Contact information for your senators can be found at senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm Hons. Schumer and Gillibrand: Im writing to express my concerns regarding Senator Feinsteins FISA Improvement Act (S.1631). While it is appropriate that the senate take note of, and seek to ameliorate, the outrageous intrusions on American civil liberty that the NSAs policies of mass data collection entails, this bill is nothing but a bandaid on the essential issue, and, realistically, serves to attempt to pacify the American people without getting at the root problems. The root problem is this: we are constitutionally, and by right should be, free of unreasonable search and seizure on the part of the state. The NSAs capture of phone and Internet data from all American citizens is a clear and present danger to our continued freedom. Reflect, if you will, what the Nixon administration would have done with this kind of information; and even if you, like I, believe that the current administration is, by and large, well-intentioned, think what kind of precedent this sets for the future. I dont think it reaching too far to say that the infrastructure of tyranny is in place; unless we establish clear rights of privacy for Americans now, the future of our republic is at risk. We do not need, as the Feinstein bill suggests, minor tweaks to transparency and oversight; we need a wholesale rejection of the idea that innocent citizens can and should be surveilled without a court order. I say nothing of the damage done to American Internet businesses by our surveillance of foreign nationals, and their reluctance to patronize American businesses thereby; nor of the damage done to our international relations by our intrusion into the private affairs not only of allied leaders, but of the citizens of allied nations. Though these are issues that should also be addressed. I urge you, therefore, either to oppose Sen. Feinsteins bill; or to seek to amend it drastically, to provide real protections for both my privacy, and yours, and indeed to sustain and maintain the freedom for which America has always stood, in an era when its greatest threat appears to be our own surveillance apparat. Regards, Greg Costikyan
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 06:43:15 +0000
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