The USA PATRIOT Act gives the government increased authority to wiretap your phone, monitor your e-mail and demand your medical, financial and student records from banks, vendors, doctors, offices, and libraries. Furthermore, it prevents anyone who is required to turn over your records from ever telling you or anyone else, even if the records turned up no wrongdoing.
And did you know that the latest version of the PATRIOT Act contains a new provision that can throw protesters like us in prison for 10 years for disrupting major events such as political conventions? (In 2004 CODEPINK took our anti-war message to the floors of both the Republican AND Democratic Conventions.)
Very soon Congress will have a chance to repair some of the PATRIOT Act’s worst excesses. In December 2005, a bipartisan group of senators filibustered to stop the passage of a bill that would have reauthorized 16 expiring PATRIOT Act provisions. As a compromise, the provisions were extended for 5 weeks to give the officials more time to work out their differences. This temporary extension will run out on February 3, 2006.
The Senate version of the bill has much stronger protections of civil liberties and more meaningful opportunities to challenge unwarranted information requests and gag orders. Please call your representatives and senators, and ask them to support the Senate version of the bill. You can call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 or find your representatives and get their direct numbers by clicking here.
Talking Points:
* Prevent the FBI from “fishing” through our financial, medical, and library records by requiring a statement of fact linking persons whose records are sought to a terrorism investigation.
* Allow businesses and libraries to pose a meaningful challenge to a FISA Court order or a National Security Letter demanding customer records.
* In light of warrantless wiretapping of domestic email and phone communications authorized by the president, make sure there are sufficient privacy safeguards and oversight on all parts of the PATRIOT Act, involving the executive branch.
* Protect our first amendment rights by removing a proposed provision that would allow stiff prison terms to people who protest-outside the designated areas–at events, such as political conventions, that have been labeled National Special Security Events.
* Eliminate proposed new death penalties from the reauthorization.
For more information, contact the Bill of Rights Defense Committee at http://bordc.org/threats/call-in.php.
Sample letter:
I am writing in regard to the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act and to ask you to please support the Senate version of the bill in order to help ensure the protection of our civil liberties.
The Senate bill corrects several provisions of the PATRIOT Act that have been of deep concern to me. For example, it prevents the FBI from “fishing” through our private purchase, medical, and library records by requiring a statement of fact linking persons whose records are sought to a terrorism investigation. It allows businesses and libraries to pose a meaningful challenge to a FISA Court order or a National Security Letter demanding customer records. In light of warrantless wiretapping of domestic email and phone communications authorized by the president, it makes sure there are sufficient privacy safeguards and oversight on all parts of the PATRIOT Act involving the executive branch (which includes the Department of Justice and the FBI).
In addition, I am concerned that proposed new powers should not be added to the PATRIOT Act. Please protect our first amendment rights by ensuring the removal of a provision that would subject protestors who are not in designated protest areas at presidential appearances to prison sentences up to 10 years. Proposed new death penalties should also be removed from the reauthorization.
I urge your support for the Senate version of the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. I believe that it protects our civil liberties without jeopardizing our safety.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Thanks, Janet! This is another thing that might have been overlooked with all the other distractions now.
They’re coming at us from all sides, baby!
even better and meet them as they come for us, AND WE ARE! Rhetoric verses fact when we meet them on the battlefield so let us be as clear as only Code Pink can be!
Great diary. Now is the time to act on this, too. The outrage will be highest with the publicity of dangers from domestic spying and unwarranted invasions of privacy. I’ll try to push this along in any way I can.
Tell the Dem leaders…either lead, follow us or get the hell out of the way.
The Democrats aren’t doing a thing. Well, Boxer, Conyers and Leahy are trying…
But we have to stand up and speak out.
It’s “fargin’ war” – stolen from Johnny Dangerously flick.
There’s no way we can let those fargin’ bastages get away with it.
Those fargin’ iceholes!!!
🙂 (((thanks for the smiles, Rumi)))
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/24/131230/106
America’s new Gestapo: The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division. A buried provision, Sec. 605 of the Act, creates a federal police force under the Secretary of Homeland Security with the power to violate the Bill of Rights. In fact, it’s entire mission appears to be the creation of a militarized Bill of Rights suppression force with special emphasis on first amendment suppression.
There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the ‘United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'”
The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division –let’s just call them the SS for short– are empowered to “make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony.”
Any “offense”? What constitutes an “offense”? Sorry, doesn’t say. And where exactly will Bush’s shiny new SS –no doubt festooned with the latest anti-personnel weaponry and “crowd suppression” technology– have jurisdiction? Well, a few places, but especially at events “designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance” (SENS).
What exactly is a “special event of national significance”? Unfortunately, this can be anything. No person protected by the Secret Service need even be involved. So SENS is anywhere the administration or the SS themselves say it is. And once you find your unfortunate self within the Bill of Rights-free bounds of an SENS, the Gestapo can pretty much have their way with you. I wouldn’t count on the Supreme Court taking too hard a line on any abuses of this new thug squad either, as it is accountable to no one but the administration, and you know what a wide latitude is given to America’s new “unitary executive”.
The obvious use for this act is to put the Code Pinks and Cindy Sheehans of the world behind bars for embarrassing dear leader with uncomfortable signs, chants or t-shirts at pro-administration, pro-endless terror war gatherings of one sort or another. The less obvious use is that the administration now has an armed wing it can deploy at will anywhere expressions of dissent against the government might spring up in the future.
Such dissent can now be put down and silenced with extreme prejudice. How’s that for PATRIOTIC?
This sends chills down my spine. We really have crossed over into fascism.
Bush and his officers have asserted his authority to act in any way under the AUMF as long as he claims he his acting in response concerning the GWoT.
As a logical sequence in reasoning, any attempt to hold Bush accountable for any act could be construed as an obstruction to the power of the executive authority and prosecutable.
He could, under this reasoning, have anyone arrested that attempts impeachment.
Maybe this is part of why the Democrats are so timid these days. Fear of prosecution for trying to hold him accountable.
“Step out of line, the man come and take you a-way”
Deja vu for some of us.
Think we better stop, hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down…
It’s been a long time coming, going to be a long time gone.
Deja vu is right but the man’s got way more dangerous toys to use this time.
to march, one last time.
one last time
We won’t even be allowed to voice our disatisfaction with Alito! We won’t be able to drive our cars without yellow bumperstickers.
To not have a yellow ribbon or “W” stamped on you, you could be pereived as a “disruptor” and you and your family, pregnant or not, could be stripped from your homes and taken to Ubekistan.
Hiel Bush!
and keeping us all informed, especially when you have so many demands on your time. My letters have been sent.
And the magenta pink type looks grand.
I saved your advice to wordpad and now have that info and other tidbits I pick up at hand. 🙂
Thanks DJ. Man. Going to put you in the pokey for 10 just for yelling “suit up or shut up” in the wrong venue. Sounds very troubling. Bleating sheep in this country. Baaaahhhh.
Bush Gestapo might put you away for life… I may have chanted and I wear, GASP, pink t-shirts… you dear sir… holy of horrors… wrote a book!
🙂
Seriously, though… after writing this.. someone banged on my door, harshly and loudly and those 1984 thoughts appeard. It was only the FedEx man though. But… damn.
This is so not my America.
Let’s fight these bastards!
Thank you Janet for all that you do each and every day. I read what so many of you here are doing and I feel like a slug. I will send faxes and call tomorrow in my Grandleezy’s honor. It is her birthday and she is the main reson I do anything at all.
I was just in the car at lunchtime and had Ed Shcultz on and the caller read what you just referred to as far as arresting us for dissent. I was appalled. Not that I am not appalled every day by the Cabal of Fascists in the White house.
A slug?? No way!
Today is an “off day” for me. My on days tend to be crazy and not scheduled as being “on” and then I spend my off days recovering from the on days and then I have to turn off my on days and play catch up on my off days which make my off days on.
(I just made you all cross-eyed, huh?) 🙂
Somedays I don’t mind scratching my son’s back to stave off the sensory overload for hours… and hours. Reassuring words or no words at all while a James Bond flick carries on and on… Shhhhh.
But… damn Leezy… I have to get to marching again!
I know CodePink is doing something soon here in my area but I’m not sure of the logistics of it and how much I can say… but there’s stuff to do. Big steps … but it’s also the little steps day by day that we must continue and that is taking care of our loved ones which gives us the strength to fight for their now and tomorrows.
makes sense? Or is it just me? 🙂
in other words: I didn’t do anything today, Leezy 🙂 I just posted a CodePink alert.
Each one of us – each an every day in their own way marches on and fights. 🙂
Well sister, I am very grateful for everything you do. You are a Warrior!
. . .we had some sort of national document that said something like, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech. . . .”
Wouldn’t that be great, huh?
‘We Already Have Enough Laws On The Books To Handle National Security and Anything Else That Would Be Covered By The Patriot Act!!’
‘Not too mention a Number of Intelligence Agencies that Work For, and Are Financed/Payed by The People!!’
The above are Factural, unlike the Arguments made by the NRA and other Right Wing Groups/Think[?]Tanks, about legislation and policies Aimed at Creating Better Rights/Safety of America’s Citizens!!!
Patriot Act wasn’t needed before, just Everyone doing their job as Hired For!!
It isn’t needed Now!!
And once “we” give up our rights or liberties we can never ever get them back.
We did get past the Alien & Sedition Acts, which have been taught to most of us as a very bad thing in American History. Similarly, the round-up of Japanese American citizens is seen as a black mark, a non-Constitutional action by the national government.
I think these terrible Unpatriot acts will be overturned, eventually, even if passed in a worse form.
You could go to prison for a long time for criticizing the government during the first World War. But when the Hun were defeated the war was over. This “war” may go on for as long as its convenient to rich people everywhere. Will we get our liberties back this time?
So, when will we see people being arrested for wearing a t-shirt that has the relevant passage from the Bill of Rights cited above:
“Congress shall make no law. . . abridging the freedom of speech. . .or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. . .
If this bill passes with those unconstitutional clauses intact (which is what I predict), it seems to me, contrary to those folks who say that public protest are of no value, the thing to do is have massive public protests.
Let them arrest thousands of citizens. Thousands. That might wake up Congress to what is happening.
When it comes to arrests, I don’t know what to think. I know I’m ready to sit in a cell… but for how long?
And.. what’s scary is that how many will it take? Not a thousand, CNN would undercount how many were arrested and besides this country is still ignoring the hundreds of thousands that have been deplaced and devoiced by Katrina/Rita.
I worry that it’s going to take bloodshed.
I agree. I’m not sure I can afford sitting in a jail cell at all, given a sick spouse and the possibility of moving from two incomes to one.
That’s the problem with bills like this. The defense against charges is the Constitution.
I keep thinking of the “free speech zone” at UTexas – over on the east side of the Tower, in the shadeless sun, as far away from the Student Union area as possible. That’s the sort of area that any protest would be sent to.
And I also think of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and Daley’s strong-armed police: “The whole world’s watching”. And for a time, it was. Those folks were not put away for 10 years, either.
Thanks for the reminder-calling in a few moments. The mention of 1968 echos something I’ve been mulling over too-mostly the image of Bobby Seal gagged and bound in the courtroom during the trial-that image won’t leave my mind. I wonder how that trial would be reported now?
Or is there would be a trial at all, probably not, just vague reports that enemy combatants had been captured and then a triumphant news conference.
Then nothing but silence.
On a personal note, I tried to run away to Chicago for the demo-I was 10 and hopelessly non-sneaky-I got caught while still in the packing stage.
Just as well, the canned soup alone must have weighed fifty pounds, I would have collapsed before I got out of the county.
I was born in 1968 🙂
Today I don’t think they’re be a trial or media coverage. Zilch.
Every person have the right to protest. Imposing restriction on this right is a serious sign that we have dictatorshp. If we, the people, are chosing our leaders and we are actualing taking part in the governance of our countries, we are more than obliged to speak when this is necessary. Criticizing constructively means that we care.
We have the right to know and we have the righ to protest. However, the Patriot Act (and the global paranoia that followed) gave excuse to leaders, uncertain in their positions, to persecute the opposition. To limit our right to know, they closed dissident newspaper, confiscated servers and hard drives without court orders and assaulted journalists.
The hard-hitting "security" forces appeared to be nothing more than institutions using violence and fear to achieve political goals. See where this is going?
well, welcome to the [new] American Revolution II.
Then again welcome to the WW Revolution, over all!