We'll give you a script and connect you automatically.
What to say
I am one of your constituents, and I’m calling to ask you to take action against mass surveillance by the NSA.
I’d like Senator/Representative ____ to support and co-sponsor the USA Freedom Act. I would also like you to oppose S. 1631, the so-called FISA Improvements Act. Moreover, I’d like you to work to prevent the NSA from undermining encryption standards and to protect the privacy rights of non-Americans.
The NSA "has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world."
— The New York Times
The NSA collected "almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks" in one month in 2013.
— The Guardian
The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls "upstream" collection.
— The Washington Post
The NSA "is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans."
— The Washington Post
The NSA "is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world."
— The Washington Post
The NSA "is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country."
— The New York Times
It introduces a special advocate to champion civil liberties in the FISA court
It appears to create new statutory limits on mass surveillance by the NSA.
However, this bill is a floor, not a ceiling. Here's how it could be improved:
It could clarify in plain language that bulk surveillance is illegal and prevent the FBI from issuing National Security Letters without prior review by a judge.
Include language to stop the NSA from undermining international encryption standards.
Have stronger language to protect the privacy of people outside of the United States.
The USA FREEDOM Act is one step in the right direction, with many more steps that need to follow.
FISA Improvements Act
The FISA Improvements Act, is a bill written by the intelligence community and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
If the FISA Improvements Act (S. 1631) were to pass:
It would codify the controversial bulk telephone records surveillance program of the NSA.
It would allow the NSA to continue to collect telephone records of hundreds of millions of Americans not suspected of any crime.
It would permit the NSA to restart the bulk collection of Internet communication records—an extremely invasive, secret program the government attempted under dubious legal ground but abandoned because it wasn't effective.
Take part
The SOPA and PIPA protests were successful because we all took part, as a community. As Aaron Swartz put it, everybody "made themselves the hero of their own story." We can set a date, but we need all of you, the users of the Internet, to make it a movement.