More Government Spying?
Tell the Bush Administration to respect our privacy!
When John Aravosis purchased my cell phone records from an online data broker in January and then wrote about it on his AMERICAblog, he demonstrated to me and millions of other Americans how vulnerable our personal information is to thieves and hackers.
Well this week we learned the problem is even worse than we first thought.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press revealed that federal and local law enforcement agencies "bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers" -- the same data brokers who sold my personal cell phone records to John for less than a hundred dollars in January.
Unscrupulous data vendors are bad enough. But the government using these brokers to access our personal telephone records without getting necessary warrants? Government can't make laws and then break them. That constitutes a real abuse of power, and it's illegal.
These actions remind me of the actions taken by other governments that would cynically make laws that they knew they would break. We called such governments undemocratic and anti-American. We said that they didn't respect freedom and dignity of every individual.
I need your help to stop this abuse.
In January, I was proud to join Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) to endorse a bipartisan bill to protect our private phone records.
Their bill, "The Consumer Telephone Records Act of 2006" (S. 2178), would make the stealing and selling of telephone records a criminal offense -- punishing individuals who impersonate customers or fraudulently access online accounts, as well as the employees of phone companies who sell this private information.
This is common sense legislation that is desperately needed; yet Majority Leader Frist has refused to move the bill forward.
After this week's shocking revelation, it's clearly time for Congress to act.
Email your Senators and urge them to support S. 2178, the Schumer/Specter bill, today!
Thanks to the Associated Press, now we've discovered that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the US Marshal's Service used these unscrupulous data brokers to bypass subpoenas and warrants and circumvent the Constitution.
According to the AP, the "U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies any price.
"Every American should be outraged.If governmental agencies need this data for their law enforcement efforts, there is a process to obtain these records. It's the U.S. court system. And by patronizing these companies, the government is not only condoning but encouraging illegal behavior.
Congress can't let the Bush Administration abuse the constitutional rights of American citizens. It is time for Congress to fulfill its constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government and tell the Bush Administration, "Enough is Enough!"
Urge your Senators to restore the privacy of our phone records -- forward them an email today!
Thank you for acting today on this urgent matter.
>Sincerely,
Wes Clark
