Ask your senator to vote against HR 6304 (right now please. thanx)

[netmouse]

To quote Novapsyche's post, there is still time to call your Senators regarding the capitulation on FISA (aka, the evisceration of the 4th Amendment).

The bill is H.R. 6304 and i have seen it described as a confirmation of the legal king model of government since it basically protects people (in this case, telecommunication companies) from being prosecuted for illegal activities because the president asked them to do them.

I would prefer to live in a country where presidential fiat does not make it ok for people to break the law, especially regarding the privacy of citizens, and in order for that to be true, we need to defeat this bill. please call your senator now.

Comments

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

The problem with this bill is manifold.

First of all, it legalizes retroactively the illegal actions of the government that have been taking place for at least the last three years. Mr. Bush has admitted to breaking the law at least thirty times. The Congress, if it passes this bill, is colluding in a cover-up of thirty instances of a felony.

Second, if the telecoms are given protection against civil suits, there is very little chance that the American people will get a full accounting of exactly what they did on the government's behalf. The depth of the wrongdoing may never be known.

Third, because the bill goes above and beyond the previous bill granting the president these powers, it effectively allows the government to spy on its citizens without any court oversight and without any redress by the common citizen. It specifically guts the main protections afforded by the 4th Amendment.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Consider also that the Senators are being asked to vote on this bill despite the fact that 70% of them have yet to be briefed on the very issue that the bill concerns. (See Russ Feingold's statements to the Senate this morning.)

I know that DailyKos is a biased source, but this diary references an interview with Jonathan Turley yesterday, wherein he describes in very sober detail what this bill means for the nation.

Another diary highlights some of the more egregious wording of the bill.

[arkaycee.livejournal.com]

From the second link...

• H.R.6304 contains an "exigent" circumstance loophole that thwarts the prior judicial review requirement. The bill permits the government to start a spying program and wait to go to court for up to 7 days every time "intelligence important to the national security of the US may be lost or not timely acquired." By definition, court applications take time and will delay the collection of information. It is highly unlikely there is a situation where this exception doesn’t swallow the rule.

This concept and its corollaries (i.e. that too much time will be lost because the FISA court will be slow to act) was totally repudiated by the FISA court's most recent past head. I heard him speaking to the American Library Association on NPR about a year ago, and he said that it was a very speedy thing when it needed to be -- he was stuck in traffic caused by the smoke of the burning Pentagon on 9/11 and said he had already approved a half-dozen warrants from his car dealing with the attacks before he even got free of the traffic jam. He was very clear in stating that this was a bogus assertion to the need for the warrantless program.