By: Harry Waisbren

Our tweetchat is over, our Open Letter has been released, and now is the time for action! We must work to amplify our collective voices to both ensure President Obama hears us and compel him to respond.

With that in mind, here are the various ways you can join us by signing on to the letter:

• sign on via BORDC
• sign on via change.org
• sign on via Care2
• sign on via Twitter

Furthermore, democratic discourse is inherently an act of activism, and it is our duty as citizens to speak out about the issues that matter to us. Quite fortunately, the Thanksgiving holiday is a time in which families and friends come together with precisely the opportunity to have this conversation.

The bipartisan, ideology-crossing nature of the fight for civil liberties is just the sort of topic that could bridge divides that might occur in other areas. The more people engaged in this fight and discussing it in the public sphere, the better the chances for us to force this issue into our national conversation.

So have a wonderful thanksgiving, and as you’re giving thanks, consider mentioning those little old civil liberties as something to be thankful for…

By: Harry Waisbren

Our tweetchat held in our Patriot Act Action Hub was quite successful and much fun! It acted as a solid launch event for our Open Letter to the President, helping us make traction on all the various ways we have available to sign, i.e. through BORDC, Change.org, Care2, and Twitter. However, it’s greatest utility came through how it exhibited the degree to which our national discourse is missing the message in regards to the Patriot Act and civil liberties.

It is the void of this conversation that has inspired our letter, and the expert commentary from Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute and Shahid Buttar of BORDC exhibited the degree to which the “experts” in our mainstream media could do a better job. I’d encourage anyone to read through the transcript, but members of our 4th estate in particular would do well to take advantage of this on the record discourse.

Fortunately, new media tools such as Twitter serve as distribution outlets that can bypass the media filter to get the word out. Even better, it does this while simultaneously alerting those outlets to the groundswell of demand that there is for such coverage.

And why shouldn’t there be such a groundswell, considering the kind of bombshells dropped even to activists well-versed on this issue from these experts. This is why we’re encouraging more retweeting, and below you’ll find some highlights to consider if you choose to do so:

Shahid of @BORDC: The long & short of this unfortunate story reflects an about-face by the Obama administration #patriotact

Shahid of @BORDC: struck by sheer ignorance within DC of the widespread rejection of these #patriotact authorities across the country

Shahid of @BORDC: Over 400 cities & towns, as well as 8 states, passed resolutions opposing the #PATRIOTAct over the past several years

@normative: Conyers bill watered down in a rather mendacious way. #patriotact

@normative: sea change in the way we conduct surveillance—a macro shift that eclipses all the specific policy points. #patriotact

Shahid of @BORDC: great 2 see so many voices, from so many political perspectives standing together 2 defend liberty & #privacy! #patriotact

Julian Sanchez aka @normative: We are not surveilling people anymore. We are surveilling populations. #patriotact

@normative: Minority Report fantasy u’re going 2 pluck potential terrorists from national pool of credit card records is stupid. #patriotact

@normative: totally irresponsible to act like we’re still doing old-school target/suspicion/investigation intelligence work. #patriotact

The tweetchat closed with Jon inspirationally describing where civil liberties activists go from here. He cited the need for these issues to impact elections, potentially through primary battles, and that the connections we’re making and the techniques we’re pioneering are the basis from which this future can begin.

Last summer, we took quite a big step towards this future through the innovative nature of our open letter. Now, we are trying to take another step again with our new letter, and we hope you join us as we push forward!

For now though, thank you to Julian, Shahid, Korkie, Jim, Mark, Amy, Triv33, Emily, Brandon, Amagi, Jenny, and Jon for joining us in the chat, to everyone who RT’d, and to anyone else following along. We hope you all enjoyed, and that you join us in the future as we continue to build on this model for 21st century activism that we are establishing.

Here’s a quick list of the posts about the open letter so far … if you write a post about it — or you see somebody else’s post that isn’t here already — please add it to the list!

• Vox Libertas on Daily Kos
• Jim Burrows on Change.org
• Jessica Pieklo on Care2 (link needed)

By: Harry Waisbren

Here are our latest suggested tweets for the launch of our Open Letter to President Obama and our tweetchat in the Patriot Act Action hub this Tuesday 8am PST/ 11 am EST:

RT @GetFISARight: Ask @BarackObama to please support #patriotact reform! http://act.ly/1fp Please RT

RT @jcool493: The Patriot Act: turning citizens into suspects since 2001
#patriotact

RT @GetFISARight: We are proud to present our now completed open letter
to Obama: http://bit.ly/8Pzd4o #patriotact #p2

At long last, we are proud to present the final draft of our open letter to our President. This letter would not have been possible, much less at the high caliber of quality it exhibits now, if it weren’t for the help of all of you that gave us your input in ways big and small.

Thank you again to everyone who took part in this collaborative project, and you can find our completed letter below.  We’re working with BORDC on a page to allow people to sign on, and will send the link out once it’s ready!

Dear President Obama,

In your response to Get FISA Right’s July 2008 Open Letter on my.barackobama.com, you promised 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 Patriot Act and FISA reform once again before Congress, Get FISA Right would like to accept your invitation.

Last July, you told us of your intention to direct your Attorney General to “make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”   Once Patriot Act reform legislation was introduced, Attorney General Holder talked about “a conversation that can be had” about civil liberties concerns.   So far, the conversation has been disappointing. Your administration opposed long overdue and badly needed protections for civil liberties and urged their eventual rejection by the Senate.  Absent this intervention, the legislation emerging from the Senate and House Judiciary Committees would likely include greater civil liberties protections.

We ask you and your administration to take a strong stand to support significant reform of key sections of the Patriot Act, including National Security Letters, Section 215, Lone Wolf, Sneak and Peek, and material support.  Legislatively, we ask for your public support of HR 3845 and 3846, and amendments adding similar protections to S 1692.

In spite of your promises for an open and transparent government, much of the conversation around this issue has been behind closed doors or via unnamed participants. We ask that you remember your promises and respond in an open and transparent manner.  With your background in constitutional law, and insight into the complex trade-offs you must make as President, you are uniquely qualified to help all Americans see beyond the false trade-off between national security and civil liberties. Please continue the discussion with us, and other voices supporting civil liberties, even when we disagree.

President Obama, the Organizing for America caption still reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”   We believe, and hope you do too.

Americans of all stripes have grown increasingly wary of giving up liberty for the illusion of security.  Get FISA Right’s 23,000 community organizers are the largest grassroots issue-oriented group on Organizing for America, and we are only one of many organizations across the political spectrum working to restore our civil liberties.

If you join us, you can inspire the same wave of grassroots energy that propelled you to the Presidency.  Together we can reject the politics of fear, and turn the page on the abuses to our constitutional rights during the last eight years.

Signed,

Update, November 22: thanks once again for the great feedback!  Please check out the final draft!

We received some really fantastic feedback from our proposed open letter to Obama and have revised it accordingly — for example, this draft is about 40% shorter. We’ve tried to incorporate everybody’s perspectives … please have a look at this version and see what you think:

Dear President Obama,

In response to Get FISA Right’s July 2008 Open Letter, you promised 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 Patriot Act and FISA reform once again before Congress, we woiuld would like to accept your invitation.

Last July, you told us of your intention to direct your Attorney General to “make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”   Once Patriot Act reform legislation was introduced, AG Holder talked about “a conversation that can be had” about civil liberties concerns.   So far, the conversation has been disappointing. Your administration opposed long overdue and badly needed protections for civil liberties and urged their eventual rejection by the Senate.  Absent this intervention, the legislation emerging from the Senate and House Judiciary Committees would likely include greater civil liberties protections.

We ask you and your administration to take a strong stand to support significant reform of key sections of the Patriot Act, incuding National Security Letters, Section 215, Lone Wolf, Sneak and peak, and material support.  Legislatively, we ask for your public support of HR 3845 and 3846, and amendments adding similar protections to S 1692.

Just as importantly, in light of your promises regarding open government, we ask you to respect the people’s passion regarding our rights as citizens and to respond in an open and transparent way.  Much of the conversation has gone on behind closed doors or via anonymous sources, rather than out in the open.  With your background in constitutional law, and insight into the complex tradeoffs you must make as President, you are uniquely qualified to help all Americans to get beyond the false tradeoff between national security and civil liberties.

President Obama, The Organizing for America caption still reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.”   We believe, and hope you do too.

Americans of all stripes have grown increasingly wary of giving up liberty for the illusion of security.  Get FISA Right’s 23,000 community organizers are the largest grassroots issue-oriented group on Organizing for America, and we are only one of many organizations across the political spectrum working to restore or civil liberties.  If you join us, you can inspire the same wave of grassroots energy that propelled you to the Presidency.  Together we can reject the politics of fear, and turn the page on the abuses to our constitutional rights of the last 8 years

Signed,

By: Harry Waisbren

We are holding a Tweetchat this Tuesday, 8 am PST/ 11 am EST held in our Patriot Act Action Hub.

It will be an ideologically and demographically diverse, expert-infused discussion about the details of the Patriot Act reform legislation that we couldn’t recommend enough!

Furthermore, it is also going to double as a launch event for our new Open Letter to President Obama, which we hope he will once again respond to as he did last summer. We need to build up support though to get to the point, and this Tweetchat is designed to be both a vehicle for promoting our letter while also acting as a resource to educate those just joining us by “delving into the details” of the Patriot Act reauthorizaton legislation.

To participate, you can tweet to #PatriotAct and/or by commenting directly in the chat room in the Patriot Act Action Hub. Hope to see you there!

By: Harry Waisbren

Tonight’s call was organized specifically in light of the release of our proposed Open Letter to Obama (call transcript available here). Now, it’s game time so to speak, as we finish final edits and prepare for its wide release Monday evening.

In particular, we will be firming up the “ask” to go into the details of the specific legislation much more concretely. There are other links to add, words to change, and the general tone to assess, so please continue giving us feedback in the comments. The finish line is in view though, and we’ve begun transitioning from constructing the letter to preparing to distribute it in a major way.

With that in mind, we will be holding a conference call Monday at 4 pm PST/ 7 pm EST to coordinate launch activities. Stay tuned, as we will soon be relaying more details on our tweetchat and crowdsourced-based press outreach strategies.

Thanks to Chip, Amy, Jim, Mark, Korkie, Brandon, and Jon for coming to the call. Momentum is building in a big way, and it’s quite exciting to see more and more people become increasingly vested in this project!

Update, November 21: thanks all for the great feedback!  Please check out the (much shorter) revised draft.

Below you will find our proposed Open Letter to President Obama. We will continue editing and discussing as needed, and as always, we welcome your thoughts and ideas in the comments:

Dear President Obama,

In July 2008, in response to our previous Open Letter, you promised “to have my 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 the future.”

Within your response, you also elaborated on 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.”

Despite our differing opinions on the  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), your statement that “no tool has been more important in focusing peoples’ attention on the abuses of executive power” than the “sustained engagement of American citizens” was an inspiring call to us.  We remain heartened by your “promise to listen” to our concerns and to “take them seriously.” This is an invitation that we hope citizens at large have taken very seriously. Indeed, we undoubtedly do, and again, we applaud your offer of collaboration.

Over 23,000 strong, we are the largest issue-oriented grass-roots group on your campaign website, www.OrganizingForAmerica.com. We once again ask you to follow through on your campaign pledges of an open and responsive government by shining light on the Patriot Act in particular, and on our country’s civil liberties in general. Our coalition is an ideologically and demographically diverse group who believes in your clarion call to change, and we want to see it enacted. We stand ready to help and wish to share our ideas to further your stated goal of rolling back the abuses of the Bush administration — implemented in a post-9/11 panic.

We ask you again to reaffirm the right to privacy in our country. However, we need you to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, through obfuscating these issues behind a veil of secrecy.

Your Attorney General has flatly stated that whereas “a conversation that can be had about do [Patriot Act provisions] need to be modified in some way to be more sensitive to civil liberties concerns”, yet this conversation has been held behind closed doors. Furthermore, we continue to hear of your representatives insisting on a package of amendments to strip privacy and civil liberties protections that you had purportedly favored in the past. We hope you will not continue to allow members of your administration to work to minimize these reforms and to further degrade our liberty. Even more broadly, we hope you do not further dilute the principles of open government and of the personal responsibility of a citizen to act through attempts to sweep the Patriot Act reauthorization, and its impact on our rights, under the rug. In particular, we are concerned about the ‘Lone Wolf’ provision and of Section 215, although we applaud your Attorney General’s decision to make the requested information available to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Americans of all stripes have grown wary of giving up liberty for temporary security, as we know such a notion is antithetical to the nature of our country. We recognize the need to ensure the safety of our free nation, which is why we feel so strongly about rolling back the abuses to our freedoms. As has been attributed to Ben Franklin, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

This is why we implore you to give us the tools to work together so we can collectively amplify the voices of the people and ensure that the true nature of American patriotism is recognized! As both you and your attorney general speak to these matters, we will capture the video, load it to YouTube, and spread your words far and wide through twitter and any other innovative delivery mechanisms at our disposal. Each of us has our own network of like-minded citizens. Each of us is a community organizer chomping at the bit to exhibit that citizenship is something you do!

Despite our disagreements last July, many of us were among your strongest supporters and we all celebrated when you were elected. Your call for us to believe in our own ability to bring about real change in Washington has affected us to the core. It is why we maintain such profound hope that you will reverse course and not let your administration be tarred by continuing the constitutional abuses from your predecessor.

The Organizing for America caption still reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in yours.” We assure you that we believe in our capacity to bring this change. We hope that you will reaffirm our trust in you, and your commitment to civil liberties, by reasserting open and public discourse as a founding principle of democracy.

Signed,

….

By: Harry Waisbren

Out latest call has illustrated that we are successfully building momentum. We have been making major progress on our open letter to Obama in particular, and are soliciting preferred times for our final call this Thursday before we launch this letter to president.

Please let us know when you can make it.

In the meantime, you can read through the call transcript or check below for other key takeaways:

Legislative situation

• There have not been any alerts regarding the scheduling of the Reyes amendment in the House Intelligence Committee, which is reason to believe it will once again come down to the wire.

• The Patriot Act’s sunset is December 31, and a bill must pass the house, senate, through conference, and back before it can be made into law.
• Strategically, this means we are confronted, once again, with a looming deadline.

Open Letter

• We highly encourage anyone/everyone to provide their input ASAP, as the time before Thursday’s call is the last opportunity to do so (for this letter at least). Thanks to Mark for jump starting conversation.
• The launch is scheduled to commence Monday. Afterwards, we will need everyone’s help to spread the letter as thoroughly as we are able. Special thanks to Jessica of Care2 for offering to coordinate efforts and to Amy who has volunteered to take the lead in organizing a press conference!
• Tuesday we are holding a launch event in the form of a tweetchat regarding the nature of our current surveillance laws, including a variety of expert participants from across the ideological spectrum. Jim Burrows has started this conversation on the techie side of getting it right, and we will be providing an update on this soon as well.

Bipartisanship

• As Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee emphasized on the call, the burgeoning coalition we are developing constitutes many of the independent voters that Obama had previously wooed, yet who have become disenfranchised due to his civil liberties track record in office. Special thanks to Chip as well for offering to host the letter and facilitating signatures through the BORDC!
• Our message is positive, as we want Obama to get this right, and we intend to show him the way back to the views expressed by the Obama from the campaign trail on this integral issue.

• Considering our president’s overt focus on bipartisanship, and his recognition of the political rewards to be reaped from maintaining the support from independents, we hope he will be inclined to listen to the collective voices of those of us attempting to transcend partisanship and ensure that democratic and republican politicians alike may not abuse the constitution or subvert the rule of law.

Thanks to Chip, Jim, Jessica, Jon, Mark, Amy, Korkie, and Soren for joining. We’ve made some major ground but are just getting our largest initiatives revved up. Much more to come!

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!