/justiceact Pls RT

@SenArlenSpecter Support the JUSTICE Act! Fix the #patriotact and FISA http://act.ly/ln (please RT)

A preliminary assessment of PATRIOT Act reform bills (via @normative) http://is.gd/3OMiO

RT @getfisaright: retweeting help, please: http://is.gd/3OMLe #patriotact #privacy

Thanks much,

jon