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Archive for the ‘FISA’ tag

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A broad coalition of organizations jointly signed a letter urging the congress and Senate to reject the proposed FISA legislation amendments. The proposed legislation will risk civil liberties and will hand more unchecked power to the executive branch. It is time to pick up the phone and call your representative and tell them to vote against this act.The U.S. Capitol Switchboard is (202)224-3121 - don’t hesitate and make the call.

As organizations that are deeply committed to both civil liberties and effective intelligence-gathering, we strongly urge you to oppose legislation recently outlined by Senator Bond to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This bill unreasonably and unnecessarily authorizes broad surveillance of Americans’ international communications without meaningful Fourth Amendment protections: no individualized warrant issued by a court, no determination of probable cause of wrongdoing, and no specification of the location or means of the surveillance.

Touted as a compromise to end an impasse between House and Senate versions of FISA legislation, the bill proposed by Senator Bond is far from a compromise. Its chief provisions are not significantly different from those contained in the bill passed by the Senate in February of this year (S. 2248). Like that measure, the “compromise” would threaten Americans’ privacy by severely curtailing judicial review and failing to include other reasonable civil liberties protections that appear in the House-passed version of the legislation (H.R. 3773). Neither Sen. Bond nor the administration has made a persuasive case that these sweeping new powers are needed or that existing authorities are inadequate to ensure the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence-gathering activities.

Written by Rogel

June 19th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Posted in Privacy

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