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Rays Of Sunlight in the House Judiciary CommitteeGood news on national security legislation. I know! I can hardly believe it myself! The USA Patriot Amendments Act was marked up this week in an epic House Judiciary Committee meeting that spanned two days. The bill, though a bit watered down, still managed to maintain some of its civil liberties protections including:
There are now a total of seven bills in Congress addressing the Patriot Act since three of the Act’s provisions are set to expire on December 31st. The USA Patriot Amendments Act is the best of the bunch that Congress is actively considering. We’ll be asking you for support on this bill, especially as it faces some stiff competition from a competing bill introduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes. That bill will likely be heading for its own markup in the next few weeks (though, that mark up will likely be closed to the public). For more great info on Patriot check out the Get FISA Right kids, Julian Sanchez at Cato and, of course, Marcy Wheeler over at Firedoglake. The House Judiciary Committee also managed to mark up the State Secrets Protection Act this week and, thankfully, left the bill largely intact. This bill was introduced early in the year after the Obama administration followed the Bush administration’s lead on claiming state secrets in our lawsuit against Jeppesen DataPlan for their role in “extraordinary rendition.” The government — unfortunately both past and present administrations now — has attempted to block several important lawsuits with an overbroad and improper assertion of “state secrets.” The ACLU considers the State Secrets Protection Act a must-pass bill that will narrow the scope of the state secrets privilege and could open the courthouse doors to people who have suffered real and legitimate harm by the government. The bill will likely see more movement in 2010. Expect to hear from us then.
Congress is Losing its Chance to Reform the Patriot Act(Originally posted on Huffington Post.) Tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue its debate over a bill that reauthorizes three Patriot Act provisions due to expire on December 31. The bill, The USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act, includes minor tweaks to the Patriot Act but does not go nearly far enough to thoroughly protect the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. The Patriot Act is a reactionary law. It was passed 45 days after 9/11 with virtually no debate and granted the government sweeping surveillance powers including the ability to conduct secret searches of Americans’ homes without warrants or even the presence of the resident. Easily one of the most dangerous powers handed over in the Patriot Act was the expansion of the National Security Letters (NSL) statute which allows the government to demand a huge variety of our information (medical records, tax records, books we borrow from the library, etc.) from recipients like Internet service providers (ISP), financial institutions, and libraries without any proper judicial oversight. Oh, and it contains a gag order for recipients. The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General has released two consecutive reports in the last several years detailing the FBI’s flagrant and systemic misuse of the NSL statute. In 2004, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, now called Doe v. Holder, on behalf of an ISP that the FBI served with an NSL. A lower court ruled in 2007 that the gag order provisions were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling in 2008. However, the FBI continues to enforce the gag order on the ISP even though the underlying investigation is more than five years old and even though the FBI abandoned its demand for records from the ISP more than three years ago. By continuing to unconstitutionally enforce its five-year-old gag order on a John Doe NSL recipient and his ACLU attorneys, the FBI is suppressing key information that could help inform the ongoing congressional debate about the need to reform the NSL statute. Back to the Senate Judiciary Committee - the bill being debated is a ‘compromise’ bill offered by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and is not the bill the ACLU was hoping for. We endorsed a bill introduced by Senators Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) called the JUSTICE Act, which would have inserted rigorous civil liberties safeguards into the Patriot Act as well as several other overly broad surveillance laws including the FISA Amendments Act. You can see how the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act stacks up against the current law and the JUSTICE Act here. During tomorrow’s continued debate, Senators Feingold and Durbin are seeking to have JUSTICE Act provisions – most importantly NSL provisions – added as amendments to the committee’s base bill. Last week the Senators succeeded in adding language that would shorten the time period on the “sneak and peek” provision, (you can thank Senator Feingold for introducing the amendment by tweeting a message here and Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) for voting for it by tweeting a message here). As we approach the committee’s vote tomorrow, there’s still time for you to contact your Senators’ offices urging them to vote to add any JUSTICE Act amendments to the bill next markup. It’s crucial that you reach out to these key Senators and urge them to protect the privacy of all Americans by voting for additional amendments that would rein in the NSL authority. Specifically, these Senators voted against modest privacy protections last week and need to hear from you: Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Edward Kaufman (D-DE), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Al Franken (D-MN) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Clearly, these Senators need to hear that we are watching and very interested in protecting our Fourth Amendment rights. Senators Specter and Cardin (D-MD) also deserve a call thanking them for supporting Senator Feingold’s important amendment last Thursday. Urge them to keep supporting the Constitution. Real Patriot Act reform can be realized as long as we all stay engaged, focused and vigilant. Get dialing, America!
Justice for True PatriotsYesterday, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced the Justice Act, which would provide much-needed fixes to the three provisions of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. This is good news, because on Tuesday the Department of Justice said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) (PDF) that it was open to reforming parts of the Patriot Act. We're going to hold you to that, DOJ! Earlier this year, the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office released a report, called Reclaiming Patriotism (PDF), that details the parts of the Patriot Act that need fixing most. Since the 38-page report isn't exactly light fare, we'll sum up the must-know parts for the upcoming Patriot Act debate: First, the three provisions that will expire at the end of the year:
The ACLU is also concerned about provisions of the Patriot Act that are not expiring, but which would be amended under Sen. Feingold's bill. For example, the National Security Letter statute, which permits the FBI to secretly demand sensitive and private customer records from Internet service providers, banks, and credit companies, without any suspicion or prior judicial approval. To make matters even worse, the statute allows the FBI to put gag orders on NSL recipients, prohibiting them from discussing the record demand. The ACLU have filed three lawsuits on behalf of NSL recipients, and most recently, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that the NSL statute's gag provisions violated the First Amendment. The Justice Act would also fix the worst parts of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). You remember the FAA, right? That was the law Congress passed last year that immunized telecoms from lawsuits for wiretapping innocent Americans, in collusion with the National Security Agency. In passing the FAA, Congress — with the help of then-Sen. Obama — basically signed away our Fourth Amendment rights by allowing the government to conduct dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications. We hope Congress and the president will take this opportunity to not only right that wrong, but also fix the overbroad sections of the Patriot Act by passing the Justice Act and signing it into law, restoring Americans’ privacy rights. You can watch the debate unfold next week: On Tuesday, the ACLU's Mike German will testify about the Patriot Act before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. And the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Patriot Act next Wednesday. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, the "Justice Act" is indeed a crazy acronym, just like the "Patriot Act." It stands for: "Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools in Counterterrorism Efforts." Does Congress have a machine that makes up these things?)
Disappointed, But Undaunted
We're obviously disappointed with today's vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act without common sense reforms to ensure that anti-terrorism resources are focused on agents of al Qaeda, and not used to invade the private financial, medical, library and internet records of ordinary Americans.
We applaud the valiant efforts of Senators Feingold and others to include truly effective civil liberties safeguards. Notably, Senators Feingold, Tom Harkin (D-IA), Jim Jeffords (I-VT), and the dean of the Senate, Robert Byrd (D-WV), voted against final passage. And in recent days, Senator Durbin (D-IL), Judiciary Committee Chairman Specter (R-PA), and Congresswoman Jane Harman and others, have reiterated the need to reform the law to better protect civil liberties, regardless of the vote's outcome. One thread of the debate remains unresolved, as the adjustments in the Sununu amendment, including a small change to National Security Letter rules, may or may not reach a House vote before the bill reaches the president's desk. We will continue to press for needed reforms to protect American freedoms. But we're sadly aware that in some ways the debate over reform may itself be completely moot. Until the Bush administration stops the illegal NSA program to spy on Americans, and stops ignoring the rule of law, any reforms to the Patriot Act may simply go unheeded under the extreme view of unlimited power embraced by this president. Congress must restore the rule of law and insist that Americans' rights be protected. Our great nation can, and must, be both safe and free. Together with our allies on the right and the left, we have made tremendous progress over the past four years. The Bush administration had sought a repeat of 2001, when the Patriot Act was passed quickly with little debate and only a few courageous dissenters. But the national debate over the secret search powers expanded by the Patriot Act has come a long way. Our efforts achieved a legislative impact that many, if not most, people thought was impossible. A bipartisan group of 52 Senators was willing to stand up to the administration and filibuster the bill last year. And we saw an exponential increase in the number of members of Congress willing to stand against the bill until it is reformed to fully protect fundamental American values. More than ever before, we need the support of conscientious Americans to help us continue to fight. We need a special prosecutor to investigate the NSA spying. We need to hold Congress's feet to the fire on hearings. And, once we've done that, we need to truly reform the Patriot Act, so that our civil liberties are protected and the law's provisions lie within the bounds of the Constitution. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
No Lip Reading Required
CNN has been running an 2004 quote from the president about court orders and wiretaps. It's pretty hard to reconcile the roiling NSA scandal with this statement. The ACLU and many others have been questioning the administration's assurances about the Patriot Act and government surveillance for a long time. This has to be the best example yet of why we think the questions must be asked.
Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution. ... from a Bush speech in Buffalo in April 2004, calling on Congress to renew the expiring parts of the Patriot Act without any reform. The White House may argue that Bush was just talking about domestic surveillance, but the NSA's warrantless wiretap program unequivocally applies to communications from American citizens originating in the United States. Also, note Wednesday's NYT story reporting the warrantless eavesdropping on purely domestic communications. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
The Civil Liberties Six Become Seven
As you no doubt have been hearing elsewhere, the Patriot Act railroad express is officially derailed -- at least for now. Six senators--three Republicans and three Democrats--who objected to the final "deal" that made the act permanent without meaningful safeguards are saying they have a critical mass to sustain a threatened filibuster if key changes aren't made.
Those changes? Well, they want 1) a meaningful standard of suspicion linking secret Patriot Act records orders to a suspected foreign terrorist or spy, 2) a meaningful right to challenge the secrecy of national security letters or "NSLs" (FBI records demands without any court review), 3) a rule requiring notice of secret searches in most general criminal cases after something considerably less than a month, and 4) a four-year "sunset" or expiration date on a few key powers so that another review can happen before the end of the decade. The "civil liberties" six are saying they won't accept a final deal without real progress, at least, on these priorities. Senator Feingold stood alone in 2001 when he objected to the original Patriot Act--now he's got a merry, bipartisan band of supporters. And they include some real "odd bedfellows." It turns out that in rural, conservative states like libertarian Alaska, Second Amendment-haven Idaho, and "live free or die" New Hampshire, lots of conservatives don't like the federal government having these extraordinary powers to invade personal liberty. So, Feingold has been joined by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Larry Craig (R-ID) and John Sununu (R-NH). Some are trying to portray the issue as liberals and the ACLU versus security, but that's getting a little stale with mainstream business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce saying the Patriot Act's provisions on business records are just way too broad. However, the real bombshell today was Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA). The "civil liberties" six were holding a press conference to announce their opposition to the deal, and Senator Specter showed up to give them a pat on the back. Specter led the Senate negotiators and his staff, which includes many Justice Department detailees, helped craft the deal to extend the Patriot Act without real meaningful safeguards. But after hearing from so many conservatives, business groups and Republicans, Specter is refusing to sign the conference report and is supporting the call for more changes. The Senate rules would force him to sign if a majority of Senate conferees agrees, but he announced at the press conference that he may well yet support the Sununu/Feingold filibuster without more meaningful reforms. They are hearing us loud and clear. This turkey of a bill won't be ready for Thanksgiving as its supporters had hoped. Instead, members are going back to their states and districts for two weeks. If they are hearing from constitutents, they'll stand firm and demand more changes before passing any bill to extend the Patriot Act. Town halls, letters to the editor, and meetings with members are really going to make the difference now. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
Don't Let Them Dress Up a Pig
Today the Administration's grand plan to make virtually all of the Patriot Act permanent -- and extend some of the most contentious provisions for seven years -- hit, shall we say, a snag.
Last night, some Senators tried to trumpet yesterday's tentative deal citing "MAJOR CHANGES" to protect our privacy. Today that claim ran into a huge brick wall called reality. Some of the changes are too cute by half. The latest proposals would still allow the government to get all sorts of personal records via "national security letters," or NSLs for short. NSLs are just pieces of paper that the FBI can issue without any court involvement at all, demanding records from "financial institutions," which are defined so broadly they include businesses like casinos, boat dealerships and pawnbrokers. Some Patriot Act supporters thought they could pull a fast one with NSLs, proposing a "fix" that would generously allow you to file a challenge to the NSL's secrecy provision. One little hitch: The government would also get a new power to block the challenge by "certifying" to the court that lifting the your gag would threaten national security, or interfere with diplomatic relations or a criminal investigation. The court is not even allowed to look at whether their claim is true. It is required to accept the government's certification as "conclusive." The current proposal would also make it a federal crime to intentionally disclose an NSL. If you go to your local newspaper to protest a government fishing expedition, you could be facing hard time. Even a a reporter writing about it could face a Hobson's choice -- go to jail or reveal their source. These provisions are hardly fixes. But supporters of the deal genuinely thought they would be able to dress this pig up, put some lipstick on it, and bring it to the ball. It didn't work. Not only the ACLU, but our allies across the political spectrum -- all the privacy groups, Bob Barr, and the many conservative and libertarian groups that have joined with us and said "No way." More importantly, Republican and Democratic senators -- including leaders like Russ Feingold (D-WI), John Sununu (R-NH), Dick Durbin (D-MI) and Larry Craig (R-ID) have called the deal "unacceptable." They're using fighting words -- saying that, if the bill doesn't get fixed, they are prepared to filibuster. So we're still in the game. The report that triggered a floor vote was due to have been filed on Monday, and here we are on Thursday and guess what? There's a window right now, and we know lots of folks are calling and letting their member of Congress and Senators know that this deal is not OK. This is the most crucial time for members to be hearing from their constituents. So let's keep those phones ringing off the hook! Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
Checks and Balances In the House
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives bucked intense pressure from the Bush administration and refused to support a ten-year extension for some of the Patriot Act's most controversial powers.
By a voice vote, with no members dissenting to back the White House plan, the House instead supported a four-year expiration date to three sections, including the infamous Section 215, which gives the FBI "secret search" power to get secret court approval to look for "any tangible thing" it wants in intelligence investigations. This vote, on instructions to the conference committee finalizing the Patriot Act renewal recommendations, is a huge win for the bipartisan group that seeks reform, not blanket renewals and extensions. Behind the scenes, Republicans and Democrats in the House had been waiting for weeks to vote against the administration and in favor of shorter sunsets. The bill forced through the House this summer extended some provisions for ten years. Members of Congress know well that extending the sunset for that long would have removed any leverage for Congress to get information about how this administration or its successor, Republican or Democratic, uses these powers. Even before this week's Washington Post article on the dramatic increase in secret records demands, advocates of reform in Congress were working hard to set the stage for Wednesday's vote. Last month, allies in the right-left coalition had counted heads and found a solid majority of House members in support of the shorter sunset provisions in the Senate bill. But House leadership refused to allow the vote. This time around, with a solid majority still in favor of reining in these powers, the House had no choice but to allow the vote. We heard that opponents of reform had been trying to pressure lawmakers to change their votes, and that, as late as today, the administration had been calling members to pressure them not to vote for short sunsets. But, with so many members ready to stand up to the White House, it seems the House leadership decided to support the motion, rather than look like they lost the vote. When members took the floor to cast their votes, not a single lawmaker spoke against it. Even House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin spoke in favor of the motion, although the House bill he worked on adopted the ten-year sunset approach. Representatives from astoundingly diverse political perspectives, from Democrat Rick Boucher of Virginia to Republican Dana Rohrabacher of California, and from Democrat Jerry Nadler of New York to Republican Connie Mack of Florida-all spoke out in favor of short sunsets for these controversial powers. The Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and the Ranking Member John Conyers of the Judiciary Committee generously allowed this motion - which is one of the few procedural rights of the House minority - to become a bipartisan effort. As we waited for the debate to begin, we were still counting votes. Soon after lawmakers started speaking, however, it was clear that reformers had the won the day. It was only a few months ago that the Justice Department had strongly opposed any sunsets, suggesting that federal agents wouldn't use temporary powers. That was a flimsy argument and one that the House wisely rejected. Without your efforts, however, our Congressional representatives would not have had the support to stand up to the arm-twisting of the White House, which was determined to make President Bush's dream of an entirely permanent Patriot Act a reality. We should savor our victory in this pitched battle for the protection of our civil liberties. Clearly, however, much more needs to be done. The inherently abusive powers of the Patriot Act need to be reformed. There's no doubt that the Post article highlighted the potential for abuse. It describes a hundredfold increase in "National Security Letters" issued annually by the government. The Patriot Act opened the floodgates to the extensive use of these secretive search tools by eliminating the requirement for facts connecting records sought to a suspected foreign terrorist. We have a great deal of work ahead of us to bring that power and the others in line with the checks and balances of our Constitution. In the coming days, we will report back to you with news as the conference committee meets. The bottom line is that your commitment to the Constitution helped move this process from a nearly blank check to the executive branch to a bipartisan effort to honor our values of privacy, liberty and due process. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
30,000 Reasons to Reform the Patriot Act
Lawmakers, journalists and bloggers have all been galvanized by recent revelations about the FBI's extensive use of National Security Letters, which permit the bureau to demand certain types of personal records without any prior judicial review.
Bart Gellman's front page expose in The Washington Post got the attention of Senate leaders from both sides of the aisle. In The New York Times, Republican Senator Tom Coburn voices concerns over the rampant issuance of NSLs. Republican Chuck Hagel is also quoted, saying, "I have always been concerned about centralization of power and eroding individual rights." On Meet the Press, Democrat Ted Kennedy pointed out that the activities described in the article "could happen again tomorrow if the House bill were to be successful in the conference between the House and Senate." The ACLU is litigating challenges in two NSL cases, now consolidated on appeal in the Second Circuit. We ourselves remain under a strict government gag order, and our client and its representatives are still gagged from adding their firsthand knowledge about NSLs to the now-swirling controversy over the Patriot Act. There are, however, several things worth noting: First, the sheer quantity of NSLs now being issued per year is alarming. Tim Edgar, our Legislative Counsel on National Security, told me today, "National Security Letters used to be a small but potent tool in national security investigations, but the Patriot Act and the 2004 Intelligence Act changes that redefined boat dealers, casinos, and pawnbrokers as "financial institutions" have opened the floodgates to 30,000 annual government requests, a hundredfold increase in the use of this shadowy power." Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson is the person who made the oral arguments last week in the Connecticut case. "With 30,000 NSLs issued in a single year," she told me, "every American should be concerned that their private records have been caught up in the FBI dragnet. Despite the FBI's ongoing efforts to keep secret its expanded spying powers under the Patriot Act, we now know that the FBI is using National Security Letters to demand library, university, financial, Internet and other personal records without court approval." There are other alarm-bells in the Post article, such as the news about NSL dragnets against casinos and this anecdote about using NSLs as a sledgehammer to get at university records at N.C. State: David T. Drooz, the university's senior associate counsel, said special authority is required for the surrender of records protected by educational and medical privacy. The FBI's first request, a July 14 grand jury subpoena, did not appear to supply that authority, Drooz said, and the university did not honor it. Referring to notes he took that day, Drooz said Eric Davis, the FBI's top lawyer in Charlotte, "was focused very much on the urgency" and "he even indicated the case was of interest to President Bush." As Gelman notes, even the FBI knew NSLs could get out of hand. A month after the Patriot Act passed, then-head of the national security law unit told colleagues: "NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant information. The greater availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in every case." Gellman reports that more recently Woods has been "struck by how starkly he misjudged the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no one noticed." "With 30,000 requests being issued per year for the records of ordinary Americans," Tim Edgar told me, "these letters are now far more common than the national security powers that must face review by the secret court that oversees surveillance. Congress has been almost entirely in the dark about this extraordinary increase in surveillance, and while it is considering a few changes, it has focused much of its attention on other provisions that expire at the end of this year. Whatever happens with the rest of the Patriot Act, Congress should sunset this power so it can thoroughly review it." The blogs are also on this story. Huffingtonpost.com has this posting. Volokh has this. Librarian.net has this. The Jurist at University of Pittsburgh Law School has this. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
Delivering the John Doe Petition to the DOJAfter the Capitol Hill event, more than a dozen librarians went with ACLU members to the Justice Department to deliver 25,000 petition signatures from supporters all over the country who want the government to "Let John Doe Speak." We traveled down Independence Avenue to 950 Pennsylvania Avenue. Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, if you look South you see the dome of the Capitol, where Members of Congress are considering whether to reform key provisions of the Patriot Act, or make them much worse, as proposed by the House bill under consideration. Looking across the street you can see the FBI's headquarters, named for J. Edgar Hoover, the long-time and notorious director of the FBI who ordered FBI agents to keep tabs on thousands of ordinary Americans who had done nothing wrong. Looking northwest, you can see the flag flying over the White House, where President Bush and his aides have repeatedly called for the Patriot Act to be made permanent with hardly any changes. Finally, facing the main entrance to the Justice Department, you can see carved in stone above the grand aluminum doors "The Place of Justice is a Hallowed Place" (a quote from Francis Bacon). In this building, Gonzales has carried on John Ashcroft's campaign to make the Patriot Act permanent and to suggest that changes to restore checks and balances would tie law enforcement' hands, even though requiring facts before searches would actually make us more safe and more free. That entrance is, ironically, now closed to the public. So you have to walk around the building, past dozens of armed guards to the Constitution Avenue entrance.
At the sidewalk, a hulking and armed agent refused to let the group of librarians deliver the petition. Instead, he arbitrarily asserted that only two people could go in the entrance to call the mail room to pick up the petitions. Knowing there was no law or regulation that limited to two the number of people from one group who could make such a delivery, I said I would be going in as well and asked if there were other librarians who wanted to join . He asked us for our IDs and after glancing at them he let the President of the ALA and of the CLA through along with me. We wanted a picture to document us walking in to deliver the petitions. The guard didn't seem pleased about that either, but he allowed the photo. (Later, he demanded the name of our colleague who took the photos.) We walked through the door and phoned the mail room. When a DOJ employee came to receive the bulk of documents, the librarians asked to make sure it would make it to the Attorney General, and were assured they would be delivered. That's how the petitions made it to the Justice Department. Hopefully, Gonzales will listen to the American people and allow John Doe to speak. We've just heard that the two Patriot Act bills could be resolved by the week of October 17th. If John Doe is ungagged before then, his testimony could provide critical information for members deciding whether to reform these dangerous powers. The Senate bill takes some positive steps for reform, although more improvements are needed to bring the Patriot Act in line with the Constitution. Hopefully the place of justice will be a hallowed place again someday, when our nation's top lawyers honor and protect our First and Fourth Amendment rights, rather than working to erode them. Tags: National Security Letters, national security project, Patriot Act, rtpa
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