On Sept. 12, Tell Congress to Stop Big Brother Surveillance Bills!

Please forward widely! Stop the fast-track legalization of warrantless domestic surveillance!

Don’t let President Bush capitalize on the somber anniversary of September 11th by expanding his surveillance powers and gutting the Fourth Amendment of our Bill of Rights. Call both your Senators and your Representative on Tuesday, September 12. Dial the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 (24 hours) and ask the operator to connect you, or find their phone numbers here: http://www.bordc.org/callin.php.

Demand that they

OPPOSE Senator Specter's S. 2453, Senator DeWine's S. 2455, and Representative Wilson's H.R. 5825. (For details including links to bill text, click here.)
OPPOSE any other legislation that would give the executive branch new surveillance powers that are immune to oversight by the courts and Congress.
SUPPORT a full, public investigation of the NSA surveillance program.

These bills would grant dangerous new powers to the current President and future presidents to create spy programs free from oversight from the courts. Tell your friends, neighbors and co-workers: If these bills pass, they would nullify current protections of our homes, phone records, and emails from government spying without warrants. We must stop these bills now—before pressure from the White House drives Congress to a speedy vote.

Why the urgency? Congress may consider bills to legalize warrantless wiretapping as soon as this week:

Last week President Bush put the Specter and Wilson wiretapping bills on a fast track when he asked Congress to give him “additional authority” to continue his secret eavesdropping program.
Last Wednesday, a bipartisan group of six senators sent Specter a letter calling for his committee to hold more hearings before it considers legislation. Read the letter here.
Last Thursday in the Senate Judiciary, Senator Russ Feingold’s speech and four proposed amendments delayed a vote on S. 2453. Read Feingold’s speech here. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter, the bill’s author, has threatened to bring his bill directly to the Senate floor for a vote.
The House Intelligence Committee will take up Rep. Heather Wilson’s bill this Tuesday and Wednesday.

Additional Talking Points:

Congress should investigate, not legislate. The Administration has not yet answered important questions regarding the program and has blocked investigation into its authorization. A full investigation into the domestic surveillance program is urgently needed to determine the nature and scope of the spying program, as well as the facts surrounding its approval.
Congress should let the traditional court system do its job. Senator Specter's bill, S. 2453, would pull all lawsuits against the wiretapping program out of the traditional legal system and into a secret court that has no procedures for hearing argument from anyone but the Administration. Anyone who has broken the law must be held accountable by the courts.
Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as the exclusive means for conducting domestic surveillance. That law requires that the government obtain approval from a secret intelligence court before eavesdropping on Americans. The proposed new legislation would reward the Administration's stonewalling and failure to follow the laws passed by Congress. The rule of law must be restored before any further changes are considered.
We cannot allow terrorists to change the core values of America. As Americans, we believe in checks and balances, and we have a system that works. Spying on people without a judge's permission and without evidence of any crime betrays that system and violates the law.

Organizations supporting the National Call to Congress. We are pleased to add the American Library Association, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, and People For the American Way to the list in last week’s message:

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for National Security Studies, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Downsize DC.org, Electronic Frontier Foundation, First Amendment Foundation, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, National Lawyers Guild, OpenTheGovernment.org, Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, People For the American Way, and Privacy Activism.

For more information and resources on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, go to www.bordc.org/threats/spying.php.

Got a slogan on warrantless wiretapping? Submit your entry for our new button, and you may win $100 worth of BORDC merchandise! Click for details and to enter! Contest deadline is Sunday, September 17.

BORDC needs your support! Please keep our work going with your tax-deductible contribution. Mail your donation to: 8 Bridge Street, Suite A, Northampton, MA 01060 or donate funds or stock online at http://www.bordc.org/donate.php.

If you have received this message in error, or you wish to unsubscribe from BORDC's newsletter and action alert, please send a message to newsletter@bordc.org with "Unsubscribe" in the Subject line.