[NV Greens] PATRIOT Act - ALERT! - Breakthrough CALL CONGRESS NOW!

[Bob Tregilus]

ALERT! - ALERT! - ALERT!

Huge breakthrough on the USA PATRIOT Act arrived on Sunday via the 
Washington Post! Washington DC is in an uproar and legislators are 
worried over the recent discloser that the FBI is abusing its power!

We must take advantage of this opportunity to show Congress a grassroots 
swell of outrage at the way our government has been spying on ordinary 
people.

Calls are needed today to support a House "motion to instruct" (see below).

* Evidence of FBI Abuse of National Security Letters Power

On Sunday, the Washington Post ran a front-page article 
(http://tinyurl.com/7tgmv) that confirmed the fears and suspicions of 
many Americans: The FBI is using powers granted in the USA PATRIOT Act 
to investigate the personal records of thousands of ordinary Americans 
without ever establishing a link to terrorism or even criminal activity.

The "National Security Letters" that the FBI is using to acquire these 
records are not subject to judicial review and, because of changes made 
by the USA PATRIOT Act (Section 505), the use of NSLs is not limited to 
suspected terrorists.

The Post article exposed that, since the PATRIOT Act, the FBI has been 
issuing "more than 30,000 national security letters a year . . . a 
hundredfold increase over historic norms." Because each letter can 
request many records, the amount of information the government is 
accumulating is staggering. The article also reported that the FBI no 
longer destroys data collected through such sweeps, even if it is 
irrelevant to the investigation at hand. Instead, the article states, 
the FBI has been ordered to keep the data, even when it is clear it is 
on innocent Americans, and "to develop 'data mining' technology to probe 
for hidden links among the people in its growing cache of electronic files."

"Motion to Instruct"

The differences between the House bill to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act 
(H.R. 3199) and the Senate bill (S. 1389) (definitely the better of the 
two, but far from perfect) will be hammered out by a conference 
committee soon. We expect the House conferees to be named on Wednesday, 
November 9. At that time, a motion will be offered to "instruct" the 
House conferees to adopt the Senate bill which limits the PATRIOT Act's 
more intrusive powers.

Take Action!

Please call your Representative today (Jim Gibbons, 202/225-6165; Jon 
Porter, 202/225-3252; Shelley Berkley, 202/225-5965) to urge them to 
vote YES on the "motion to instruct" that will be introduced Wednesday.

Because neither the Senate or House version of the Patriot Act bill in 
conference addresses NSL concerns - PLEASE - express your outrage with 
the FBI's misuse of NSLs, as reported by the Washington Post! It is 
unconscionable that Congress is not providing oversight of this power.

The foregoing was adapted for use by the NCDPA from an action alert 
issue on 11/8/2005 by:

Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Web: www.bordc.org
Email: info at bordc.org
Phone: 413-582-0110
Fax: 413-582-0116

Nevada Campaign to Defeat the Patriot Act
http://ncdpa.org
775/826-4514