Transparency: The Ultimate Check and Balance

"Unwarranted government surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens the very foundations of a democratic society."
  -- Tim Berners Lee, Wired

Take just two minutes of your time, right now, to help what the Atlantic called “perhaps the most diverse collection of groups in the modern history of American politics.” (There aren't many issues that the ACLU, Green Party, the Tea Party Association, and Occupy Wallstreet groups--just to name a few--can all agree on... but this is one of them.) Add your name to the 524.600+ signatures at StopWatching.Us to let Congress know this is not okay.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  -- Benjamin Franklin

Checks and balances don't work when they operate in total secrecy; Transparency is the ultimate check and balance. If our elected officials are doing things we do not like or agree with, we are able to vote them out... but we have to be able to know what it is, exactly, they are doing. Would you be comfortable with it if police operated in total secrecy? If every court room, Congress, and the White House operated in complete secrecy? If the Constitution and Bill of Rights were classified documents, would you just take the government's word for it if they assured you that you *did* have rights... but they just couldn't tell you what they were because people might try to take advantage of them? This is too big of an issue to operate entirely behind closed doors.

"[The National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide."
  -- Senator Frank Church, in 1975, on Surviellance State evils.

With just your e-mail, name, address, and zip code, you're sending a letter to Congress asking for three things:

1. Reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law;
2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying and create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

And if these programs are truly just the "modest encroachments on privacy," as President Obama has assured us, then it should really be no problem to accommodate these requests.

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
  -- UN Declaration on Human Rights

Sign your name.

Share this with your family and friends and ask them to do the same.

Further Reading:

• The Criminal N.S.A., The New York Times
• John Cusack: The Snowden Principle, The Huffington Post
• Leaks Are Vital For Democracy and the NSA Revelations Are the Quintessential Example Why, Freedom of the Press Foundation
• Surveillance State evils, Salon