The following posting is intended as part of the background information for a forthcoming Get FISA Right chat on the technological issues in “getting FISA right” or more generally balancing needed foreign intelligence gathering with the rights reserved and protected in the Constitution. We eagerly seek your comments here and your participation in the chat. Please post as comments here not only critiques of this posting, but also any ideas regarding who should participate in such a discussion, when we should hold it and any of the ideas that should be discussed.

We will also discuss the logistics of the chat at our next regular organization conference call or two Please join us.

– Jim Burrows

Introduction

One of the knottiest problems in “getting FISA right” is the question of precisely how to insure that our Constitutionally guaranteed rights are protected while any email is being spied upon. It’s a purely technical problem in one sense, but one that has huge repercussions in the Constitutional and political areas. As a dedicated nerd and and civil libertarian, let me see if I can lay it out clearly.

The Goals

In US legal theory, our rights are inherent in us as human beings. We are “endowed by our Creator” with them, as the Declaration of Independence says. They are not granted by a King or a piece of paper. Our Constitution is not a grant of rights to the people. It is a grant of power to the government. It lays out what constitutes that government, what it can legitimately do. It is very specific about what what the government may not do in the area of surveillance. It says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This means that the explicit search warrants based on probable cause and sworn testimony must be used for:

• Any surveillance by the government within the US
• Any surveillance by the US government upon “US persons” anywhere in the world.

On the other hand it is relatively well accepted that we allow the government to spy on the nation’s foreign enemies, and that the US courts need not issue warrants for spying on foreigners outside the US.

Last year’s FISA amendment clearly sought to bring the law into line with these principles regarding warrantless surveillance of foreigners in foreign places, US court warrants on US persons within the US and FISA Court warrants in the gray zone between. It is highly debatable whether it has succeeded, but these are clearly the goals.

The Technicalities

The government’s authority and responsibilities in the area of surveillance, search and seizure depend upon identifying “US persons” (US citizens and resident aliens) and on identifying where people are while being spied upon (within the US jurisdiction or without). But how do you identify such people and their location when dealing with email? The following diagrams and discussion will attempt to summarize the issues involved. Be warned: they are both gross over-simplifications and still rather complex.

First, let us consider three people and a handful of the computer process (both in terms of hardware and software) involved in someone spying on an email exchange.

The sender composes an email in some sort of mail client. This can either be a mail program such as Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple’s Mail.app on the user’s own computer (or cell phone or other device), or a web application running on a server such as the GMail interface running at Google. The mail client packages the email in the electronic equivalent of an envelope and transmits it to a mail server which may be the same server used by the recipient, but which is more likely to be a different one which passes it on to the recipients server either directly or through one or more intermediaries. Eventually, the recipient’s mail client program fetches the mail from the recipients’s server and the recipient reads it. The recipient’s mail client, like the sender’s can be on the user’s own computer or some remote server.

Messages are transmitted to the recipient’s mail server by mail clients and intermediate mail servers using a protocol called SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol), which is layered on top of the TCP/IP protocols that power the internet. At each level of the “stack” of protocols, the messages are broken into some form of source address, destination address and message content. In TCP/IP, the addresses consist of a set of four numbers, something like “32.167.111.84“. In SMTP, the addresses are the the familiar email address format such as “John.Doe@XYZ.com”

Each of these forms of address carries with it some implication as to the identity and location of the person or the machine named. Yet, none of them is entirely reliable. Suppose, for instance, that we have an email addressed as follows:

From: Mohamed.Atta@alQaeda.org
To:   FISAexample@gmx.co.uk
Subj: Next Month’s meeting

A quick glance suggests that it is being sent by a member of a group of interest to someone in the UK. Further, it is rather easy to find out that the domain name “alQaeda.org” is registered in South Korea, and “gmx.co.uk” is registered in the UK to a company, GMX AG, whose headquarters are in Munich, Germany. Unfortunately, as it turns out, “FISAexample@gmx.co.uk” is registered to a US citizen, namely me. It is one of several email addresses that I have in the UK and Germany. I have family in the UK and have been doing substantial genealogical research in Germany. I didn’t want to attract a lot of spam to any of those addresses, so I created this one for this article.

The IP addresses used in the actual packets that transport the email around the internet are not that much more useful in determining either identity or location. To illustrate, suppose our spy has managed to tap the cloud in figure #1. They might see an SMTP packet that looks like this:

In this example I’ve shown not only the To and From fields, but also, in abbreviated form, some of the “Received” fields. These are basically the equivalent of the postmark in electronic mail, mail servers are supposed to add them as they pass the mail along its route from sender to recipient. Not all servers do, and as a you may have read with regard to spam and “phishing” attacks, forged ones may be added by badly behaved programs. Nonetheless, they do offer some indication of how the mail has moved through the network.

The Source and Destination addresses show that the packet is being sent from 74.125.92.27, a server at Google, to 213.165.64.100, a server at GMX. The Received headers show that the Google server got it from another Google server using the private IP address 10.224.89.80, who in turn got it from 173.48.201.218, a machine using an IP address allocated to it by a DHCP server at Verizon. In this case, that machine is a router between my mail client running on my Mac and the mail server at Google.

A sufficiently well informed filtering agent could perhaps associate the Verizon address with its various DNS aliases and dynamic DNS addresses and the name I used in creating them with the name I gave when I created one or both of the email accounts, and by that means infer that I was at home at the time that the email was sent. However, the mail could have been queued earlier or sent by someone else in my household. Knowing for sure that the sender or the recipient is me and that I was in the US and not the UK at the time the email was sent is very difficult, even though I used my own name for all of the various registrations.

The Implications

According to the FISA act as amended in 2008, email and other electronic surveillance must be targeted at non-US persons outside the US, or must have a warrant. In somewhat greater detail, the following rules apply. The parenthetical notes are the section numbers from the US Code excerpts at the bottom of this article.

1. Surveillance may target persons outside the US (a), but not people known to be in the US (b.1), or US persons reasonably believed to be outside the US (b.3), or communications involving only people known to be in the US (b.4), and may not be used to indirectly target people believed to be in the US (b.2), nor violate the Fourth Amendment (b.5).
2. Further, the targeting procedures must be designed to insure that only persons believed to be outside the US are targeted (d.1.A) and to prevent the intentional targeting of communications involving only people known to be in the US (d.1.B)
3. Finally, there must be procedures to minimize the acquisition and retention and prevent the dissemination of private information about US persons without their consent, and to guarantee that the identities of uninvolved US persons not be revealed when information is disseminated.

The Law

The key passages in defining what traffic can be targeted are as follows. The full text of the 2008 amendment to the FISA act from which these were taken can be found at depublican.org.

1. [...] the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information.
2. Limitations- An acquisition authorized under subsection (a)
   1. may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
   2. may not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
   3. may not intentionally target a United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
   4. may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States; and
   5. shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
3. [...]
4. Targeting Procedures-
   1. REQUIREMENT TO ADOPT- The Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall adopt targeting procedures that are reasonably designed to
      1. ensure that any acquisition authorized under subsection (a) is limited to targeting persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States; and
      2. prevent the intentional acquisition of any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.
   2. [...]
5. Minimization Procedures-
   1. REQUIREMENT TO ADOPT- The Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall adopt minimization procedures that meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 101(h) or 301(4), as appropriate, for acquisitions authorized under subsection (a).
   2. [...]

The “section 101(h)” referred to above is as follows:

1. “Minimization procedures”, with respect to electronic surveillance, means—
   1. specific procedures, which shall be adopted by the Attorney General, that are reasonably designed in light of the purpose and technique of the particular surveillance, to minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons consistent with the need of the United States to obtain, produce, and disseminate foreign intelligence information;
   2. procedures that require that nonpublicly available information, which is not foreign intelligence information, as defined in subsection (e)(1) of this section, shall not be disseminated in a manner that identifies any United States person, without such person’s consent, unless such person’s identity is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance;
   3. notwithstanding paragraphs (1) and (2), procedures that allow for the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes; and
   4. notwithstanding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), with respect to any electronic surveillance approved pursuant to section 1802 (a) of this title, procedures that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under section 1805 of this title is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.

The law, then, does make serious attempts to insure that the principles stated above are followed. The surveillance allowed here is supposed to be targeted at non-US persons outside the US. US persons and anyone in the US is supposed to have their rights protected, and failure to do so is a crime as well as a violation of Constitutionally protected rights.

That’s what is supposed to happen. But, exactly how is that to be implemented, given the technicalities listed above? Aye, there’s the rub. What slips may there be ‘twixt cup and lip? How is a computer program to know that an email message being delivered between two specific IP addresses with a given set of sender and recipient email addresses represents Constitutionally protected communication or the target of legitimate surveillance? If it spreads its net too wide, who has committed the crime? Was the error intentional? Or was it just a bug? Is being a bug a mitigating circumstance? Is an overzealous program that was “just obeying orders” innocent? Or, regardless of whether it was a bug or intentional, is it a crime?

The law as seen here is very clear about what the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence must do. It specifies the reviews to be conducted by them, the FISA Court, the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and even the agency heads. However, as one gets closer to the actual technology of spying, it becomes less and less clear.

Recent Revelations

It should not be surprising, then, that word has begun to leak out that the first NSA review shows that the targeting and minimization procedures have failed to an unacceptable degree. The first of the semi-annual reviews shows, we are told by reliable sources, that surveillance has been too broadly targeted and the abrogation of rights has been insufficiently minimized. Please note tat the NSA themselves are finding this. Their own review, being conducted in keeping with the law, and not some outside agency, is showing that there is a problem.

In a sense, this means that the law is working. An attempt has been made to implement the law, and to monitor the success of the targeting and minimization procedures. Problems are being found and reported. Presumably attempts will be made to correct these problems. But in just as true a sense, it means that the law has failed, at least this first test. The NSA has proven unable (in the first round) to carry out its mission and protect the rights of US citizens. They have violated the Constitution and quite probably committed a crime. That they were trying to avoid that, but failed makes it all that much worse. By all accounts the folk at NSA are highly competent, and they are failing to follow rules that they knew.

And so, here we are: face to face with a snarly, nasty technical problem facing the question of how to, or even if it is possible to create software procedures that implement the current law, or the Constitutional requirements and principles upon which that law is based. What, exactly, in the precise terms that computers and technology require, does it mean to “get FISA right”?

By: Harry Waisbren

We have made a lot of ground on some of our final conceptions for our open letter to the president, both during our November 10th Patriot Act and FISA organizing call and through messages voiced to us through a variety of communications channels aggregated in the comments section of our last update.

We can use this post and its comments section to go through and discuss some of the broader changes and additions to consider as we take our final steps to edit and launch the letter:

Need for a crisp call to action

We have long been going over the need for a crisp call for action. On our last call, we decided on focusing on transparency from Obama and ending the back room deal making that have defined this debate since the beginning.

Our ask is simple: we want him to speak out about his position more clearly, and then act in accordance with it.

If he does this, then it removes the need for back room deals in the first place…

Broadening the scope

This was another topic broached on our last call in light of a desire to focus more on the larger principles behind the matter rather than on specific, more temporary legislation.

The Patriot Act and FISA are both aspects of a much larger debate about civil liberties in our society that has been going on since the founding of the country. Focusing on the broader issues at hand, such as the role of intelligence in our society, could be prudent.

Tone

Linda Young discussed the benefits of emphasizing working together and avoiding an overtly combative tone. This has long been considered a proof point for GFR, as both our original letter and his response were polite in nature, and clear aspirations towards a civil discourse have been cited as an instigator for his engagement with us.

However, this most definitely does not mean that we must restrict our passion or mask our disappointment. We must be frank and open about how we feel, especially since that is our primary ask from him.

Editing for length

Craig Nazor pointed out that we should edit this letter down to avoid any redundancy. This makes a lot of sense also in terms of being conscious of the length in order to maximize the chances for it to be read.

This project is collaborative by design, so please do let us know what you think (especially if you disagree with the broader changes discussed).

Our open letter has already reaped the rewards possible only through harnessing the power of a crowd, so keep it up!

By: Harry Waisbren

Various news items out to report. Thought this would be a good time to aggregate them, and if you see any others please put the links in the comments section:

Chris Strohm of GovExec.com writes about the Democratic impasse in regards to the Patriot Act.

Declan McCullagh of CBSNews.com writes about the implications to privacy and news as DOJ asks for visitor lists from news sites as they did for indymedia.us.

Julian Sanchez of the CATO institute posts a clarifying post about how The Patriot Act ‘Lone Wolf’ provision is irrelevant to Fort Hood.

Marcy Wheeler cautions us about Sen. Lieberman’s potential exploitation of Ft. Hood to eliminate the Lone Wolf provision, extrapolating on  Julian Sanchez’s definitive piece about Lone Wolf.

Spencer Ackermann posts about the failure of our already expansive surveillance apparatus from preventing the Ft. Hood massacre.

an investigation is necessary to determine if the intelligence agencies did, in fact know about Hasan and why his murderous attack nevertheless succeeded. At this point “radicalization” in the armed services — a surely minute and peripheral concern, even after Hasan — is less important than determining why it was that the architecture of surveillance, pushed on the public so heavily as vital to preventing precisely what happened at Ft. Hood, failed us.

Marcy Wheeler has more analysis about Nidal Hasan and Ft. Hood.

Chip Pitts relayed this article about complaints from lawyers about a “second class” judicial system being developed through military commissions.

By: Harry Waisbren

We once again had a very exciting Patriot Act and FISA reform call with some major action items before us. We’ll have much more to report about where we’re heading soon enough with a myriad of opportunities for participation, but for now you can check here for the call’s transcript/chat log notes or below for some of the key takeaways:

Legislative situation

• The Reyes amendment will be marked up in the House Intelligence Committee within the next few weeks
• We have to make sure that it is the House Judiciary Committee bill and not the House Intelligence Committee bill that is the template when it does come to the floor
• Rep. Nadler has introduced H.R.984 – State Secret Protection Act of 2009, which correlates to our work in terms of the opaqueness to how privacy and civil liberties issues are dealt with.
• Secrecy remains a major unifying concept here, and runs specifically counter to Obama’s promises of transparency

Upcoming Tweetchats and Open Letter

• There is a growing bipartisan concern for this lack of transparency, and we are pushing forward on utilizing the format of our highly successful tweetchats last week to coordinate with an increasingly ideologically and demographically diverse constituency
• Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute endorsed this strategy and agreed to participate, and we will be working with him in particular as we pursue conservatives and libertarians who care about these issues
• Jim Burrows discussed the difficulty of truly getting FISA right, which prompted the idea of utilizing a tweetchat to engage the technical community to share information about what is really going on amidst such secrecy
• We will be utilizing a tweetchat to launch our open letter to President Obama. We will be making final edits to the letter over the next few days (with more integral help from Amy), and are planning on launching next week.
• However, we most definitely could still use any of your input as we race to the finish, so please chime in with any/all of your ideas!

Thanks to Julian, Jim, Amy, Mark, and Jon for joining the call. We have a whole lot in motion, so stay tuned!

By: Harry Waisbren

Today has been a great one for the fight for civil liberties! The House Judiciary Committee met to finish their markup of the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009, and low and behold, we receive a big win as the HJC voted 16-10 to send the bill to the floor with most of the major reforms left intact.

The hearing had began inauspiciously as an amendment by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) to preserve the “lone wolf” provision was narrowly defeated 15-15. However, apprehension gave way to appreciation as we saw civil liberties champions emerge as Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) introduced a House version of the JUSTICE Act (which would fix the Patriot Act while also repealing telecom immunity) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) proposed and passed an amendment that requires the declassification and periodic review of FISA and NSL programs.

With these victories in hand, we need to ensure that momentum does not wane as we gear up for the fight ahead. We are already planning for our next organizing call for this upcoming Tuesday, so please let us know what times you can make it.

In the meantime, our suggested tweets provide a variety of options to send, but we are focusing on the following tweets in a carrot and stick approach to these legislators in particular:

@RepTammyBaldwin congratulations on your amendment passing. Thanks for supporting the constitution! http://act.ly/Rh0 #patriotact

RT @eff: thx to Rep. Holt for intro’ing House version of JUSTICE Act to fix #PATRIOTact & repeal telco immunity! http://eff.org/r.5b2

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for temporary security. How un-American! http://act.ly/Res Pls RT #patriotact

Furthermore, we are pushing forward on our Open Letter to President Obama in a big way, and are striving for as much input as we can get for this crowdsourced effort. We have been making some major progress, but definitely want as much help as we can attain for this 21st century grassroots effort.

Lastly, the two days largely spent tweetchatting away in the Patriot Act Action Hub have been an enormous success. The conversation contained important opinions from experts and lay people alike, and the swift actions and information sharing fostered through the hub are clear examples of the very best qualities that the medium has to offer.

Rounding thank yous to Amy, Kevin, Julian, Jim, Brandon, Rebecca, Jon, Korkie, Jeff, and Brishen for chiming in the chat log, to the myriad of tweeters whose tweets were aggregated in the feed, and to anyone else who followed along. The democratic discourse we engaged in over the past few days is a sort of which our founding fathers only could have dreamed!

Update: even more great news–the HJC referred the State Secrets reform bill to the House floor.

By: Harry Waisbren

Below you’ll find our latest tweeting points we’ve been trying to relay:

@RepTammyBaldwin congratulations on your amendment passing. Thanks for supporting the constitution! http://act.ly/Rh0 #patriotact

RT @eff: thx to Rep. Holt for intro’ing House version of JUSTICE Act to fix #PATRIOTact & repeal telco immunity! http://eff.org/r.5b2

Come help us craft our open letter to President Obama about the #patriotact: http://bit.ly/2fDWDb

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for temporary security. How un-American! http://act.ly/Res Pls RT #patriotact

Thanks to Reps Conyers, Nadler, & Watt for standing up for the Constitution at today’s #patriotact hearings!

@RepJaneHarman thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct reform, please also sponsor H 3846! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R1a

As always, thank you so much for any help amplifying the message!

By: Harry Waisbren

We are making some major progress on our new open letter to President Obama. However, this is a crowdsourced effort, and we are seeking out as much input on it as we can!

Make sure to let us know what you think of this open letter and/or what you would do differently. We suggest posting any ideas/suggestions/edits/anything else in the comments of this blog post or through any other communication method you prefer.

We had a short conference call earlier to go over the letter, and Amy mentioned that our last blog post like this one about the open letter was what inspired her to begin working with us in the first place. It’s quite gratifying to hear that, and I know that the more participation we get the greater degree to which such positive impressions about this effort will be proven true!

Update: Below you’ll find our current version–thanks to Amy, Jim, and Jon for their editing tonight!

Dear President Obama,

In July 2008, in your response to our previous open letter, you committed to have your Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all current surveillance programs while making further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse. You also told us of your intent as President to run “a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.”

With USA PATRIOT Act and FISA reform once again before Congress, now is the perfect time to follow through on this commitment. 

Two bills that were the subject of Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee Patriot Act hearing specifically deserve your attention and support. HR 3845 contains a substantial number of significant new checks and balances to the government’s spying authorities under the PATRIOT Act. HR 3846 would prohibit the “bulk collection” of Americans’ emails and phone calls under the FISA Amendments Act, and it would repeal the Fisa Amendment Act’s telecommunication immunity provision — a provision that you voted to repeal as a Senator.

When Senators Feingold and Durbin introduced similar legislation in the Senate last month, Attorney General Holder flatly stated that there is “certainly a conversation that can be had about do [certain Patriot Act provisions] need to be re-examined, do they need to be modified in some way to be more sensitive to civil liberties concerns.” Disappointingly, much of the conversation happened in a classified briefing. Even worse, published reports say that your administration worked behind the scenes to introduce a package of amendments to strip privacy and civil liberties protections that you had voted for in the past. //BleuZ00m: This is excellent!

As the debate continues in Congress, we ask you to work for changes to the Patriot Act and FISA to preserve our civil liberties and reestablish checks and balances. Please support HR 3845 and HR 3846 and the amendments that restore similar protections when they are introduced into the Senate.

We also ask that you and Attorney General Holder discuss the issue more transparently. While closed door sessions and private briefings that respect genuine security issues may be necessary, we, the people, need to know that you are still our ally on civil liberties. We ask again that our private information be held in confidence. Further, can we, the people, expect that we will remain innocent until proven guilty?

In today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Representative John Conyers restated your quote,
“As a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on [the Constitution's] enduring principles for expedience sake.”
// citation: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-On-National-Security-5-21-09 check the flyover. speech at the National Archives. ///
“I’ve studied the Constitution as a student, I’ve taught it as a teacher, I’ve been bound by it as a lawyer and a legislator.  I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.”

In contrast, Representative Lamar Smith today repeatedly sought to defend National Security Letters and 215s for any and all, without scrutiny, targeting people who are not terrorists. Sir, we are not all terrorists. Yes, we are listening and, as this letter professes, we do care about security and civil liberties. As you stated to us in your July 2008 response to our letter to you, ““In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited.” //citation: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rospars/gGxsZF/

The proposed reforms in HR 3845 and HR 3846 do not take any powers away from law enforcement; they simply introduce stronger checks and balances, measures that you have supported in the past. Respectfully, why do you argue against these now? We would appreciate hearing the reasons for your change in position. If there is new information that has changed your outlook, please share it.

Many of us were among your strongest supporters as you ran for the Presidency, and we celebrated when you were elected. You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and we had every reason to believe that you — as a professor of Constitutional law — would honor that pledge. We hope you do not betray our trust.

As you requested, we’re doing our part to shape our country’s destiny. We kindly ask again that you do yours. Please replace the politics of fear with a restoration of our Constitutional rights.

Signed,

…

By: Harry Waisbren

First off, there has yet to be a final vote on the House Judiciary Committee markup of the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009.  Markup continues tomorrow morning at 10 a.m, and we’ll be back in the Patriot Act Action hub aggregating and relaying news and action items through our tweetchat once again!

For analysis of today, Kevin Bankston of EFF is a good place to start:

So, a mixed bag so far as we head into our second day of the PATRIOT mark-up. The supporters of reform have so far done a good job of beating back bad amendments from the Republican camp, but we’re also starting to see Chairman Conyers and other Democrats working to weaken their own bill in a number of ways at the request of the Administration

Marcy Wheeler also has a great recap, where she explains why this is currently a better bill than the Senate side, despite the fact that it still allows for data mining of Americans. I agree with main highlight she cites from it as well:

The highlight of the hearing, though, was a speech that Mel Watt made. He talked about how, in the days after 9/11, he thought, “Well, if AG Ashcroft is protecting me from terrorists, who’s protecting me from AG Ashcroft?” He went on to bemoan the fact that there was no one like Bob Barr left on the Republican side. “I long for the day that somebody on your side of the aisle and remember that it was you that stood for individual rights at one point in your party’s history.”

The lack of Republican support for civil liberties was apparent throughout the markup, as Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute chronicled throughout his live tweeting. Rep. Lamar Smith in particular was egregious with his lies and distortions, which inspired our ongoing retweeting campaign relaying:

@LamarSmithTX21 is willing to give up liberty for security. How un-American! #patriotact http://act.ly/Res

However, the main campaign response from the Get FISA Right side  is our decision to make some major headway on our open letter to President Obama. We will be collaboratively editing it together in a Google doc at 6:30 PST/9:30 PST tonight, and encourage as much participation as possible as we commence this crowdsourced project!

We will have much more to support as we further analyze what happened today and undoubtedly what happens tomorrow, so stay tuned—much more to come!

We did a couple of training sessions today on Twitter activism and the Patriot Act.  Thanks to Harry’s detailed notes, hopefully the information should be useful whether or not you were there.  Please check out http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter+activism+training.

If you’d like to see some of this activism in action, please join us in the Patriot Act Action Hub Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee hearing (12:30 p.m. Eastern)!

jon

By: Harry Waisbren

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

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

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

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

By: Harry Waisbren

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

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

Now, onto the key takeaways from this week:

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

By: Harry Waisbren

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

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

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

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

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

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

By: Harry Waisbren

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I look forward to your response on this important matter.

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

By: Harry Waisbren

Here’s your latest update on Patriot Act and FISA reform in the news:

Michael Anne Conley posts about how mental health privacy is at risk: http://bit.ly/3U9Xii

Marcy Wheeler takes on Eric Holder’s state secrets invocation: http://bit.ly/3RgXSg

Glenn Greenwald writes about how Obama seeks to block wiretap suit through state secrets provision: http://bit.ly/20e45i

Jon Pincus details social network activism and the future of civil liberties: http://wp.me/ppipf-cK

Marcy Wheeler further discusses the “investigations into people who have nothing to do with terrorism”: http://bit.ly/2JD4uc

The Center for Democracy and Technology discusses how the House Patriot Act bill draws broad support on account of National Security Letter fix: http://bit.ly/4ewwX7

JCK Magazine has an exclusive on how the IRS will examine jewelers for Patriot Act compliance: http://bit.ly/1ipAsF

Marcy Wheeler asks asks “what happened to zazi’s product purchasing associates”: http://bit.ly/1HBXSP

Al Jazeera English asks what’s next for the Patriot Act?: http://bit.ly/4siIv

Nat Hentoff of the CATO Institute writes how instead of fixing the Patriot Act, President Obama is protecting it: http://bit.ly/26oYfi

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest suggested Patriot Act and FISA tweets:

RT @GetFISARight: Our next #patriotact & FISA organizing call is this Monday, come join: http://bit.ly/120ubS

RT @jdp23: Social network activism and the future of civil liberties http://is.gd/4HHGD (Please RT) #patriotact (via @getfisaright)

@RepHankJohnson @RepJacksonLee: thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct and FISA reform! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R19

@RepJaneHarman thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct reform, please also sponsor H 3846! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R1a

Thanks for helping spread the word!

I’ve got a post up on The Seminal and Pam’s House Blend, highlighting the opportunity to broaden and recharge the civil liberties community.   The thesis is that Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Care2, OFA and other social network sites:

• provide a way to engage with Millennials and other diverse groups of people who care a lot about the Patriot Act — but are not currently involved with civil liberties activism.
• make it easy for people to let their politicians know their feelings — and recruit their friends in the process.
• allow civil liberties organizations to get beyond the media blackout and provide accurate information to everybody.
• complement in-person local campaigns like People’s Campaign for the Constitution’s local ordinances and good ol’ fashioned letters-to-the-editor

The last section of the post has some suggested next steps.   There’s also some cool graphics too.   Please check it out.

As I say in a comment, thanks to the Get FISA Right members and our allies for the hard work.  We’ve been taking the lead on social network activism in the civil liberties area for over a year now, I honestly believe we’re making progress!

jon

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest organizing call was a smashing success, and we heartily thank Marcy, Mark, Derrick, Mandy, Soren, Jim, Jo,  Jon, Korkie, Amy and anyone else following along on the phone or online for attending!

We made a whole lot of ground discerning our shorter term direction while fortifying our longer term foundation. With much in the works, we decided on next Monday as a followup call and are circulating a poll to find which time—4, 5, or 6 PM PST—works best.

Mandy from the ACLU confirmed that this Wednesday will be the House Judiciary Committee markup of Patriot Act and FISA reform legislation. Get excited, because come Wednesday, we will be holding a live interactive chat in the Patriot Act Action Hub—-which we are also using to coordinate our actions and to roundup news items.

In the meantime, here are some other key takeaways:

• Our priority in the house remains targeting HJC democrats to sign on as co-sponsors to both bills, in particular Rep. Jane Harman  given her influential status (not to mention her upcoming primary battle), but Reps. Schiff, Wasserman-Schultz, Berman, Baldwin, Quigley, and Wexler were emphasized as well. For more, see the targeting discussion call excerpts.
  
• As we construct our narrative, Amy brought up a fantastic idea of more assertively focusing on the personal stories of individuals whose privacy has been violated.
• Jim started a discussion about the need for increased outreach to libertarians and conservatives, and suggested the Campaign for Liberty as an organization we should particularly work to align with while Mark emphasized the NRA.
• We decided to continue building momentum writing our open letter to President Obama despite remaining unsure of when we would release it, as it would not necessarily be a great tactic for our shorter term initiatives.

Remember that you can check the Patriot Act Action Hub for the latest campaigns and news items (or just to contribute in the chat room), and feel free to poise any questions you have in the comments section!

Update: chat log from the call available here.

From its inception, Get FISA Right has been dedicated to building an online movement from within the context of the Obama for President campaign. But the passage of time and the turn of events have led to some subtle and not-so-subtle changes in Get FISA Right’s focus.

During 2008, Get FISA Right reacted with chagrin to Senator Barack Obama’s support for the FISA Amendments Act and pressured him to consider FISA reform as his inauguration approached; during 2009, we’ve watched as President Barack Obama has moved to definitively support and reinforce elements of George W. Bush’s surveillance agenda. The agenda of Get FISA Right has become more distant from the agenda of President Obama as the President’s agenda moves ever farther from the defense of American constitutional protections.

During 2008, Get FISA Right worked from within the Democratic Party base of supporters to rally support for a NO vote against the FISA Amendments Act; during 2009, we’ve watched as Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined Republicans to form a supermajority against civil liberty and for the reauthorization of Patriot Act. The reach of Get FISA Right has become less partisan, drawing from the expertise of libertarians such as Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute and reaching toward Libertarian Party audiences in an effort to build more bridges.

During 2008, Get FISA Right was able to tap into the excitement of the presidential race and existing media coverage stemming from Senator Christopher Dodd’s filibuster threats to build a large online activist presence. This year, there are no presidential elections and only one one congressional elections. To my knowledge, newspapers’ coverage of the introduction of surveillance reform bills H.R. 3845 and H.R. 3846 has been limited to one Associated Press article and one Roll Call article. There’s no similar buzz this year over surveillance legislation, even though constitutional and practical problems with government surveillance remain unresolved by the Obama administration. And so as Get FISA Right continues its important work of building awareness online, there is a need to expand awareness of surveillance policy developments offline.

One way to build awareness of Patriot Act reauthorization, and of the need for Patriot Act and FISA reform, is to use the newspapers’ voice in spite of most newspapers silence. In addition to your online twitter, facebook and blogging work, please consider writing a letter to the editor today. Your words may reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers, and if published will almost certainly gain the attention of your local paper’s editorial staff. Get FISA Right has added a wiki page with appropriate links to background information and the letter-writing engine at my.barackobama.com. Add your submitted letters to the wiki page as an inspiration for others who would like to write their own original letters but may not know where to begin.

Here’s the current draft-in-progress for our Fall 2009 open letter — a combination of excerpts from letters Nancy, Lois, and Sally wrote, along with a few points from our discusson on last Tuesday’s phone call and a quote from his previous letter to us.  There are several excellent comments on the wiki with various suggestions that we still need to incorporate — please check them out, and jump into the discussions, or leave your opinions here on the blog.

Dear President Obama,

With FISA reform once again in Congress, we’d like to take the opportunity to continue our dialog.

In July 2008, in your response to our previous open letter, you committed to have your Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in.  You also told us of your intent as President to run “a White House that takes the Constitution seriously, conducts the peoples’ business out in the open, welcomes and listens to dissenting views, and asks you to play your part in shaping our country’s destiny.”

We have a hard time seeing how your administration’s work behind the scenes with Senator Sessions to weaken privacy and civil liberties protections during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Patriot Act reform manifest this commitment.   In the courts, too, your administration’s repeated backing of Bush Administration arguments for hiding information is troubling.

We urge you to live up to the stated goals of your campaign and avoid continuing the horrific practices of the previous administration. You have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and we had every reason to believe that as a professor of Constitutional law, you would honor that pledge.  Please, do not betray our trust.We ask you to …

Please, Senator Obama, reject the politics of fear on national security, and take the lead in restoring our Constitutional rights.

Signed,

…

Hmm.  Just what do we want him to do?

jon

PS: Other feedback welcome too, of course!

By: Harry Waisbren

In my post, Questioning Obama on the Patriot Act, I described how Attorney General Holder’s discussion of the “conversation to be had” about modifications for civil liberties concerns could help dictate our response. In particular, I cited our open letter to Obama last summer as instigating a conversation of sorts with then Senator Obama by way of his follow up post directed to us, and asked whether or not it is time for a follow up–based on our own precedent–through writing another open letter.

As we take steps forward by working together on our collaborative effort to draft a new open letter, we must recognize the enormity of what we did last summer. Our organizing of Obama supporters in a group on his own social network, My.BarackObama.com, was an example of a crowdsourced action that set an entirely new model for communicating with our government. Critical acclaim abounded, as we were cited as part of Fast Company magazine’s rationale for ranking the Obama campaign as the “top startup company of the year” as well as an example of an innovative lesson the Obama administration learned and exhibited in Jeff Jarvis’s book What Would Google Do.

Our precedent, and the innovative model for citizen engagement it exhibited, was explained by Alan Rosenblatt in his post Will They Rise Up and was recently reemphasized during The Progressive Revolution Will be Tweeted edition of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable.

I found this aspect of his post to be particularly poignant:

“when citizens are included in the decision making process, at least in terms of seeing it transpire and having a clear opportunity to engage with government leaders in the process of the policy formation, they become more connected and more supportive……at the core, democracy is about compromise and working together to solve problems for the good of the whole society. When the whole of society feels they are part of the process for solving the problems of the day, they become shared stakeholders, rather than opponents.”

Personally, I know that Obama’s direct engagement with the Get FISA Right community and recognition that we were “shared stakeholders” made me a greater supporter of his, despite any of our ongoing disagreements. I privilege the discovery of new methods for citizens to engage their representatives extremely highly, especially in light of my wholesale agreement with Chris Bowers’ The Medium is the Movement concept. The Get FISA Right experience inspired me to engage with other efforts to communicate in this manner, including Change.org’s Ideas for Change and the collaborative Ask the President effort, and I view the relaunch of Get FISA Right to be an extension of this ongoing effort to improve the way our country engages in democratic discourse and makes decisions.

As we take steps to follow up on our open letter with a new one, we must recognize that we are not only pushing to reclaim our civil liberties. Rather, we must see this as another opportunity to, once again, lead the way in helping innovate new means for citizens to engage their elected officials through tools that our founding fathers only could have dreamed of!

By: Harry Waisbren

Check out our latest Tweeting points below:

@RepHankJohnson @RepJacksonLee: thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct and FISA reform! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R19

@RepJaneHarman thanks for sponsoring #PatriotAct reform, please also sponsor H 3846! (Please RT) http://act.ly/R1a

I’m not a terrorist–stop spying on Americans! Fix the #patriotact. http://act.ly/Rf Pls RT

Thanks to Reps Conyers, Nadler, and Scott for Patriot Act and FISA reform bills http://bit.ly/2nKcOE #patriotact

Dialin information and a draft agenda is at http://bit.ly/oct27call, which is also where we’ll have the online chat during the call.

Candidate goals:

1. Agree on short-term goals, priorities, strategy
2. Plans, owners, and next steps for Twitter, OFA, Care2, Facebook, blogospheres (tech/new media/libertarians./progressives/moms)
3. Social network activism recommendations for civil liberties organizations and bloggers

If you’ve got a few minutes between now and then, please have a look at Jessica Pieklo’s Justice not dead yet, Harry Waisbren’s Next steps and open questions, and my Social network activism and the Patriot Act (DRAFT).

And let’s use this thread for some pre-meeting brainstorming and discussion about various topics.

For example:

• Who are the right politicians to target?  I’ve got some thoughts from a Twitter-centric perspective in the first comment
• What’s the best timing for an open letter/media release from Get FISA Right?
• What kinds of techniques could work better on Facebook and MySpace?

Or anything else that leaps to mind!

jon

By: Harry Waisbren

Our latest Patriot Act/FISA organizing call exhibited the tidal wave of passion and growing momentum to act amongst civil libertarians of all stripes. A quick summary has already been posted and the complete chat log is available here, but now we must cauterize the flurry of fantastic ideas into action!

Our timing could not have been better, as mere hours beforehand Representatives Conyers, Nadler, and Scott introduced bills to reform the PATRIOT Act (HR 3845 and 3846). Marcy Wheeler has provided a detailed analysis of what is being proposed, and below you will find the next steps and open questions laying before us as we strive to make an impact on this integral issue.

First off, our short-term priority is to ask House Judiciary Committee members (and other Representatives) to sign on as co-sponsors for the bills. We will be complementing the ongoing efforts from other organizations through both our social media perspective in addition to more traditional forms of activism, and are already thanking the politicians courageous enough to stand up for civil liberties with the following tweet:

RT @GetFISARight: Thanks to Reps Conyers, Nadler, and Scott for Patriot Act and FISA reform bills http://eff.org/r.4at #patriotact

The first question before us is how we transition our theme away from the JUSTICE Act while learning from our prior experiences supporting it. One essential lesson is that we must push back against the closed door briefings being cited ominously as a rationale for why civil liberties infringement remains necessary, especially considering some of the members of those meetings (especially Senator Feingold) are directly contradicting that argument. We have to encourage such dissent while working to find ways to make it easier for them to speak out.

This is especially important considering the lingering and widely held notion that relinquishing liberty in order to “stay safe” is worthwhile instead of inherently un-American. Combating this meme is essential, as although it is constantly cited by our mainstream media, if it is explained in simplified and personalized terms Americans will recognize the antithetical nature of the argument to citizenship.

During the call, a consensus emerged during the call that targeting the media has become increasingly essential. We are beginning to discern our narrative as part of our pitch to these opinion makers of why they should cover this, and when we do we will conduct all sorts of new media and more traditional letters to the editor campaigns to try to break this ongoing silence.

Fortunately, the model we utilized last summer did just that, and we will be building upon past practices even more so moving forward. This will be most manifest in our decision to release another open letter to Obama, and we are hoping for as much input as possible as we collaboratively produce this document. However, the more general narrative of our previous campaign also is one we can replicate, as the “democrats vs. democrats” story was one that held a great amount of salience amongst mainstream media members who otherwise would not cover this issue. Unlike last summer though, we have a better understanding of who might become champions in this fight including Arlen Specter (particularly in light of how he has already been pushed to the left due to his primary battle with Rep. Joe Sestak), Rep. Alan Grayson, Rep. Ron Paul, etc.

Despite any congressional targeting though, as we push forward on our open letter we need to transition our sights to president Obama. He, more than anyone else, inspired our nation in large part by his calls for change, yet his capitulation on FISA last summer remains a point of dismay amongst even his most ardent supporters. This is why our fight is part and parcel of Mike Lux’s argument that Obama must fight for regular people, and we must continue our effort to show our president the way.

Americans are not frightened sheep willing to give up our citizenship and become subjects. Our most recent organizing call and this effort in general exemplify this truism, and it is precisely why our fight is about ensuring that the ideal of America will persevere.

There is much left to do, and we hope that you will join us both on our upcoming call next Tuesday (2pm PST/5 pm EST) and throughout the week as we develop new means to make our voices heard!

Harry will have more details and the full transcript later, but I just wanted to give a quick update on today’s excellent phone call.  Our timing was perfect: earlier today, Representatives Conyers, Nadler, and Scott introduced bills to reform the PATRIOT Act and FISA (HR 3845 and 3846).  House Judiciary Committee markup is expected in two weeks.

The short-term priority is to ask House Judiciary Committee members (and other Representatives) to sign on as co-sponsors for the bills.  My guess is that as with the Senate, a lot of organizations will be have phone and email campaigns.  Kevin Bankston of EFF pointed out that we’re uniquely positioned to complement these via Twitter and Facebook.  New members like Judy Chu could use some encouragement; other names tossed around included Wexler, Grayson, and Ron Paul.  As a first step, let’s continue to thank politicians who are courageous enough to stand up for civil liberties.  If you’re on Twitter, could you be kind enough to retweet?

RT @GetFISARight: Thanks to Reps Conyers, Nadler, and Scott for Patriot Act and FISA reform bills http://eff.org/r.4at #patriotact

Another potential opportunity is to couple online activism with traditional letters-to-the-editor campaigns.  Jim C volunteered to write up some bullet points; with additional suggestions from Jon, Sally will help turn this into a blog post.

We also talked about trying to get folks like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Bill Moyers to cover the story.   There was an excellent suggestion about framing it in terms of a battle within the Democratic party between the heroes who are making good on the promises made to reign in the Imperial Presidency … and those who are trying to prolong the status quo.  We’re on the side of the heroes    The basic plan here is to draft a blog post on “here’s where the story is”, and start tweeting and emailing it to Maddow, etc.   There’s a very early draft here; others, please share your suggestions.

And finally, we agreed that now’s the time to get started on our next open letter to Obama.  As a first step, I’ve started things off with some excerpts from letters from Sally, Nancy, and Lois.   Feedback welcome!

Our next call’s going to be Tuesday, October 26, 2 p.m. Pacific/5 p.m. Eastern.   More details soon.

It was a great call and I’m sure there’s a lot I overlooked.  Thanks to Kevin, Mark, Sally, Jo, Brandon, Melinda, Jim, Jim, Jim, Rafael, Harry, Soren, Patrick, and anybody else who was on the call!

jon

If we’re going to have any significant impact on the Patriot Act and FISA debates in the rest of 2010, we’ll need to build on whatever momentum we’ve achieved so far, learn about what has and hasn’t worked, and continue to organize.  The goals for our next phone call include an update on the legislative situation, pooling knowledge about learnings from SJC battle and upcoming activism plans, and deciding on our next steps.   

Please join us!   More information at http://bit.ly/oct20call.

Between now and then, let’s continue the discussion that Sally, Gavin, and Harry have started in Questioning Obama and the Patriot Act.  Get FISA Right’s claim to fame is our dialog last summer with then-Senator Obama; now is the perfect time to continue it.

Please to use this thread to share any thoughts on lessons learned and next steps.  The first comment has some thoughts by Marcy Wheeler to kick things off.

jon