Coalition of More Than 80 Organizations and Internet Companies Calls on Congress to End NSA Spying
On Tuesday, the Free Press Action Fund and more than 80 organizations and Internet companies sent a letter demanding that Congress halt and investigate the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. The signers include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla and reddit.
The letter coincided with the coalition’s launch of StopWatching.Us, a site demanding an inquiry into the scope and scale of the NSA’s spying activities.
“Imagine if the government just ripped out everyone’s window curtains — that’s the effect of the NSA’s spying,” said Free Press Action Fund Internet Campaign Director Josh Levy. “Living in a surveillance state makes it harder for the press to hold power accountable, for activists to organize for justice and for everyone to live their lives in private. We urge Congress to shine a light on the NSA’s secret spying programs.”
PRESS CALL:
The lead organizers of both the letter to Congress and the petition site will host a call today at 1 p.m. EST to discuss the revelations about the NSA’s spying programs and the need for swift and decisive reform. The details of the call are as follows:
Call date: Tues., June 11, 2013
Call time: 1 p.m. EST
Call number: 424-203-8405
Dial-in code: 699082
Read the full text of the letter and the list of signers below:
Dear Members of Congress:
We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.
The Guardian and Washington Post recently published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.
Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.
This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.
We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data-collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:
- Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make it clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court.
- Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance.
- Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
4Chan
Access
Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
The AIDS Policy Project, Philadelphia
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union of California
American Library Association
Amicus
Association of Research Libraries
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Boing Boing
Breadpig
Calyx Institute
Canvas
Center for Democracy and Technology
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
Center for Media and Democracy
Center for Media Justice
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Consumer Action
Consumer Watchdog
CorpWatch
CREDO Mobile
Cyber Privacy Project
Daily Kos
Defending Dissent Foundation
Demand Progress
Detroit Digital Justice Coalition
Digital Fourth
Downsize DC
DuckDuckGo
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Entertainment Consumers Association
Fight for the Future
Floor64
Foundation for Innovation and Internet Freedom
Free Press Action Fund
Free Software Foundation
Freedom of the Press Foundation
FreedomWorks
Friends of Privacy USA
Get FISA Right
Government Accountability Project
Greenpeace USA
Institute of Popular Education of Southern California
Internet Archive
isen.com, LLC
Knowledge Ecology International
Law Life Culture
Liberty Coalition
May First/People Link
Media Alliance
Media Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia
Mozilla
Namecheap
National Coalition Against Censorship
New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC
Open Technology Institute
OpenMedia.org
Participatory Politics Foundation
Patient Privacy Rights
People for the American Way
Personal Democracy Media
PolitiHacks
Privacy and Access Council of Canada
Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Ottawa, Canada)
Public Knowledge
Privacy Activism
Privacy Camp
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Privacy Times
Represent.us
Rights Working Group
Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association
RootsAction.org
Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic
Sunlight Foundation
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
TechFreedom
TURN-The Utility Reform Network
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
William C. Velasquez Institute
World Wide Web Foundation
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