March 6, 2008

NATIONAL SECURITY & CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES TEAM

DON’T LET BUSH WIRETAP YOU

ACTION

Contact your Congressperson (Sutton, Ryan or LaTourette) and urge him/her to resist any conference committee bill that would give non-warranted permission for the President to wiretap Americans and that would grant immunity to the telecom companies for the wiretapping they have already done. We need “adult supervision” of this kind of activity.

This vote could come up within the next two working days, so call or e-mail now.

Contact Information

Due to the pending vote on this issue, a phone call is better than e-mail. These contact pages include both local and D.C. phone numbers, including toll free numbers.

Betty Sutton

Tim Ryan

Steve LaTourette

ISSUE

President Bush has been trying to bully Congress into ”modernizing” the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) law so that he can carry out wiretapping of Americans’ telephone and e-mail communications without warrants and without court oversight. He also demands that Congress give the telecommunications companies immunity for any wiretapping information they have turned over to the government thus far.

Currently the FISA court is supposed to oversee such wiretapping and ensure there is some reasonable cause to collect such information about a person, but Bush wants to change that so he can institute wiretapping without having any judges give their approval.

The President can obtain information from the telecoms if he goes through the proper FISA procedure. If, as the President insists, he and the telecoms did not break any laws in this wiretapping, then they have no need for immunity.

What this is really all about is that we want to know what, if any, legal documents the government gave the telecoms to obtain their assistance, and whether thousands of purely domestic calls have been tapped.

The Senate passed its version of the modernization bill with telecom immunity in it. The House version did not contain this immunity. We want the House to stand firm and not cave in to Bush on either immunity or removal of court oversight of his programs.

TALKING POINTS

1. Stand strong against the Senate bill! So far, House leaders have courageously rejected the shameful Senate Intelligence Committee Bill (S. 2248) that authorizes warrantless spying on Americans and lets lawbreaking telecommunications companies off the hook. Please continue fighting for the Constitution, and rejecting Bush’s fear-mongering.

2. The House must continue to reject telecom immunity. Lawsuits must be allowed to proceed or we’ll never know the truth about what laws were broken and how many Americans' rights were violated.

3. The House must reject any bill that allows the government to spy on Americans without getting a warrant. America doesn’t need a bill that needlessly expands the President’s ability to spy on innocent Americans without a warrant.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Read here about the “Protect America Act” that was first passed to “modernize” FISA and give Bush more power to spy on Americans.

Here is a very interesting and informative explanation on why the fight over telecom immunity matters and what the fuss is all about. It also explains about the powers Bush is trying to consolidate for himself.

This article explains about the compromise vote that we must defeat.

Previous Alerts:

MAKE MSNBC STOP BEING SEXIST IN ITS REPORTING

GET THE FEC BACK INTO OPERATION FOR THE ELECTION

CLOSE GUANTANAMO PRISON

MUKASEY CONFIRMATION AS ATTORNEY GENERAL

STOP CORPORATE MONOPOLIES ON OUR NEWS AND INFORMATION

OPPOSE SPAKOVSKY NOMINATION TO FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION

SUPPORT THE BEST FISA REVISION
REGARDING WIRETAPS

RESTORE HABEAS CORPUS

STOP APPT. OF CIA GENERAL COUNSEL

STOP FUNDING FOR IRAQ WAR

NBC AND TUCKER CARLSON'S COMMENTS

FISA COURT REVISIONS FOR WIRETAPPING