Reblogged from Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition:

Starting this week, Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition is pleased to host a series of posts on protecting your online privacy, written by Bill Day.  Bill is an employment lawyer by day and a digital privacy and Internet use activist by night.  He’ll be suggesting ways you can enhance your online privacy with email encryption, anonymizing your Internet surfing, best practices, and more.  Perhaps even more importantly, he’ll be suggesting *why* you should care about and protect your digital …

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President Obama announced last week that he was not planning to veto the National Defense Authorization Act — a bill with provisions upending the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and arguably common law dating back to the Magna Carta: the right to a trial and to not be imprisoned without review.

MCCRC activists were determined to weigh in on a decision that will have terrible consequences for the rule of law in this country. We decided to select Obama’s Montgomery County, Maryland “Organizing for America” headquarters in Kensington, on Wednesday during evening phonebanking hours. Our goals: (1) to serve notice that we’re willing to protest President Obama’s plans or decisions when necessary, “even” in an election season, (2) to engage Obama volunteers about the NDAA bill, (3) to persuade some of them to call the White House — (202) 456-1414 — and urge Obama to veto the bill, and (4) to discuss with them the general “security at the price of liberty” policies that have accelerated since 9/11 — and that have been continued or even expanded under the Obama administration.

We talk with the campaign's evening office manager. Click the image for a slideshow of the protest.

Obama volunteers — whether inside the office or at the building entrance — were surprised to see us, and many told us they hadn’t heard about the NDAA bill before we had spoken with them.

For his part, the evening office volunteer manager was willing to hear from us, and listened with interest as we explained our problems with the NDAA. He said he would share the news and reasons of our visit with higher-ups in the Obama campaign organization.

He also agreed to distribute about a dozen copies of our one page, two-sided informational flyer to the evening’s volunteers. The flyer featured the New York Times editorial “Politics over Principle” on one side and excerpts from Glenn Greenwald’s “Three myths about the detention bill” on the other. As these articles explain, the bill…

• strips civilian law enforcement and courts of the power to prosecute terrorists, giving that to the military
• codifies indefinite detention of those charged, without trial
• does not preclude that American citizens might suffer the same fate, despite the Bill of Rights
• expands the scope of the “war on terror” beyond those responsible for 9/11 or harboring them, to anyone who “substantially supports” such groups and/or “associated forces”

While too much of the above has already been occurring, it’s a legally meaningful and bad thing for such practices to be expressly codified by Congress and signed by the President. It’s additionally disappointing — and ominous for democracy — that a president who campaigned on the “Hope” for “Change” so many of us shared, and who specifically opposed many of these measures on the campaign trail, might now choose to make them the law of the land.

Many of us believe it’s important to take a stand against these encroachments of our rights and liberties — wherever we are, and no matter who is responsible. By next Wednesday, we sadly anticipate that President Obama will have signed the NDAA into law.

So we’re asking everyone in our area to join us that next Wednesday, December 28, at 4:30pm at 3750 University Blvd. West, Kensington MD (map)* to protest the NDAA’s passage at Obama for Maryland headquarters. And we hope Americans elsewhere will do the same at the Obama campaign headquarters nearest to them.

UPDATE: video

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Further reading on the NDAA:

• BORDC NDAA page, Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• President Obama: Veto Indefinite Detention, ACLU “Blog of Rights”; all NDAA posts
• @BarackObama: Protect #US National Security and #VetoNDAA! (Wala, Human Rights First)
• So you think you’ve arrested a terrorist (Reilly, Talking Points Memo)
• A Bill of Rights for Some (Cole, New York Review of Books)
• New Military Detention Powers Threaten Basic Rights (RealNewsNetwork video series)

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* Public Transportation: From the Bethesda Metro Station, take Ride-On Bus #33 towards Glenmont (30 min.) or #34 towards Wheaton (37 min.). From the Wheaton Metro Station, take Ride-On Bus #34 towards Friendship Heights (7 min.)

We had three months.  It is virtually gone.  Support Russ FEiongold for senator or governor, should there be a recall election, support Al Franken on virtually everything he does, and even thank Rand Paul for being a holdout on this.  There are some things that Libertarians have absolutely right.

“All day long, we received reports of phone lines being flooded with calls, so that people couldn’t even get through,” says EFF’s activism director Rainey Reitman, “In the coming weeks, we’ll look to harness this energy into future actions in the fight against overbroad government surveillance.”

The two-week Congressional recess from April 18-May 1 is a great opportunity for “in-district” meetings with Representatives. Several clauses of the PATRIOT Act will sunset unless Congress extends them by May 27.  Most Democrats support reform, and more and more Republicans are coming out against overbroad legislation, so it’s a great opportunity — but on the other hand, there’s also the risk of a permanent extension. So now’s the time for action.

Executive Director Shahid Buttar of Bill of Rights Defense Committee explains, “With the Obama White House pushing a Bush administration policy, the next step is for Congress to check & balance documented executive abuses under the PATRIOT Act — and for We the People to press our congressional representatives to do their jobs.”

BORDC has some great suggestions about how to set up and prepare for a meeting — including “you don’t have to go it alone”, “outline your interests”, and “follow up”. They’ve also got a couple of optional preparation phone calls scheduled for next week. sign up on their web site if you’d like to be notified. ACLU’s Congressional testimony hearing has some great talking points, and so do Downsize DC, EFF, and BORDC.

Once Congress gets back, things are likely to move very quickly. But as Pew Research reported in February, the PATRIOT Act galvanizes bloggers and people on social networks across the political spectrum.   Combining that with the in-person meetings over the recess, and there’s a great chance to build on the multipartisan campaign’s successes so far.  As Sue Udry of Defending Dissent points out, “”Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle understand the country won’t stand for another rubber stamp extension of PATRIOT.  Our job is to be clear that minor reforms won’t cut it. We demand JUSTICE, not the PATRIOT Act.”

Here’s how you can help:

• Start planning now to meet with your legislators when they’re back in your districts between April 18th and May 1. BORDC has some great suggestions.
• Help get the word out! Share links and forward email action alerts. Write a letter to the editor. Talk about the PATRIOT Act with friends and family and your colleagues at work — ask what they think, tell them about your concerns, and tell them how they can get involved.
• Check back for updates — for me, Twitter is the easiest way to stay informed; or sign up with any of the organizations involved to be on their mailing lists.  Speaking of Twitter, we had a great discussion of this at #privchat on April 5, and will probably cover it again later this month. If you’re not on Twitter, here’s how you can get started.

The next six weeks are a crucial time for civil liberties in the US. So please, get involved!

jon

On April 5, 1792, President George Washington vetoed a bill — the first time in U.S. history that the presidential veto was exercised. On the anniversary of this day, we’re calling on Barack Obama to exercise his presidential powers to veto any PATRIOT Act renewal bill that does not include powerful reforms to safeguard civil liberties.

– EFF’s action alert

As a candidate, Obama repeatedly promised to reform the PATRIOT Act.  He also promised Get FISA Right, in his response to our open letter, that he’d ask for “recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”  With the battle in Congress over key clauses of the PATRIOT Act heating up again, now’s a great time to ask him to live up to his campaign promises.

The legislative situation is very fluid.  Legislation in the House is likely to drop soon.  In the Senate, Leahy’s S. 193 will be the basis for a floor debate, with amendments likely to be proposed by both sides.  The Obama Administration supports S.193, but many privacy and civil liberties organizations support the JUSTICE Act’s much stronger protections, including better oversight of the use of national security letters (NSLs) as repeatedly recommended by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, more effective checks on “sneak and peek” searches , and roving wiretaps, and revising the “material support” standard to require that prosecutors prove that defendants knowingly intended their support to further violent extremism.

By taking a strong stand for civil liberties, Obama could help shape the upcoming Congressional debate.

It’s easy to be skeptical …

Will Obama listen?  Thus far, his administration seems to have largely followed the Cheney/Bush path on civil liberties.  With so many other contentious issues in the pipe, it’s easy to be skeptical whether he’ll make a stand on this one.

That said, Obama’s not the only one we’re trying to send a message to with this call-in day.  Making a lot of noise will also catch Congress’ attention and hopefully remind the media that the multi-partisan opposition to the PATRIOT Act is continuing to organize.   So please don’t let your skepticism become an excuse for inaction.   If you’re sick of the PATRIOT Act, this is a chance to actually do something about it.  So please get involved even if you’re not sure it’ll matter.

We’ll follow up on the call-in day later in April, during the two-week recess, it’ll be a great time to meet key members of Congress in the House and Senate.   Right now, though, it’s Obama’s turn.

How you can help

Most importantly, call the White House at 202-456-1111 on April 5, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time.  Tell President Obama to keep his campaign promises by vetoing any PATRIOT Act renewal bill that lacks substantial new checks and balances to protect the privacy of innocent Americans.  EFF has some more detailed talking points.  You can RSVP on Facebook, via EFF or Demand Progress.

Between now and then …

• help get the word out!  Share links and forward on email action alerts.  Sign up on the Facebook event and invite your friends.  Talk about the PATRIOT Act with friends and family and your colleagues at work — ask what they think, tell them about your concerns, and tell them how they can get involved.
• And start planning now to meet with your legislators when they’re back in your districts between April 18th and May 1.  BORDC has some great suggestions.
• Check back for updates — At least for me, Twitter is the easiest way to stay informed; or sign up with any of the organizations involved to be on their mailing lists.  Speaking of Twitter, we will also be discussing this at #privchat on April 5.     If you’re not on Twitter, here’s how you can get started.

After February’s unexpected victory in February, now’s a key time to build on the momentum.   So please — get involved!

Julian Sanchez’ post from yesterday discusses why this is (relatively) good news . And as EFF tweeted, we have three months to organize.

Here’s a Doodle poll for our next organizing call. Please let us know when you can make it!

The grassroots anger against the PATRIOT Act is real across the political spectrum. So is the fear. And I agree with the politicians on both sides who said there’s a lot of misinformation out there. So over the next three months we need to do a lot of education, and get our message out in a way that’ll be heard.

And we need to make sure politicians get an earful from their constituents over next three months. The PATRIOT Act is an emblem of the kind of government intrusion the Tea Party and Libertarians loathes. So the Tea Party caucus — and every politician facing a likely Tea Party or Libertarian challenger in the 2012 primaries or general election — will be thinking very carefully about their votes. And ditto for progressives (and politicians facing progressive challengers).

There are a range of options and amendements on the table: permanent extension, a multi-year extension as requested by the Obama Administration, new safeguards, a reintroduced JUSTICE Act. And a lot of the people I heard calling in on CSPAN supported an outright repeal.*

For almost ten years, the PATRIOT Act has been an embarrassment to our country and even most of the politicians who have voted for it. One way or another, it’s time to do something about it.

Stay tuned for more.

jon

* speaking of which, for those of you on Facebook, here’s info about a March 12 protest in DC to repeal the PATRIOT Act.

We’re hanging out in the chat room at on http://bit.ly/feb17chat … please join us!

jon

Today’s House Floor Schedule includes possible consideration of the Senate’s amended version of H.R. 514 .  The Hill reports that the rule for considering the Senate bill is likely to be passed today, with the vote either today or tomorrow.

The Senate Judiciary will consider Sen. Leahy’s S. 193 (The USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011) on Thursday  (Feb. 17th) at 10:00am.   Watch for details on our blog, our Facebook group, and Twitter!  Here’s Senator Leahy’s statement on the 3-month extension that passed the Senate:

The bill I introduced on January 26, and that the Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider this week, is based on the bill the Judiciary Committee considered and passed with a bipartisan majority last Congress.  It includes additional adjustments made at Senator Kyl’s suggestion after the Committee reported the bill in 2009.  I will urge the Judiciary Committee to report that legislation again, and I will urge the Senate to consider and pass the improvements to the USA PATRIOT Act that we have proposed, during this short, additional three-month extension.

The ACLU’s reaction to yesterday’s Senate vote:

Every day that Congress continues to push back the February expiration deadline, the Patriot Act continues to erode one of Americans’ most basic rights – the freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into their privacy. If there has to be an extension of this law, we urge Congress to use the time well to finally rein in the pernicious impact of the intrusive provisions at stake.

In the LA Times, Lisa Mascero gives the political context

Senate Democrats are hoping to avoid interjecting the national security issue into the 2012 presidential campaign by sending their bill to the Republican-led House, which earlier this week overcame opposition from conservative lawmakers to pass an extension through Dec. 8.”

CBS news quotes Dianne Feinstein (whose S.289 is one of the bills the Senate is considering)

“It’s very important that it not expire.  It gives us more time because there are three different bills and a lot of stuff going on and you can’t sort it out. So this will give some time.”

Saxby Chambliss, top ranking Repbublican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, adds

“We’re talking about a ninety day extension to give us time to bring it up for full debate on the floor. Obviously we don’t have time to do that before the end of the week.  As of right now I have no qualms with doing that.”

AP gives some historical context:

But from the inception of the Patriot Act in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the increased surveillance powers have been subject to scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals who say they violate free speech rights and rights against unwarranted searches and seizures….

’We knew we were in a very emotional state’ after the attacks, said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. He said the provisions give the government access to sensitive personal records such as medical, library and gun records, and ‘can lead to government fishing expeditions that target,
unfortunately, innocent Americans.’

And in Rand Paul vs. the PATRIOT Act, in The Atlantic, Chris Good quotes Sen. Paul’s letter to his colleagues:

I object to these warrantless searches being performed on United States citizens.  I object to the 200,000 NSL searches that have been performed without a judge’s warrant.

I object to over 2 million searches of bank records, called Suspicious Activity Reports, performed on U.S. citizens without a judge’s warrant.

Yeah really.

jon

PS: thanks to Patrick for the links and summaries, and @threeifbybike for the tweetable list of Senate nays.  To stay in touch with the latest news, check out our blog, our Facebook group, and the #patriotact hashtag on twitter!

On our planning call last week the consensus this was the least awful of the options.  So, thanks to everybody who got involved and made enough noise that they couldn’t sneak through something more awful!

And now, looks like we’ve got some serious organizing to do.  Stay tuned for more.

Now the debate moves to the Senate, which is expected to vote on Feinstein’s S.289.  Sen. Feinstein’s bill would, without introducing any new reforms, reauthorize the PATRIOT Act until 2013. Please contact your Senators and urge them to oppose S.289, and to support the reforms in S.193 (Leahy’s bill) and the JUSTICE Act (S. 1686 from the last Congress).

As always, we welcome discussion here as to what further actions we should take as a group.

Please urge your representative to no, and ask her to support reintroducing the JUSTICE Act instead.  Phone your representative at (202) 224-3121, use POPVOX to say “vote no on 514“ and demand JUSTICE, and weigh in using email via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC.

Get FISA Right will be getting together online during the debate and during the vote.  There’s also a Day of Action on Facebook and elsewhere.  Details on all of this coming soon — watch the blog!

Despite our best efforts,  HR 514 is expected to pass easily.  Key questions to watch: how will tea partiers vote?  What about the 66 dems who voted for reauth?  what about the three potential senate candidates the Hill wrote about?   Contact your representative now, use POPVOX to say “vote no on 514″ and demand JUSTICE, via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC

After tonight’s vote, action shifts to Senate.  The odious clauses have to be reauthorized by the end of February or they sunset, and I believe Congress is on recess last week in February.  There are 3 bills, none of which match the House.  I’ll put the details in a comment for those who are interested.   Right now though, it’s the House.  Call your representative now, use POPVOX to say “vote no” and demand JUSTICE, via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC

Help get the word out!

We are finally seeing a lot more media coverage of the PATRIOT Act: Fox, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, and Al Jazeera but a lot of people still don’t know the deetails of what’s going on or how they can make a difference.   So please help getting the word out.  Here’s how

• email this info to people
• share it on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter
• leave a comment on any blog posts, articles, Facebook groups, and message board threads discussing the PATRIOT Act and make sure to include the link to the POPVOX page at: http://bit.ly/oppose514 and BORDC’s Demand JUSTICE campaign at http://bit.ly/demandjustice
• and if you’re on Twitter, tweet early and often using #patriotact hashtag — some suggested tweets in the first comment

Get FISA Right will be having a chat during the debate vote on Monday — watch our blog at http://getfisaright.wordpress.com/ for updates.  Please join us!  You can follow the PATRIOT Act discussions on Twitter at http://getfisaright.twazzup.com.    And please:

• call your representative now at (202) 224-3121
• use POPVOX to say “vote no on 514“ and demand JUSTICE
• weigh in using email via  via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC.
• and help get the word out

jon

To start with:

• use POPVOX to ask your representative know to oppose HR514 and reintroduce the JUSTICE Act
• contact your legislators via email via Demand Progress, ACLU, EFF, or Downsize DC
• or call your representative at (202) 224-3121

Then help get the word out!

• email this info to people
• share it on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter
• leave a comment on any blog posts, articles, Facebook groups, and message board threads discussing the PATRIOT Act and make sure to include the link to the POPVOX page: http://bit.ly/oppose514
• and if you’re on Twitter, tweet early and often using #patriotact hashtag — some suggested tweets in the first comment

Get FISA Right will be having a chat during the vote on Monday — watch our blog at http://getfisaright.wordpress.com/ for updates.

Have a great weekend … and make some noise!

jon

#ff for the #patriotact: @BORDC @ACLU @EFF @DemandProgress @C4Liberty @Cato @DownsizeDC @PrivacyALA @GetFISARight

#ff for the #patriotact: @SenRandPaul @JaredPolis @DennyRehberg @DeanHeller @RepKucinich @RepRonPaul @normative

And if you’re not on Twitter, now’s a great time to check it out — we’re going to have a lot of activism there over the next week. Stay tuned!

jon

- jon

Ten years after passing the USA PATRIOT Act, Congress is again debating this enormous expansion of government power. With three provisions set to expire at the end of this month, and Tuesday’s revolt in the House against fast-track reauthorization, there has never been a better time to insist that Congress restore constitutional rights.

Take action now. Demand that your congressional representatives support meaningful reforms through the JUSTICE Act.

A law so extensive that many members of Congress admitted to having never read it, the USA PATRIOT Act has been in place for too long—and there has been too little debate on its dramatic expansion of executive power—to allow a reauthorization without debate.

Millions of Americans from across the country—and the political spectrum—have already raised their voices calling for limitations on PATRIOT powers. Although he now supports extending the PATRIOT Act, President Obama himself joined this chorus of opposition during his presidential campaign.

Several reauthorization bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, but none of them would put meaningful limits on any of the PATRIOT Act powers that have been repeatedly abused.

Raise your voice today! Insist that your members of Congress check and balance the Executive Branch by introducing and supporting the JUSTICE Act, instead of rubber-stamping PATRIOT powers.

Thank you for helping defend our nation’s most fundamental values.

Shahid Buttar

The House will once again be voting on HR 514. in a “closed vote” (that is, no amendments can be offered), this time setting aside an entire hour for debate.  The House will vote on the rule tomorrow, and vote on the bill sometime next week.  Meanwhile in the Senate, the Republicans are positioning Feinstein’s S.289 (also known as S.149) as a compromise betweeen Leahy’s S.193 (also known as S.290) and  Grassley’s S.291.  Confusingly, none of those match HR 514′s timeline, so it’s quite possible we’ll see another Senate bill as well.

The complicated legislative situation makes it complicated for activism as well.  In the short term, we want to continue to focus opposition against HR514 and S.289.  There’s a range of opinions on Leahy: it is better than the other bills, but far short of what we want.  EFF and ALA are supporting it; Downsize DC opposes it.  Over the next few days, Get FISA Right vote on whether or not to endorse Leahy, using a similar process to our vote in early 2009 on a special prosecutor.

BORDC will be soft-launching a campaign on POPVOX late this week, with a full-fledged launch probably on Monday.  One of the biggest ways people can help is by trawling through the comments on the POPVOX site, rating them with the user feedback mechanism, and sending the most powerful ones to local media and bloggers.  If you’ve got some time available, please let us know by leaving a comment here or on our Facebook wall.

We’re scheduling a “Day of Action” for Monday (great suggestion from Patrick).  Before then we’ll want to collect raw material for bloggers (for example statements and videos from Ron and Rand Paul, Kucinic who else?) and instructions for how people can help on Facebook and Twitter.   Between now and then we’ll be refining the way we’re using POPVOX: BORDC will take the lead in setting up their ‘Legislative agenda’ and landing pages, and then other organizations can use that as a starting point.

There are several different media angles: Obama vs. principled members of house; populists vs. establishment; a cool new tool POPVOX; and of course individual members’ stories at the district level.  Not clear where the resources come to make progress here.

There was a lot of other interesting stuff discussed as well; here’s the detailed notes.  We’ll meet again Friday or Monday (or perhaps over the weekend) depending on how fast events move.  Stay tuned!  And as always, please share your thoughts in the comments.

Action items

- Sally and Kelli : Obama quotes
- BORDC refining landing page
- All: driving traffic to POPVOX
- Jon: write up Facebook processes
- Sally to put up blog post from Mark
- all focus on #patriotact hashtag on Twitter
- GFR: to vote on whether or not to endorse S.193
- Sally to verify that POPVOX has fixed “commercial address” problem
- Jim to follow up with Marci on “add a comment” use case

Thanks again to everybody who was there, and keep fighting the good fight!

jon

Key takeaways

• Short-term activism over the next 24+ hours focused on HR514; Thursday morning, launch a campaign focused on the Senate
• Leahy (S.193) is better than other alternatives, nowhere near as good as JUSTICE Act, unlikely to make it to Senate floor
• Clock is ticking: end-of-Feb deadline to reauth, Congress is on recess last week of the month. A two- or three-month extension is arguably the least awful of the options
• Need to start preparing now for possible scenarios like: extension until December and next battle is in the shadow of 9/11; Feinstein bill extends patriotact and FISA until 2013.
• Focus Twitter energy on the #patriotact hashtag.
• Worth investigating POPVOX as an additional tool — it’s designed to work well in a situation where advocacy orgs are aligned on an issue but not in a coalition, also good functionality for focusing on specific votes.

Next steps

• Online event tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Pacific, right before the House vote
• Next phone call/chat Wednesday.  When’s good for you?  Please fill out the Doodle poll.
• Senate campaign to launch Thursday.

Action items

• Harry and Jon write up notes from meeting
• Sallie to do a post tonight or tomorrow for the GFR blog (Chip has been giving feedback in email), Patrick to help
• ? to do tech support for the blog
• BORDC to shoot for Thursday morning launch
• Jon and Harry to set up online meeting during vote tomorrow; Jim and Patrick to get word out on Facebook, Mark on myBO
• Jon to follow up wtih rainey at EFF
• Sallie and Rachna to follow up on ‘commerical address’ PopVox issue
• Rachna to report other bugs to engineering
• Rachna to send POPVOX one-pager, ? to post on the blog
• all to try out POPVOX and let us know about any issues

There was a lot of great discussion at the meeting.  If you missed it, Harry’s excellent notes are almost as good as being there.  Even though it’s not a great situation, I was really encouraged by the energy on the call. So, let’s make some noise and see what happens!

jon

Sounds like a good time for some activism!

In aid of which, we’ve got an organizing phone call and chat at 4 p.m. Eastern/1 p.m. Pacific time today.  The goals are a shared understanding of situation and strategy,  short-term planning for HR514 activism over the next 30 hours,  and starting to prepare for the longer term battle.

The dialin number is 1-213-289-0500 passcode 869727, and there’s a chat room at the bottom of the thread. Here’s a draft agenda (all times Eastern) — feedback welcome

4:00 Introductions
4:05 Legislative and activism landscape (Shahid and others)
4:15 Strategy (Jon and others)
4:30 Brainstorming and refining ideas
4:45 Next steps
5:00 POPVOX training for anybody who wants to stick around

Patriot Act renewal: Fortunately, there’s an app for that! has some background — and if you’re by a computer during the meeting, it has some useful links as well.

Please join us!

jon

PS: Thanks to Harry for setting up CiL, to Jim and Patrick for the work on the Facebook event, and Mark for helping get the word out on myBO.

We’re having problems with the chat room … we’ll update in the comments once we have something working.

The Privacy Coalition is a nonpartisan coalition of consumer, civil liberties, educational, family, library, labor, and technology organizations that has been meeting regularly since 2001.   The members include a lot of names that are familiar from the fight against FISA and the PATRIOT Act.  It’s very much a “strange bedfellows” group politically, and the diversity of political perspectives on the call was very helpful!

Here’s the highlights

• The small government focus of incoming members (and the Tea Party and libertarian movements generally) creates opportunities for attacking appropriations.  the National Taxpayers’ Unoin/PIRG joint report on government waste is a good example of what kinds of alliances are possible.  More broadly, the way to look at this is in terms of reducing government responsibilities, not just funding.  Should the government even be in the business of ensuring aviation safety?
• The partisan focus of the upcoming Congress will also lead to a lot of desire for oversight (aka administration-bashing)
• Committee memberships are in flux.  Optimistic scenario: Markey goes to telecom, Barton gets strong position. Not clear that’ll happen.  We shall see.   New members are uncalibrated, but likely to be strongly against government regulation.  now is a great time to be reaching out to them and their staffs.
• Internationally, is there possible international alignment with the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition in the UK: saving money [and improving civil liberties] by reducing surveillance?
• On consumer privacy, the ball’s currently in FTC’s court.  A “staff report” is coming out this fall, 60 days of comments, and probably a committee report in the spring.  Nobody on the call was optimistic that the FTC will take action but who knows.  Congress will probably wait for report before acting.  There are significant risks of weak and unhelpful internet privacy legislation.  There are also significant risks of weak data breach legislation, preempting state laws, perhaps even in the lame-duck session.  We must be vigilant!
• Several privacy coalition member organizations have done some effective consumer privacy lobbying (especially in the financial reform bill).  There’s been substantial progress on the hill: getting access, solid talking points, good contacts on allies’ staff.

In this landscape, how can Get FISA Right have the most impact?  A good topic for more discussion …

jon

Activists convened at the Washington Friends Meeting House a week ago for education and brainstorming about the recent troubling FBI raids and grand jury subpoenas of peace and solidarity activists in Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan. Search warrants indicated the FBI was looking for evidence of “material support” for foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) in Colombia, Palestine, and elsewhere — but as forum-goers were to learn, the idea of ‘material support’ has been stretched past the breaking point. A diverse and engaged crowd of some forty people attended the forum, and peppered each of three speaker panels with questions before brainstorming together about the next directions they could take.

All three panels are displayed on an “11/6 forum videos” page together with links to news items, analyses, and documents referred to by panelists.

The first panel, “What’s Going On and What Are the Legal Rules in Place?,” was led off by Sue Udry, of the Defending Dissent Foundation, who spoke about the raids themselves, the shifting legal predicaments the activists involved are in, and the background of ever more intrusive, expanding uses of surveillance to address ‘terror threats’ allegedly emanating from nonviolent peace, animal rights, and environmental groups, to name a few. Using the Inspector General report on the FBI, and revelations from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and elsewhere, Ms. Udry made clear that the FBI raids are not isolated incidents, but an escalation of an already deteriorating situation.

Ms. Udry was followed by ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson. Like Ms. Udry, Ms. Richardson noted how the expanding surveillance undermined both the Constitution and real counterterrorism efforts by “dumping more hay” on the haystack, instead of focusing on searching for needles. She described the United States as a surveillance society “collecting 1.7 billion records and communications a day. … When you get to 1.7 billion, that’s not about the government going to a judge and saying “I have a suspected terrorist, I’d like to read his emails,” that’s about our government turning its extraordinary computer powers loose on the American people.” Charity and Security Network executive director Kay Guinane focused on the recent Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruling, which she and others believe probably green-lighted the raids on the peace activists. John Hardenbergh of the National Lawyers Guild discussed the grand jury process, acknowledging the old saw that prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich — though he got a laugh with the observation “it depends what the ham sandwich is accused of doing.”

Seen on the way home from the forum.

Mr. Hardenbergh opened a second panel, “What Are Our Rights?,” with the sobering statement, “If you come away with anything from this training… one: cops lie and the second lesson I’d like people to come away with is keep your mouth shut.” For instance, a law enforcement officer can commit a misdemeanor like smoking a marijuana joint — and then arrest someone who emulates him. When an audience member observed that the scenario was much more likely for a black or Hispanic citizen than a white one, Hardenbergh agreed: “…there’s a huge gulf between knowing your rights and having them respected. [...] in our society, rights are granted on a scale, and that’s based on the [social] hierarchies.”

Camera and video use during protests were discussed as well. The rules and regulations can vary from state to state and are often murky — by design. One woman recounted a story of being questioned for taking pictures of federal Katrina-related activity in 2005. When she later inquired of the Homeland Security Department what things she wasn’t allowed to photograph, she was told that security reasons prevented them from sharing that information with her!

In a final panel, “How Should the Movement Respond?,” Nadine Bloch discussed the 2008 Maryland State Police spy scandal (discussed several times on this blog), while Raed Jarrar discussed several instances of entrapments of Muslim Americans such as Yassin Aref and the recent alleged Metro bomb plotter Farooq Ahmed into crimes fabricated by the FBI.

Audience members then brainstormed a number of ideas about how to push back against surveillance and for civil liberties. Among the ideas discussed:

• developing a protocol for rapid response to incidents like the 9/24 FBI raids
• preparing to push back against possible Metro initiatives to search bags
• pushing the Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s Local Civil Rights Restoration Act (LCRRA)
• supporting local political prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian (under house arrest)
• pushing back against organized Islamophobia…

…and others. If you’re in the DC area and want to help with these alternatives or learn about others, contact Ms. Sue Udry at sue.udry@defendingdissent.org.

I got the feeling these were people who didn’t just absorb information but were interested in doing something about it. So I’m hopeful we’ll be making real progress over the coming weeks and months.

[crossposted from newsrackblog.com]

Obviously, it’s not a happy day: Feingold lost the Wisconsin Senate race, by a 52-47 margin. I’m not a Wisconsinite — maybe Harry can tell us more — but it looks like a standard issue urban-rural divide on the map at the linked CNN page.   If the map were set up to do so, I imagine the reds might be a little redder and the blues a little paler than in previous years.

What can I say?  I think the people of Wisconsin made a mistake yesterday — but I’m sure we did not.   We needn’t be sad – it’s understandable, I feel it, too, but it does no good if we indulge it for too long.

Instead, we can be proud.  Proud of the best Senator in the Senate, proud of standing by him, proud of knowing we did what we could when a tsunami of anonymous cash and propaganda came crashing in; proud of each other.  I know I am. Thanks very much for reading, for contributing to the “Get FISA Right With Russ Feingold” campaign — 63 donations! $3,351 dollars!! in just over a month!!! — and thanks for everything else all of you have done in so many other ways.

Let’s take stock, figure out what to do next, and do it.  Please consider this an invitation to think out loud about that with the rest of us.

By: Thomas Nephew

I went through a phonebank orientation for Russ Feingold remote phonebankers yesterday, and did four hours of remote location phonebanking tonight.

Tell you what: I’ll do four more on Thursday — but maybe you can make an hourly pledge in the comments and then go straight to the Get FISA Right with Russ Feingold fundraising page and make your contribution.

The orientation was attended by at least twenty(!!) people from around the country on a conference call. To get signed up for an orientation, call (414) 727-5682. You’ll get an 800 number and an access code to join the conference call.

Our orientation guy was very good: concise, enthusiastic, organized. He sent materials by email so we had an agenda is and a handout describing the online data entry system to look at.   Obviously, with a week to go before the election, I think it’s safe to say the campaign is thinking about getting out the vote (GOTV) — i.e., Lincoln’s old line “find out who your friends are and get them out to vote.”

And that proved remarkably easy in the phone calls I made.  When I actually reached someone — as ever, maybe 40 percent of the time — it was almost always “Oh yes!” … “Straight Democratic ticket!”... “I’ve always voted for Russ!”… “We’ll be there!” Some said they’d vote early or absentee, some said they’d vote on Election Day — a sentiment I understand, since I kind of like voting that day too.

Needless to say, some people hung up on me or weren’t thrilled about calls later in the evening. Also, a small fraction turned out to be wavering or undecided voters. Occasionally, people would need to know where to vote early — almost always City Hall or “Village Hall” — and I’d go to one of the votenowwisconsin.com tabs I’d set up for the locales I seemed to be calling — Edgerton, Evansville, Milton, some others.  One of them was from Harmony, WI — and to my befuddlement, four of those showed up.  Wisconsin is clearly a very harmonious state!

The “VoteBuilder” online data entry software works superbly and the data are well maintained — meaning there were never times where the number was wrong, though (again, as ever) there were often times where it was disconnected or not in service. Once one call was over, you entered the “not home” or “support”/”early vote” information, saved, and got a new person to call. Nice features: (1) sometimes other persons in the household were listed, so you could switch gears and ask for Joe instead of Betty Smith; (2) a “note” field let you describe what happened in the call if need be — wants a yard sign, etc.

Folks, I promise this $3,000 goal is the final one — and we’re very, very close.  Could we push it over the top sooner rather than later, so the Feingold campaign has just a little more to work with between now and Election Day?  Let’s support Feingold one more time.    Thanks!

The third and final debate between Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson was held on Friday night at Marquette University; moderator Mike Gousha posed some questions himself, and citizens from around the state added those of their own. The roughly ninety minute debate can be seen online in two parts provided by television station WISN. As the Associated Press report relayed by WISN noted, Feingold’s primary tactic was to suggest his opponent remained an unknown quantity:

Feingold accused his opponent at least half a dozen times of ducking questions by resorting to vague cliches instead of offering specific arguments. “I’ve never seen a larger gap between questions and what’s said in response than any debate I’ve ever been in,” he said. Feingold said he himself offered specifics, for example a 41-point plan to help control federal spending. Johnson said the plan would cut $25 billion per year at a time when the deficit is $1,400 billion. That “doesn’t cut it,” he said. Feingold shot back that at least he’s providing a plan, whereas his opponent hadn’t done even that.

The debate was also characterized by an almost exclusive focus on the economy and the federal budget. In fact, foreign policy only barely made it into the debate, as moderator Rousha’s final questions: “How long should American troops remain in Afghanistan?” , and “besides the terrorist threat represented by Al Qaeda and other similar terrorist groups, what concerns you most in foreign policy, what keeps you up at night?”

I’ve appended these exchanges to the transcripts of the two prior debates — but both candidates gave essentially the same answers they did in those debates: Johnson felt the war in Afghanistan should continue as long as required to deny it as a haven to Al Qaeda, while Feingold urged a timetable for withdrawal. Likewise, both candidates agreed that Iran was a threat — and Feingold once again made clear he had no qualms even about supporting a military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Johnson added North Korea — and then added, “That’s one of the reasons we should not have moved the missile shield from the Czech Republic and Poland. That was a real mistake.”

That gave Feingold the chance to observe — with a priceless, puzzled expression — “If your concern is North Korea and Iran, I don’t know how a missile shield relating to Russia is the answer. Seems odd.”

Not if you’re Ron Johnson — who seems to specialize in non sequitur answers to every issue of the day: tax cuts for the wealthy as part of a plan to return budgets to balance; opposing the stimulus bill to return America to prosperity, scrapping health care reforms and starting from scratch because health care is that important.

Support Russ Feingold now!

The good news is that Feingold has pulled into a statistical tie with Johnson according to a recent Wisconsin poll. The bad news, of course, is that the political climate is such that Feingold has needed to come back at all to get to this point, and that the election remains a toss-up, given the vastly unequal resources being spent on it.

But for those of us who value Feingold as a consistent voice for civil liberties and for a rational foreign policy, this debate and those before it should also be troubling in other ways.

First, it’s telling that not a single citizen question focused on either of those issues. While an economy that remains frail at best is undoubtedly going to be uppermost in people’s minds, the side effect is to relegate fundamental questions of war and peace, liberty and security to the back burner at best — or to some forgotten jar in the cupboard at worst.

Second, should Johnson win, he has given ample signals (e.g., repeated, Cheney-esque emphases on missile defense and “very strong intelligence capability”) of being a nearly 180 degree turnaround from Feingold’s positions. Johnson stands for a return (to the extent we’ve even managed to leave it behind) to the Bush-Cheney vision of America as a kind of militant Stratofortress, intervening and bombing wherever there’s even the prospect of enemies finding a haven. Not only that, but with his view that Senators should discuss such matters in private, rather than take public stands, Johnson affirmatively believes in permanently relegating such issues to “back burner” or “forgotten” status.

Still the right symbol for
“Get FISA Right”?

Finally — and this is simply my personal opinion, not one that should unduly influence allied groups like “Get FISA Right” or others — we should recognize that we need not always fully agree with even a Senator we esteem as highly as we do Russ Feingold, just as we don’t always agree (to put it mildly) with President Barack Obama’s decisions before and after assuming office. If the past ten years have shown anything, it’s that peace, security, and civil liberties are closely connected issues. It may be time to put our own allegiances to to civil liberties and to peace ahead of those to parties, men, and campaign slogans or insignia when the situation calls for that.

To get to the point, as scary as Iran could be with nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union was scary too — and we emerged from that era with our planet intact and our hands clean of beginning at least that war. There is little we could do that would more certainly guarantee Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons than attacking their enrichment facilities; those facilities are dual-use, to be sure — but one of those uses is legitimate. Nuances get lost in debates, but Feingold’s repeated insistence that “nothing is off the table” with respect to Iran are words he may want to have back some day, just as many of us wish we hadn’t supported the Iraq War at any juncture. Let’s hope we don’t have to repeat the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan — with the people of yet another country paying the fullest price for it, but ourselves paying ever higher prices in fear and curtailed liberties as well.

All that said, I have no doubt whatsoever which man I’d rather have in the Senate if this issue is debated. We need Senators like Russ Feingold who aren’t just willing to say “seems odd” about the non sequiturs of men like Johnson now or Bush and Cheney in the past, but to speak out against and vote against their plans. I continue to be proud to support the most independent, principled, liberty-defending man in the Senate: Russ Feingold. Let’s continue to stand by him in every way we can.