Don’t let the power crazed in Washington get more power: Help derail Bill S.2453

It’s time to start paying attention, folks. Just today the Convention on Cybercrime was ratified by the U.S. Congress, which leaves open a big door for stifling freedoms currently allowed on the Internet.

Now, with summer in full swing and Americans dazed by the heat, Arlen Specter’s Bill — S.2453 is looking to make its way to the President’s hands. Think that the U.S. conducting random surveillance on its own citizen with no judicial approval is a good thing? Then just ignore all this.

If not, well, Glenn Greenwald laid it out quite well in his excellent blog:

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“The Specter bill — in addition to its other multiple flaws — would solve this problem almost entirely for the administration. Section 702(b) of the bill (entitled “Mandatory Transfer for Review”) protects the administration in numerous ways from meaningful judicial review:

First, it requires (if the Attorney General requests it, which he will) that all pending cases challenging the legality of the NSA program (which includes the EFF and ACLU cases) be transferred to the secret FISA court. Thus, the insufficiently deferential federal judges would have these cases taken away from them.

Second, it would make judicial review of the administration’s behavior virtually impossible, as it specifically prohibits (Sec. 702(b)(2)) the FISA court from “requir(ing) the disclosure of national security information . . . without the approval of the Director of National Intelligence of the Attorney General.” That all but prevents any discovery in these lawsuits.

Third, it quite oddly authorizes (Sec. 702(b)(6)) the FISA court to “dismiss a challenge to the legality of an electronic surveillance program for any reason” (emphasis added). Arguably, that provision broadens the authority of the court to dismiss any such lawsuit for the most discretionary of reasons, even beyond the already wide parameters of the “state secrets” doctrine.”

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The text of the bill can be found here

As distancing themselves from the current administration is becoming more in vogue, it’s very possible, if not likely that enough republicans will bail on this for it to die. But if not, keep in mind that democrats are politicians also, meaning they are only a step above street bum when it comes to helping the average U.S. citizen.

So, check out this link to FireDogLake’s weblog to get numbers of democrats to call to push them to do whatever it takes to stop this bill, up to and including filibuster.

If you sit still, they’ll take power from you, and they’ll never give it back. No, they won’t take away whatever current Dance Reality Show is leaving you enthralled, but you’re going to have to trust me on this — it’s not all about finding the damned terrorists, or stopping the pedophiles, or whatever other catch phrase is popular.

It’s about taking power and taking things that belong to you — your rights. Don’t let them do it, at least not anymore than they’ve already done.

–WKW