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Some of you may not consider this a big issue because you have "nothing to hide". Our founding fathers knew that power leads to corruption, so they put in place a form of government that could be run by devils but do no harm. This is the very foundation of the idea of checks and balances. This legislation does two things:

1. It acknowledges that the President and his friends (telecommunications companies) are above the law, thus removing the legislative check on the executive
2. It permanently eliminates the forth amendment judicial check on the executive

Please take two minutes, find your congressman and his position on http://www.stopthespying.org/ and call them NOW.

It's simple, put the keyboard down, pick-up the phone and call your Representative. Go to http://www.stopthespying.org/ if you don't know who that is, then call 5 friends (or as many as you have) and ask them to do the same. NOW.

This is called grass roots and you can make a difference.

I just called and reached an live person. I had to try 4 times before I got through. She says they are getting hundreds of calls and that Obama is officially against it.

Please make sure to keep calling.

Find your congressperson here:
http://www.stopthespying.org/

Okay, so the advertisers are tracking you using a non-personally identifiable cookie. What about the government? They are wiretapping your home phone and your wireless phone without adequate 4th amendment protections. To top it all off Congress is trying to give immunity to those who violated your Constitutional Fourth Amendment rights.

People are pissed off because Amazon knows you want a roll of toilet paper, but don't care when the government might be spying on you? Get a clue and get your priorities straight.

http://www.stopthespying.org/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/myth-facts-about-retroactive-immunity-and-attorneys
http://del.icio.us/milican/domestic+surveillance

JOhn

FIRST POST!

http://www.stopthespying.org/

The Democrats are rushing this through because they were shocked by the reaction to their passing the Protect America Act last session -- everyone slammed them for giving new surveillance powers to the White House, and so they're scrabbling to fix matters with a new bill.

But they're making the same mistake again. They think no-one cares about immunity. They think it's just a business-as-usual deal.

Please call Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and let them know that you're angry at the idea of giving retroactive immunity to the telcos, and by extension, participating in a cover-up of the warrantless wiretapping project. It's not that they're wedded to this idea, it's that they don't think their base or independents care about telco immunity.

Call Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- 202-225-4965
Call Sen. Harry Reid -- 202-224-3542

If you want more facts and arguments, EFF has them here.

A couple more notes, for those who like the grubby details. The telcos are pushing for complete retroactive immunity, or alternatively "substitition", by which the government takes the place of the telcos as the defendant in the case. The government has a lot more power to evade the cases by dint of its own in-built immunity to some kinds of prosecution and thus end the cases. A few other groups are suggesting financial caps of penalties, so that the cases could go forward, but if the courts found the telcos guilty, they wouldn't suffer the "crushing liability" they say the cases would cause. (Note that the only way the telcos would *actually* be fined a large amount of money by our case would be if they were guilty of blanket, system-wide surveillance of all their subscribers.)

Thanks.

This seems like as good a time as any to remind ourselves about EFF's http://stopthespying.org/ web site. McConnell did not just lie to the press. He had to call Senator Lieberman to "clarify" his testimony because he lied to Congress. It hardly needs to be restated to this audience that we can tell when these guys are lying because their lips are moving, but it is worth remembering that there's something that we can and should be doing right now, which is backing up the EFF efforts.

This seems like as good a time as any to remind ourselves about EFF's http://stopthespying.org/ web site. McConnell did not just lie to the press. He had to call Senator Lieberman to "clarify" his testimony because he lied to Congress. It hardly needs to be restated to this audience that we can tell when these guys are lying because their lips are moving, but it is worth remembering that there's something that we can and should be doing right now, which is backing up the EFF efforts.