Louder! Tell Congress: No compromises on 4th amendment!

The fight on Capitol Hill over domestic spying has turned ugly:

In the House, Democratic leadership withdrew the RESTORE Act before a scheduled vote, in response to a Republican amendment implying that the bill and its supporters were defending the rights of Osama bin-Laden. The bill may be reintroduced next week, if it has enough support.
The Bush Administration wants to make the Protect America Act permanent, instead of letting it expire in February, and President Bush has promised to veto the RESTORE Act if it passes.
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have reached agreement with the White House on a Senate FISA bill that would grant immunity for the telecommunication companies that collaborated with the government's illegal warrantless wiretapping program that began in 2001.

Fortunately, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) has promised to issue a hold on the Senate Intelligence Committee's bill to prevent it from moving forward. But Dodd can't single-handedly prevent a floor vote without the widespread and vocal support of the American people.

Missing In Action: The Fourth Amendment

In the Congressional scramble, Americans' Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the requirement for warrants, have been forgotten, even though most Americans oppose warrantless wiretaps, so-called 'blanket warrants' (which are really general approval for a whole program of surveillance), and immunity for telecoms, according to this recent poll by the Mellman Group:

News on Poll: U.S. Voters Oppose Bush Wiretap Law
A copy of the poll is available by clicking here.

What you can do to restore the Bill of Rights:

Once again, it's up to us to stop Congress from surrendering our hard-won constitutional rights to a U.S. intelligence community that wants unlimited powers to spy on Americans, without oversight in the form of warrants.

Rally at your congressional representative's local offices
Call 1-202-224-3121 today, and ask the switchboard operator to connect you to your representative and both of your senators.
Find direct phone numbers for your rep and senators here.

The message:

Searching without individualized warrants and without probable cause is unconstitutional.
We cannot let the telecommunications companies off the hook for breaking the law, not only to prevent future violations but to find out what happened. The lawsuits against telecoms are our link to the facts about warrantless wiretapping.
Further info and talking points are here.

The Bush Administration's Record in the "War on Terror" Speaks for Itself:

Remind your elected representatives that our government's track record for using and abusing power is dismal and does not warrant more "tools" for government surveillance, at the expense of our civil liberties.

After 9/11, more than 5000 innocent Muslims and Southeast Asians were detained (some, up to a year) as potential terrorists. No terrorist convictions resulted.
No Guantánamo detainee has been convicted of terrorism. Only four have ever been charged with any crime. Australian David Hicks pled guilty to "material support" earlier this year in order to escape the detention center where he lived for nearly 5 years. 760 alleged terrorists were brought to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. Today, there are 340 detainees. The rest have been freed.
By February 2006, there were 325,000 names on U.S. Intelligence terrorist lists. A number that quadrupled since fall of 2003. According to Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel of the ACLU, "If we have over 300,000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we've got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case."
U.S. Intelligence consistently over-targets by stereotyping, and that hurts innocent people. Since 2001, federal prosecutors have declined to prosecute 2 out of 3 international terrorism cases brought to them, according to a fall 2006 Syracuse University study.
Just last weekend, a former Qwest official, Joseph Nacchio, revealed that the National Security Agency approached Qwest about participating in the warrantless wiretapping program spying six months before September 11, 2001. This news calls into question the entire September 11 pretext for spying on Americans. It also indicates that our intelligence agencies are easily overwhelmed with too much information, making them less effective in predicting a terrorist attack.

Thank you for all you do.

Bill of Rights Defense Committee