86 Companies And Groups Ask Congress To Put An End To Abusive NSA Spying
from the enough-is-enough dept
A group of nearly 100 civil liberties, public interest groups and internet companies have asked Congress to put an end to the abusive NSA surveillance that we’ve been writing about over the past week (full disclosure: our company, Floor64, is a part of the coalition, along with the EFF, ACLU, reddit, Mozilla, the American Library Assocation, the Internet Archive and many, many more). Along with this effort, a new website has been launched, called Stop Watching Us, which is collecting more signatures for the letter, while also asking for some specific reforms from Congress.
- Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make 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.
The full text of the letter is 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 Washington Post and the Guardian 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, e-mails, 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:
1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make 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;
2. 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;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Access
Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
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
BoingBoing
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
4Chan
Free Press
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 (IDEPSCA)
Internet Archive
isen.com, LLC
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
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
The AIDS Policy Project, Philadelphia
TURN-The Utility Reform Network
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI)
World Wide Web Foundation
Filed Under: congress, letter, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act
Companies: aclu, american library association, eff, floor64, mozilla, reddit
Comments on “86 Companies And Groups Ask Congress To Put An End To Abusive NSA Spying”
They might say they’ll end it, or use some FUD about terrorists, but the NSA won’t stop. The US Government is far too corrupted for them to stop abusing their power and attacking their own citizens. It’s only going to get worse.
Re: Re:
I really, really hope that’s not the case. If it is, there’s only one possible outcome and no one is going to like it. Not me, not you, not them.
Re: Re: Re:
Revolution?
dog damn, i hates my gummint...
fuckers…
like the poster above, EVEN IF they weally, weally, cwoss-my-ha-rart-and-hope-to-die pwomise to not ebber, ebber do that again, I DO NOT TRUST THEM, PERIOD…
(they have EARNED that distrust, REPEATEDLY…)
not that it will do any good, but signed on myself…
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
Mikin’ It! Mikin’ It!
Mikin’ It! Mikin’ It!
Mikin’ It! Mikin’ It!
Mikin’ It! Mikin’ It!
Mikin’ It! Mikin’ It!
No one on this planet will publish more words about this than Mike. Just like he did with Swartz. And, of course, just like with Swartz, Mike will refuse to discuss any of it directly and honestly.
No ask yourself this: Why would a man publish more words about something than any other person on earth, yet, at the same time, refuse to discuss any of it on the merits?
A man like that clearly is hiding something.
Re: Re:
Says AJ, who has spent 2 years throwing the same tantrum while refusing to discuss anything on the merits.
I wonder what you are hiding.
Re: Re:
You feeble, distressing, miserable, inadequate and pathetic fool. See? I can be redundant and irrelevant too.
Re: Re:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120818/01171420087/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week-techdirt.shtml#c1210
You should take your meds already.
Re: Re:
If you give me your name and address I’ll make sure a group of thugs come and arrest you for copyright infringement. I hear the watersports facilities in Gitmo are really excellent and the instructors are unequalled.
atrocities still not revealed
Not just spying; torture, forced suicide, harassment, murder of Targets.
Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein of the congress have an affirmative duty to the people to address the atrocities ongoing by the fbi/cia/nsa/etc. So far, they have dodged their responsibility. Why!
http://lissakr11humane.com/2012/09/08/collapse-of-the-constitutional-government-of-the-united-states-of-america-by-geral-sosbee/
The fbi are traitors; a murderer is less to fear.
http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v194/__show_article/_a000194-000518.htm
The fbi and their operatives at all levels of government and in the private sector seek to fabricate a person of interest so as to falsely portray him as a domestic terrorist.
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/469056/index.php
http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v194/__show_article/_a000194-000528.htm
http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/profiles/blogs/police-come-to-my-home-on-fishing-expedition?xg_source=activity
We are the fbi:
http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/profiles/blogs/public-notice-by-geral-sosbee-attributed-to-fbi?xg_source=activity
Huffington Post & fbi delete all of my previous years’ posts, delete my ‘Super User’ status, and require me to re-apply for membership. previously I was a member for several years with dozens of approved and posted reports, and with fans, followers, and multiple notifications. Today Huffington Post shows the following profile data on me:
gsosbee
Member Since June 2013
Comments (2) | Friends (0)
Re: atrocities still not revealed
Hit the report button for poor formatting. If you take up that much of the page with empty spaces, you should be collapsed down into a “click to reveal” matter indeed.
Take that as a note for the future; Proper formatting results in no annoyance.
Re: Re: atrocities still not revealed
And yes, I know it was likely a mistake, this is just a friendly way of letting you know.
#cleanslate
I was going to make this a ‘kick the rascals out’ post, but then I started laughing too hard when I saw 4chan and 4chan lite (reddit) on the list.
Still, kick the rascals out.
I signed too. Maybe, maybe this will be a wake-up call for enough people to make a difference. One can only hope.
I mostly agree but some of these same fools are pushing for more intrusive background checks and stuff for people to exercise constitutional rights. They’re being hypocritical at best.
And none of them want to call out their pal Obama for being a bigger dirtbag than Bush, even though VP Biden has been a tech privacy failure since day 1. All of them have. Bought out by Hollywood.
all these entities want the spying stopped, even though Obama himself has said there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s perfectly legal. i’m waiting for the ‘nothing to hide’ bull shit! what i will be curious to see is how much baking Snowden will get once he is ‘taken into custody’. what he has done is a real service and eye opener for everyone. he is going to be hounded now until he is caught. once caught, if he can be smuggled out of wherever back to the USA, he will get a life of total misery, just like Manning. and for what? making everyone wake up and have to admit to what is going on, how no one is safe, not from others but from your own government! what a situation to have found himself in!! if anything untoward happens to him, i hope the retaliatory shit storm is of the greatest severity from everywhere. and remember, the USA isn’t the only country doing this! so dont think you are safe, wherever you are!!
i hope that the entertainment industries are not left out of this. they are the worst industry for this spying stuff. they have been pushing for and been granted multiple chabges to laws, new laws and changes that make civil ‘crimes’ now ‘criminal’ crimes. it’s no good stopping blanket surveillance by law enforcement and leaving Congress to allow these industries able to carry on. all that will happen is that whatever data they gather, will be passed on to law enforcement, thereby nulling the whole idea of ‘no surveillance’ anyway!! the whole document that contains the changes wanted needs to be worded very carefully. after all, thge wording is what gave rise to this crap in the first place, where one set can interpret this way, another set can interpret another way!!
just a checklist for the IRS
just looks like a checklist of companies the IRS is going to audit. 😛
Had to let out a chuckle when I saw that they wanted my Name, Address, and e-mail to sign the petition.
Was tempted to tell them to ask the NSA for it as I am sure its filed away somewhere.
Apparently Stop Watching Us has been hacked, as the link to their Privacy Policy is redirected to heroku.com.
Who knows where the emails, names, and addresses of those who “Signed” the site have ended up.
I don’t mind standing up for my rights – I’ll even stand up publicly. But it truly sucks when online “protests” are vulnerable to potential redirection of personal information.
It’s no-win:
Don’t use real info, and the “signatures” won’t be taken seriously.
Use real info, and Google only knows who gets copies of that info.
Even if the SSL error I got is benign, the issue remains: just because “FightForTheFuture” says they’re protesting, who’s to know?
ERROR MESSAGE FOLLOWS
You attempted to reach http://www.fightforthefuture.org, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.heroku.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of http://www.fightforthefuture.org.
eof
Re: Re:
Is that still happening for you? Mine went directly to the EFF Privacy Policy page.
Mike helps feed BIG DATA.
@ “wanted my Name, Address, and e-mail to sign the petition.” — Every cause that Monetizing Mike supports appears to bring him or his pals money. And they don’t mind being grifters, actually enjoy it.
There’s another red flag: “You attempted to reach http://www.fightforthefuture.org, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.heroku.com.” … Hmm.
BUT even assuming this is legit, my point is that EVERYTHING you do on the net gets fed into the maw of the beast, where it’s collated, and you end up tracked, if only by commercial interests, and makes it worse. You are of value only as an economic unit, to be sold by the thousand. That’s the major flaw of the net. Corporations don’t have any right at all to your information, it’s just that there are no explicit — or no enforced — laws against it. But if you want to be free, it’s going to require REGULATING corporations.
Re: Mike helps feed BIG DATA.
Let’s see. A letter to the United States Government from people claiming to be voting citizens of the United States signed by people going by names like “Out of The Blue”. Yeah, that’s going to go over well.
Would you not give your name if you spoke to your representative directly?
There are points when anonymity is the best answer, there are points where it’s the worst. You seem to think that it can only be one or the other. Give the NSA all your data, or accept Anonymous Coward as everyone’s signature.
Re: Mike helps feed BIG DATA.
Re: Mike helps feed BIG DATA.
You…. do know how petitions work, right? They kind of require your legal name and some piece of identifying information for the signature to be legal and countable. Did you even take a government class in high school?
irs visit
all thoses on the list should be expecting an irs visit very soon.
I hereby declare my support for this letter. If you want my real name and address, just ask the NSA. They have it together with other “terrorist” information like what I gave my dad for christmas last year and a search for the medical term for scratchy groin rash.
Pretty sad when Ai Weiwei compares the US to his homeland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/nsa-surveillance-us-behaving-like-china
Let’s face it, the US Constitution is about as valuable as the Communist Manifesto when the core doctrines of a free people are subverted to the governing body. Their actions might have the best interest at heart, but it will inevitable lead to social injustice.
Now I wonder where the other 95% of the global population stands on being spied on by the US Administration?
Masnick
SHUT the FUCK UP already !!!!
Enough already, we just don’t care about your crazed ranting’s..
Re: Masnick
Then stop reading his blog, idiot.
Re: Masnick
We?
Gotta laugh
I love when Techdirt is somewhat less than transparent. You have to read down the list of names to discover not “techdirt” but “Floor64” on the list. No mention in the story of course that the piece is being run because Techdirt is one of the co-signers.
Why hold other up to a level of transparency when you cannot do it yourselves?
Re: Gotta laugh
“full disclosure: our company, Floor64, is a part of the coalition”
First paragraph, first sentence. Don’t know how you missed that. Never mind, yes I do. You intentionally don’t understand what you read.
Re: Re: Gotta laugh
Honestly I missed that. Was there an edit? ;0
Seriously didn’t see it, I was reading the letter text.
Re: Re: Re: Gotta laugh
More like you’re an idiot blinded by your own delusions. So does average_joe usually get on top of you or do the two of you engage in spooning instead?
Re: Re: Re: Gotta laugh
Of course you didn’t see it; why waste an “opportunity” for an ad-hominem attack when it appears to present itself?
“Seek and you shall find,” indeed.
Re: Gotta laugh
Gotta laugh at how fucking stupid you are to miss where Mike pointed it out.
Re: Gotta laugh
Wow, you sure are good at making a fool out of yourself.
Not even your "Cloud Storage" is safe from the prying eyes of the NSA
The 2008 amendment empowers US spy agencies to collect information stored by American cloud computing providers.
http://www.dw.de/eu-failed-to-protect-citizens-from-nsa/a-16872631
So my Firefox Do not track me add-on will not protect me from the NSA?
/s
I think they should not only be held responsible for their spying actions, but also be charged with the worst of all crimes that presently exists: copyright infringement. Isn’t “…extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents…” exactly what the Hollywood-MAFIAA is so desperately trying to fight? How come I don’t see their names on the list? Surely the Government must owe them gazillions in lost revenue by now? And just think of all the lost jobs! And, of course, the children!
Oh, wait… I forgot – the Hollywood-MAFIAA IS the Government!