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The Huffington PostToday, the Senate voted to pass the FISA bill, including Title II, which grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally handed over private customer data to the Bush administration without the warrants required by law.
The Vote Against FISA group has vowed to continue fighting for reform on the matter. The group completed an open letter to Senator Obama by the time the vote was wrapped up in the Senate and is demanding accountability (after all, Obama continues to say that he wants his supporters to hold him accountable) if and when Obama moves into the White House. The open letter expresses continued support for Obama's presidential candidacy and asks him to go further in his promise to the American people:
Senator Obama, you told us last Thursday that you would have your "Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and ... make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future." You need to go further. When you are president, use your powers to expose the truth. A full investigation of Bush's so-called "terrorist surveillance program" needs to be conducted by your administration, not just the Bush administration. Legal opinions that try to justify spying on the phone calls and emails of Americans without warrants need to be released so they can be publically debated and discredited. Finally, you need to revisit this flawed bill as president. It is anything but a compromise. As Republican Senator Kit Bond said, "the White House got a better deal than they even had hoped to get."
Members of the group are vowing not just to fight on, but to organize in a way that was impossible to do during the last frenzied two weeks. Members are retooling, creating a central website with more robust tools so that the large number of members can better communicate without hundreds of emails clogging their inboxes.
Obama asked his supporters to get involved in the issues, to hold politicians accountable, and to work for the changes they want to see. This group, which organized around the FISA bill, may be only the first instance of the kind of activism and political participation that Obama has asked us to envision -- at least I hope so.
Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/networked-obama-fisa-grou_b_111577.html
The above is just an excerpt. It is written by Dawn Teo and is well worth a full read.
The central website Get FISA Right is linked here:
http://www.getfisaright.com/Apologies if the site is down; we were swamped by traffic right after sending the word out.
We have a petition: Sign the Open Letter: Tell Barack Obama You Demand Accountability here:
http://www.getfisaright.com/petitionHere is the letter:
Dear Senator Obama,
We, Get FISA Right, a group of more than 23,000 of your own supporters, are outraged that the Senate supported a complete cave-in to the Bush administration. It is disheartening that you decided to support this bill, which does immense damage to the rule of law and our most fundamental democratic institutions.
Even though we are disappointed, most of us continue to support you as a candidate. But as a candidate you have work to do repairing our trust in you and in government.
Senator Obama, you told us last Thursday that you would have your "Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and ... make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future."
You need to go further than this, and promise to use the full power of the presidency to expose the truth. A full investigation of Bush's illegal "terrorist surveillance program" needs to be conducted by your administration.
Legal opinions that try to justify spying on the communications of Americans without warrants need to be released for public review.
Finally, you need to revisit this flawed bill as president. It is anything but a compromise. As Republican Senator Kit Bond said, "the White House got a better deal than they even had hoped to get."
Please restore our faith in you. Respond to us again, and pledge to us that you will do these three things once we help put you in the White House.
Signed,
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