Aug 8, 2007

NATIONAL SECURITY & CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES TEAM

FISA COURT REVISIONS FOR WIRETAPPING

ACTION

Contact Sherrod Brown, Betty Sutton, and Tim Ryan (choose only your own Representative but all can send to Senator Brown) and thank them for voting against the FISA revisions. Urge them to work to gain a majority when this bill comes back up for reauthorization in six months.

Contact George Voinovich and Steve LaTourette (if he is your Representative) and express disappointment in their vote in favor to the FISA revisions. Urge them to reconsider and vote against it when it comes back up for reauthorization in six months.

CONTACT INFO

Sherrod Brown http://brown.senate.gov/contact.cfm
George Voinovich http://voinovich.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm
Betty Sutton http://sutton.house.gov/contact.htm
Tim Ryan http://timryan.house.gov/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=129&Itemid=42

Steve LaTourette http://www.house.gov/latourette/contact.htm

DESCRIPTION

Congress recently passed changes to the FISA law (Foreign Intelligence Act) that give the Bush administration more latitude to conduct the NSA (National Security Agency) wiretapping of telephone and e-mail communications occurring between a person in the U.S. and a person overseas. The changes remove the FISA Court from approving or granting oversight of this process and instead place that authority in the hands of the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. The law also forces telephone companies to comply with government requests for the phone calls of their customers, without a warrant

Language in the bill is general enough that many critics believe it will give support to the President to wiretap any U.S. citizens he wants to, without a court warrant.

During negotiations over the bill, Democrats and the Director of National Intelligence were progressing toward a reasonable compromise but at the last minute the White House withdrew its support and raised the flag of “terrorism” in order to back the Democrats into a corner with threats of being soft on terrorism. Sadly, enough Democrats joined the Republicans to provide a majority.

The only saving provision is that the Democrats held out for a provision that this bill only lasts six months (a “sunset” provision) and then it will have to be re-authorized. This gives Congress an opportunity to develop a better bill, if it will take that opportunity.

TALKING POINTS

If you are writing to a legislator who opposed the bill, merely thank them for their vote and urge them to fix the law when reauthorization comes up.

For those who supported the bill--

The changes to the FISA law in this bill undermine the system of checks and balances in the Constitution. There will be little or no oversight of Executive branch actions, either of this President or of future Presidents.
We need aggressive action to protect America from terrorist acts but we do not need to undermine our own Constitution in order to accomplish this.
Secret wiretapping of American citizens without reasonable cause only serves to create a “surveillance society” that undermines our democracy and creates massive amounts of useless data that overwhelm our intelligence resources.
The potential of this law to be used to stifle dissent is unacceptable. We don’t need our own government using intelligence resources to spy on those who disagree with it. This administration has already accused those who disagree with it of giving aid to the enemy

MORE INFORMATION

This New York Times article describes the bill and the debate over it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/washington/05nsa.html?th&emc=th

This New York Times excerpt details some of the issues: “Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.” Read the entire article here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?th&emc=th

Here is an ACLU article/blog on the issues and the threats the bill poses. http://blog.aclu.org/index.php?/categories/5-Government-Spying

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