Despite the outrage coming from a broad coalition of concerned citizens1, by tomorrow night the House of Representatives will vote on whether or not to gut the Constitution and give immunity to phone companies who broke the law and spied on Americans.
Congress is moving so fast and so secretively that we only got a copy of this bill this morning. I can tell you it's horrible. It contains vacuum cleaner style surveillance that sweeps up the phone calls and emails of Americans. And it's blatantly unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that this is legislation that benefits a few of our country's largest corporations while taking away basic rights from the rest of us. And it is unacceptable.
I'm going to spend the rest of the day on the phone calling Capitol Hill trying to stop this bill. I hope you will spend whatever time you can to make the voice of freedom heard in Congress -- make calls, ask your friends and family to call -- please do whatever you can.
A sham spying "compromise" similar to the one we warned you about last week could be rammed through both the Senate and House this week. It's moving that fast.
In a proposal that makes a mockery of the rule of law, telecom companies that broke the law by supplying mountains of personal information to the government without a warrant will be let off the hook.1
Here's what Senators Feingold and Dodd had to say about Senator Bond's proposal, which is very similar to what we expect in the coming days:
… under the Bond proposal, the result of the FISA Court's evaluation would be predetermined... the FISA court would be required to grant immunity.2
There's a deeply disturbing premise behind this dangerous FISA legislation: The president simply had to claim his request was legal for immunity to be granted to telecom companies that illegally handed over personal information.
No matter how illegal, offensive or intrusive a company's invasion of your privacy has been, it won't make a difference, because if the president gave the company a note claiming their behavior was legal, they're completely off the hook.
Congress needs to reject this sham for what it is and insist on real accountability for telecommunications companies that broke the law.
Throughout the extended FISA debate, you and the ACLU have worked tirelessly to protect personal privacy and the rule of law. Together, we've given the Bush administration a run for their money, defeating a number of freedom-stealing proposals. Don't let Congress cave in now.
The Republican Governor of Minnesota distinguished himself earlier this month by becoming the only governor in the country to veto an anti-Real ID bill.18 other states had already rejected this Bush Administration boondoggle, which would turn state driver's licenses into national identity cards.By a bipartisan majority, the Minnesota legislature passed a provision to its transportation budget that would have allowed the Governor to delay implementation of Real ID until funding could be secured from the federal government, and the law's multiple privacy and security problems could be fixed.
Not one to be cowed by reasonable, fiscally conservative measures that would protect Minnesotans from identity theft, Gov. Pawlenty vetoed the state's entire transportation budget over the Real ID measure, saying, "[t]he positions of interest groups such as the ACLU… will likely cause protracted and unnecessary litigation for the state."I checked around the office and no one is quite sure what ACLU Gov. Pawlenty is talking about – we don't usually challenge laws we support, especially when they reject the federal Real ID Act.Nevertheless, the Governor's veto pen seemed to be the end of the road for this important bill that would have protected the privacy and civil liberties of Minnesotans, while saving the state millions of dollars.
Until last night.In a stunning reversal, the Minnesota legislature passed a bill yesterday that would bar the state from complying with Real ID altogether.The bill's language leaves little to interpretation, stating simply, "The commissioner of public safety is prohibited from taking any action to implement or to plan for the implementation by this state of those sections of Public Law 109-13 known as the Real ID Act."The votes were equally unambiguous:50-16 in the Senate and 103-30 in the House.Those are veto-proof majorities, leaving the Governor in the uncomfortable position of having to reject an even stronger version of the bill he already vetoed, and then potentially face an override by the legislature.
Of course, all this embarrassment could have been avoided if Gov. Pawlenty had listened to the overwhelming opposition to Real ID in Minnesota and across the country, rather than attempting to do battle with an imaginary ACLU bogeyman (we're actually real nice once you get to know us, especially to elected officials who stand up for Americans' privacy rights).Governors Brian Schweitzer, Democrat of Montana, and Mark Sanford, Republican of South Carolina, have both been rewarded by their constituents and on the national stage for staring down threats by the Department of Homeland Security and refusing to comply with Real ID.Indeed, an important milestone passed by last weekend with little fanfare:May 11, 2008 was supposed to be the deadline for all states to comply with the Real ID Act.That day came and went, without a single state implementing the program.
Meanwhile, anti-Real ID legislation continues to move in the states.The Louisiana House of Representatives is considering a bill today that was passed out of committee unanimously and would opt the state out of the program.The Alaska legislature sent a bill barring the state from spending any money to implement Real ID to Gov. Sarah Palin's desk last month.And the state of Arizona is poised to pass a bill similar to Minnesota's, and send it to Gov. Janet Napolitano this week.
All these anti-Real ID bills have enjoyed broad bipartisan support, just as the U.S. Senate bill that would scrap Real ID and go back to the negotiated rulemaking process for improving identity security that was created based on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission is supported by Democrats and Republicans alike.Smintheus suggested recently on KOS that Real ID could be a perfect wedge issue for the Democrats in November, but we have seen over and over again that opposition to a national ID transcends party affiliation or political ideology.The Real ID Act was flawed in its conception, and may now finally be in its death throes thanks to the actions of legislators in Minnesota and 18 other states from South Carolina to Washington.
Governors Napolitano in Arizona, Palin in Alaska, and others across the country should sign their states' anti-Real ID bills into law if they want to avoid their own reversals of fortune.The message of the Real ID rebellion is clear:Don't pull a Pawlenty.
By Michelle Richardson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the abuse of National Security Letters, the secret FBI requests for your financial, consumer and communication records. By simply asserting the request is relevant to a terrorism investigation, the government can dig into your personal information, keep it indefinitely, use it for really any purpose it sees fit. Of course, these requests come with an unconstitutional gag on the company or organization that turned over your information from ever telling you, the public, or Congress.
Just last month the Justice Department's Inspector General issued a second report on the use of NSLs, finding that upwards of 50,000 were issued in a single year, most of them to collect information on U.S. persons, and some on people two to three times removed from an actual suspected terrorist or spy. Once the FBI gets its hands on the information, who knows? Sometimes it's uploaded straight away so thousands of FBI employees can plumb it, even for non-terrorism purposes. Some of it the IG couldn't even track down.
Add to this blatant overuse of the statute to collect information on innocent people the fact that the FBI uses NSLs to collect information that even the secretive, often rubber stamp FISA court says is irrelevant to terrorism and implicates First Amendment rights. Oh, and the fact that there is reason to believe that the FBI has been issuing NSLs on behalf the Department of Defense to collect information that the latter may not be entitled to. And of course, the icing on the cake: The FBI apparently returned information to a grand jury so that it could issue an improper NSL, get turned down, and then testify to Congress that this refusal to comply justified giving the FBI a general subpoena power to get any document or any tangible things it self-certifies as "relevant." Perhaps the House Judiciary Committee should ask FBI Director Mueller about this hoodwink when he testifies this morning, since emails uncovered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation seem to imply that this was done at the request of FBI headquarters and the director.
The FBI's response to this repeated documented abuse? Guidelines! Internal rules about managing and tracking NSLs better. But binder clips and manila folders are not going to provide one ounce of protection for our private information. The only way to fix this mess is with clear, statutory rules limiting NSL use to terrorists, and a constitutional gag that hides government investigations only when truly necessary. Of course the FBI is going to use every weapon in its arsenal that Congress gives it. It is Congress' responsibility to ensure that when the FBI is investigating, it's not using a cannon to kill a fly.
The bipartisan NSL Reform Act of 2007, S. 2088, is one such fix. The bill requires that NSLs be issued only to collect information about terrorists and spies, their associates and their activities. It also fixes the unconstitutional gag by forcing the government to go to court after a short (but reasonable) amount of time to demonstrate why national security interests outweigh the First Amendment right to speak out about government intrusion into our lives. Senator Feingold and 11 of his colleagues are on the right track to taking back our private information from the powers that be.
It's clear that our government believes that more is always better: more records, more phone calls, more emails, more satellite data, more force in interrogations, more plain clothes officers sitting in on public meetings. But more for the sake of more has never once been proven effective in tracking terrorists. They say they just want to "connect the dots," but how will they ever do so when the innocent dots drown out the guilty ones?
Earlier this week, Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all signaled their support for a federal shield law. Hopefully, the combined voices of three presidential nominees will spur Congress into action. Last year the House passed its version of a federal shield law for journalists, the Free Flow of Information Act, by an overwhelming and bipartisan vote. The Senate…well, the Senate is taking its time with a version of the bill that fails to provide the same level of protection, particularly in the national security arena. Without those protections, the current administration's overzealous efforts to intimidate reporters will be more likely to continue unabated.
Frankly, a federal law is long overdue since forty nine states currently have shield laws on the books and with the absence of a federal statute, those state laws when appealed to higher courts can be easily undercut. We at the ACLU are urging the Senate to take up the House shield bill, H.R. 2102, instead of Senator Spector's valuable yet flawed legislation. H.R. 2102 has more meaningful protections for the free flow of information to the public and for journalists. It's a better bill and there's no reason the Senate can't take it up — preferably sooner rather than later.
One of the latest journalists to be threatened with legal action is New York Times reporter James Risen. After chapters in his book, "State of War," piqued the interest of the Justice Department he was subpoenaed in January to appear before a grand jury in an effort to root out his sources. The Justice Department went further last week when the Times reported that authorities have sifted through the phone records of former and possibly current contacts in an attempt to draw connections between Risen and possible sources.
Risen is one of the Times reporters — along with Eric Lichtblau — responsible for breaking the story of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program in 2005. Since day one, this administration's priority has been to expand the role of the executive any way it can — more often than not secretly. So when journalists keep pulling back the curtain, the administration goes for the jugular.
The wiretapping story and the Washington Post's coverage of the CIA black sites, like Watergate before them, are all stories that have opened the public's eyes to government misconduct. They are stories that have shaped the last five years of this country's debate over the limits of our government's reach and they are stories that would absolutely not have been possible without confidential sources. Since the relationships between sources and reporters are so entwined and so vital to an informed electorate, we should be doing everything we possibly can to protect it.
Those who have read Lichtblau's book, "Bush's Law," can tell you that the decision to publish the wiretapping story was a deliberative and drawn-out process. But in the end, and quite correctly, the public's right to know outweighed the administration's impending embarrassment. The role of the press is to keep the public informed and educated. These are bedrock principles of a democracy and in order to keep ours functioning we need Congress to pass a federal shield law. And we need it yesterday.
It’s DC Emancipation Day! Who Cares About the Slaves in Our Midst?
By Vania Laveille, Legislative Counsel at the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
How is it possible that today, 146 years after President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act ending chattel slavery in this city, women of color continue to be enslaved in the shadow of the Capitol? Why do the crowds that swell at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial remain silent in the face of degradation occurring just a few miles away?
Policy makers have ignored for too long Washington, DC's dirty little secret: in the nation's capital, the State Department unwittingly facilitates the trafficking, exploitation and enslavement of poor women of color from around the world. It does so by issuing special nonimmigrant employment visas - more than 3,000 every year - so that ambassadors, foreign diplomats, consular officers, and employees of international organizations like the United Nations and the IMF can bring their nannies and other household workers into the US. Too often, these domestic workers become slaves in the household, unaware of their rights and unable to escape. And their tormentors are shielded by the domestic worker's anonymity and by diplomatic immunity.
It's time for Congress to bring this shameful practice to an end. They must shatter the culture of impunity that has developed within some parts of the diplomatic community and has resulted in the widespread violations of the human rights of domestic workers. As the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act winds its way through Congress, it presents the perfect opportunity for policymakers to put into place laws that make clear the enslavement of domestic workers by diplomats within the US will no longer be tolerated.
And I'm not using the word "enslaved" lightly. Many of these women rise before the sun, seven days a week, and clean, sweep, scrub, wax, cook, serve, wash, iron, mend, fold, and care for children until well after the sun sets. They are paid a pittance - $100 for 4,500 hours of work over 11 months in one Potomac, Maryland case - or nothing at all. They are fed the family's scraps, forced to sleep on a mat on the kitchen floor and denied basic healthcare even when sick or injured. Some of these women are prisoners in their employer's home - their passports are confiscated or they are forbidden from leaving the house. Some are not allowed to practice their faith. Some are beaten, or mentally and sexually abused and are threatened with deportation if they report the abuse or try to escape.
These women came to this country from places like Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Paraguay in order to provide for themselves and their families and are told, by the State Department, that they will be protected by the law of the United States. Instead, they find themselves exploited and enslaved in places like Gaithersburg, MD, McLean, VA and Washington, DC.
Alone and dependent on their employers, they face barriers of language, education, and culture, isolation in the home, and discrimination based on race and gender and are, thus, particularly vulnerable to abusive employers. In the words of Raziah Begum, who worked for a Bangladeshi diplomat, "They treated me no better than they would treat a stray dog. They tried to take from me my humanity."
Because of their employer's profession, these women are rendered even more defenseless because, in the United States, diplomats are immune from the criminal and civil jurisdiction of our courts. In other words, they cannot be held accountable for their illegal actions
How is it that this deeply troubling practice has continued unaddressed? We can't claim ignorance because, truthfully, this hasn't been such a well-hidden secret. In 1997, The Progressive published an article titled "DC's Indentured Servants." In 2001, Human Rights Watch authored a report, Hidden in the Home, that documented the abuses suffered by domestic workers at the hands of diplomats. In 2004, a report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights described the vulnerability of migrant domestic workers employed by diplomats and urged the international community to act to protect the rights of these workers. In 2005, two human rights experts participated in a Domestic Workers Human Rights Tribunal to address the situation of domestic workers in the United States.
And, if all that attention wasn't enough to spur some action, most recently, in 2007, a shy, young woman from Tanzania named Zipora Mazengo sat before the late Chairman Tom Lantos of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, members of the committee and a packed hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building, and recounted her story of abuse and exploitation that lasted almost 4 years until she was able to escape.
Congress needs no additional information or time to act. The time has come. Advocates have asked for the enactment of reasonable, thoughtful measures that would protect domestic workers and help prevent this type of abuse. Some of these measures include:
better training of consular officials who can inform domestic workers of their rights,
a pamphlet written in multiple languages that explains domestic workers' rights,
a model employment contract with clear terms and conditions to replace the haphazard and rarely-used contract recommended by the State Department,
a follow-up visit with the domestic worker within three months of their arrival in the US and not in the presence of the employer to ensure they are not being victimized,
the development and implementation of an insurance scheme, compensation fund or bond program that ensures domestic workers will receive appropriate compensation when the employer breaches the contract and thereby closes the gap in accountability created by diplomatic immunity.
The legislation that recently passed the House of Representatives, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act (HR 3887), is a good beginning. But many key provisions are missing. The Senate bill has yet to be introduced. We urge the Senate to continue the work and to finish the job. It's time to end slavery in Washington, DC. Again.
Check out this event: 2008 ACLU Membership Conference
Hosted By: ACLU When: Sunday Jun 08, 2008 at 10:00 PM Where: Washington Convention Center 801 Mount Vernon Place NW Washington DC, Washington DC|9 20001 United States Description: ACLU
By Barry Steinhardt, director the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project. Cross-posted at DailyKos.
Yesterday's report in The Wall Street Journal about the NSA's domestic spy dragnets should be major, major news. It is nothing less than the return of TIA: "Total Information Awareness." Yet there has been barely any followup coverage of the story in the mainstream media. I know the media thinks the sexual behavior of the governor of New York is earth-shatteringly important for American life – but this NSA report actually is.
I mean, when we warn about a "surveillance society," this is what we're talking about. This is it, this is the ballgame. Mass data from a wide variety of sources – including the private sector – is being collected and scanned by a secretive military spy agency. This represents nothing less than a major change in American life – and unless stopped the consequences of this system for everybody will grow in magnitude along with the rivers of data that are collected about each of us – and that's more and more every day.
The TIA program, you may recall, was a massive Pentagon plan (run by Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame) to tap into as many databases containing personal information about Americans as possible (program materials listed "Financial, Education, Travel, Medical, Veterinary, Country Entry, Place/Event Entry, Transportation, Housing, Critical Resources, Government, Communications"). All that information would then be pulled together and scanned for "suspicious" patterns. Given the density of the "data trails" that we all create in our daily lives today and in the future, it was a recipe for the routine surveillance of Americans and their every move.
TIA was supposed to have been killed off by Congress in 2003 amid widespread objections to its sweeping Orwellian scope. There have been always been hints about a secret annex to the law that permitted some limited aspects of TIA to operate within the Pentagon's black budget for intelligence and with respect to foreigners only. Now it appears that, like a vampire that can't be killed except with a stake through its heart, TIA has arisen again from its coffin in full body with its voracious appetite for privacy of Americans and foreigners alike.
The reporter on the Journal piece, Siobhan Gorman, describes stunning new spying capabilities that flow from a distributed collection of new domestic spying capabilities (each of which the ACLU has long warned against):
The Patriot Act's broadening of FBI power to collect third-party personal information without a subpoena through Section 215 searches and National Security Letters.
The erosion of privacy through the judicial creation of a distinction between content and "transactional" or "addressing" information (such as the recipients of e-mails or phone calls and the times and dates of each communication) through the Patriot Act and prior developments.
In the ongoing battle over FISA and the NSA's warrantless spying program (which appears to be but one part of this larger effort), the government has been saying in effect, "trust us." Why should we trust an agency that has been running this secret program in contravention of the Wyden Amendment, the law passed by Congress shutting down TIA.
It's time for Congress to find out exactly what is going on here, inform the public, and put a stop to what appears to be the construction of a sweeping infrastructure for the routine mass surveillance of innocent people.
Current federal sentencing law punishes crack cocaine offenders more severely than any other drug offenders for possession. Possessing or dealing 5 grams of crack cocaine results in the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine.
This disparity has resulted in a disproportionate number of African-Americans sentenced under this mandatory minimum law. Numerous judges, medical professionals and civil rights advocates have all called on Congress to end the 100 to 1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences, and legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate.
Throughout February, the ACLU, along with civil rights and other organizations, led a variety of activities urging Congress to end the disparity. On February 26, 2008, we hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill with stories of individuals who've been personally impacted by the current law. But it's not to late to join is. Click here to ask your senator or representative to co-sponsor and support legislation aimed at fixing the federal sentencing disparity.
Click here for more information on this issue and the ACLU's work to bring fairness to federal sentencing.
The Bush administration is still trying with all its might to force Congress to grant the president broad spying powers and to give immunity to telecom companies that cooperated with illegal government eavesdropping.
We've extended our petition deadline to send the strongest message to Congress: "Keep Standing Up to Bush Fear-Mongering!" Please sign the petition now.
Yesterday, thousands of ACLU supporters helped us run a powerful ad in USA Today. We praised House leaders for standing firm and letting the dangerous and poorly named Protect America Act expire. And we urged them to keep standing up to Bush's scare tactics.
Now, something noteworthy is happening. Bush administration fear-mongering is falling flat, in spite of administration officials issuing ominous warnings. Republicans have even launched a deceptive TV ad in the sensationalist style of the television drama "24." But, the American people aren't falling for it. And so far, House leaders aren't either.
With continued leadership from Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer, we must keep fear merchants on the run and insist that Congress pass domestic surveillance legislation that keeps us safe and free. Sign the ACLU's "Keep Standing Up To Fear-Mongering" Petition now.
There's no predicting what happens next and no guaranteeing that House leaders will continue to hold the line. That's why the ACLU is pulling out all the stops. We ran the USA Today ad to frame the debate. We're gathering tens of thousands of signatures urging House leaders to stand their ground. And soon, we will be launching "Calling for Freedom," an all-out calling campaign aimed at flooding Congress with our message.
So please, sign our petition now and pay close attention to your ACLU emails in the crucial days ahead. Thanks for all you are doing.
Sincerely, Caroline Fredrickson, Director ACLU Washington Legislative Office
P.S. This is the time for outreach. Please forward this petition-signing request to as many people as possible.The more leaders in Congress hear from people like you, the better our chances of holding the line against spying without warrants and law-breaking without consequences.
