If I call friends in Panama from my time in the Peace Corps there, my call may be listened to by American authorities. If the ACLU of Maine calls a client in El Salvador, a man who was beaten by jail guards when he was imprisoned for immigration violations in Portland, our calls may be recorded and reviewed. When families call their loved ones serving in Afghanistan, their calls may be transcribed and circulated.
The law that dragnet surveillance of innocent Americans' ordinary international telephone and Internet communications is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, and it's up for reauthorization today (Wednesday, September 12) in the United States House of Representatives. If you think warrantless wiretapping by the United States government is wrong, please contact your Member of Congress today. Tell them it's time to fix FISA.
Back in 2008, National Security Agency whistleblowers revealed to ABC News that the NSA was spying on Americans' communications overseas to a horrifying degree. As one former NSA employee, Adrienne Kinne noted to ABC News the surveillance sweeps up, "Americans who are not in any way, shape, or form associated with anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that really nobody else should have been listening to." The other whistleblower, David Murfee Faulk said to ABC News, "I was told, 'Hey, check this out, there's some good phone sex.' ... It was there, stored the way you'd look at songs on your iPod."
Instead of putting in place safeguards to make sure this would never happen again, Congress made this legal by passing the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 with a promise to review the matter again in 2012. It's 2012, and unfortunately, the United States House of Representatives appears ready to rubberstamp reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act.
The ACLU believes the FISA Amendments Act is unconstitutional, but the government has fought us in court every step of the way. The government argues that our clients don't even have the right to challenge this program. The United States Supreme Court will hear our case on October 29.
However, we can't rely on the courts to restore our constitutional rights. It's up to us and to Congress to act now. You can call members of Congress using the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or email them through the ACLU's action alert site here.
