Repealing the PATRIOT Act will be an uphill fight. But Congress won’t restore civil liberties unless we ask for what we really want. Edward Snowden's most important revelation is that the American intelligence community systematically breaks the law and ignores even the minimal checks on its power that have been written into law. And the consequences are breathtaking.
As Representative Pocan explained in a recent letter to his colleagues in Congress:
"According to press reports, all Americans are subject to the collection of phone call metadata, the harvesting of To, From and Bcc data, the blanket targeting of encrypted emails or encrypted “cloud storage” data repositories, and the targeting of anyone using Tor (an online anonymization capability). And this includes the communications of constituents with Members of Congress. We have also learned that for years the NSA has been pressuring software and hardware manufacturers to deliberately weaken commercial encryption technology in order to facilitate NSA’s surveillance operations. In doing so, NSA has made us all more vulnerable to hacking by criminals, and made it easier for foreign intelligence services to exploit these built-in encryption vulnerabilities."
Even before the Snowden leaks, Senator Ron Wyden warned that "there are two Patriot Acts" – the plain text of the law that the public can read and the executive branch's secret interpretation authorizing mass surveillance – and that members of Congress and the public would be shocked when they learned the truth.
Repealing the PATRIOT Act will be an uphill fight. But Congress won’t restore our civil liberties unless we ask for what we really want.
For far too long, “national security” has been both a way for the government to override civil liberties objections and a way to squelch debate.
But we must recognize that the surveillance apparatus created by the merging of our spy agencies with private communications telecommunications and Internet companies is potentially so broad and indiscriminate that it tramples not only our privacy, but endangers our citizens' right to free speech and association guaranteed by the Constitution.
And the sad fact is that there is scant evidence that this wholesale intrusion into our privacy has done anything to make us safer. The bill would also send a clear message to the intelligence community that Congress is reasserting its role in overseeing secret intelligence and protecting our civil liberties.
We call members of Congress to go on the record and tell us where stand on repealing the PATRIOT Act and reining in unconstitutional government spying. The Surveillance State Repeal Act gives us the opportunity to make them do just that.