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Because Freedom Can't Protect Itself.

Dear friends,

Thanks for volunteering to join our Constitution Rescue Effort. As a member of our media response team, we hope you will write at least one letter to the editor of your local paper on this issue.

We need you now more than ever. Last week, legislators crossed the line and played right into the hands of President Bush and rewarded his lawless behavior when they allowed the surveillance bills to go through Congress, giving the president and his administration more power to invade our privacy and ignore our Constitutional rights. Now we demand that Congress make immediate fixes to FISA and work to restore our Constitution, not destroy it, including ending rampant surveillance and warrantless spying on Americans.

Democrats in Congress are in a lot of hot water from their constituents for passing this bill, and we've heard they might not wait until the expanded surveillance powers expire in 6 months to revisit their decision. Now's the time to turn up the heat and insist that Congress restore checks and balances. Please submit a letter today!

Below are some guidlines for writing a LTE, plus talking points on this issue. If you need any help figuring out how to submit the letter or if you'd like us to take a look before you send it, we'd be happy to. Just let me know by responding to this email or give me a call at 774-5444.

When you're done with your letter, please send me a copy. Then monitor your local paper to see if they print it; if they do, send me a copy of that too (or point me to the link online)!

Please forward this on to friends and family and ask them to join the Constitution Rescue Effort TODAY!

It's good to have you on the team.
Thanks for all you do,

Rachel

Rachel L. Myers
Field Organizer
Maine Civil Liberties Union
www.mclu.org

TIPS FOR WRITING AN EFFECTIVE LETTER TO THE EDITOR

• State your point early in the letter (first paragraph is best) and support it with facts. Use the ACLU talking points to support your position.

• Stick with what you know.

• Be positive! The best way to reach people is through positivity.

• Most papers want letters of 250 words or less, so be clear and concise. Shorter letters are less likely to be cut. Avoid long, wordy sentences, as well.

• Include your name, address, and home and work phone numbers.

• If your first letter isn’t published, don’t get discouraged! Papers are often inundated with letters. Keep trying!

ACLU Fact Sheet on the “Police Americans Act"

The so-called “Protect Americans Act," which we are calling the “Police Americans Act," allows for massive, untargeted collection of international communications without court order or meaningful oversight by either Congress or the courts. It contains virtually no protections for the U.S. end of the phone call or email, leaving decisions about the collection, mining and use of Americans’ private communications up to this administration.

The “Police Americans Act" allows the Attorney General (AG) to issue program warrants for international calls without court review. This new program grants the AG — not a court or independent body — the authority to issue year-long program warrants for surveillance of people reasonably believed to be outside of the United States. The secret intelligence court that has been overseeing such activities for the last thirty years is cut out of the process, leaving the executive branch unchecked.

The “Police Americans Act" has no protections for American phone calls and emails that are caught up in the dragnet. The new program only requires that the surveillance be targeted at people overseas. While this will allow collection of foreign-to-foreign calls, it also allows the government to pick up all international communications where one party is in the United States, so long as no one particular person in the U.S. is being “targeted.” The law is silent on how to treat these American phone calls and emails — leaving the administration to decide how to collect, store, datamine and use Americans’ private communications.

The “Police Americans Act" provides only a phony court review of secret procedures. The AG is directed to submit to the intelligence court the procedures by which this new program will operate. However, the report to the court only need detail how the program is directed at people reasonably believed to be overseas — it does not require the AG to explain how it treats Americans’ calls or emails when they are intercepted. The court will have no information about how extensive the breach of American privacy is, nor the authority to remedy it.

The “Police Americans Act" requires only meaningless reporting to Congress. The new law requires the AG to report to the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees twice a year. But those reports will only contain information about activity in violation of the AG’s own secret guidelines about targeting foreigners over seas. Again, this ignores the impact that vast international collections will have on U.S. persons. The AG does not have to report on how many Americans’ calls it has tapped, incidentally picked up or how many Americans have become targets, even though the AG will now be allowed to rummage through all calls and emails coming into and out of the U.S.

The “Police Americans Act" has a sunset that may be of little value. The ACLU will continue to work with Congress over the next six months to insert real protections into FISA for Americans who are going to be swept up in these new dragnets. However, the sunset will fall in the middle of the politically charged primary season, where it may be even harder to rein in intelligence activities already in progress than it is to resist expansion of those authorities in the first place. Changes should be made immediately.

URL: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/31203res20070807.html

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