October 20 organizing call page.

Jon: Hi all ... thanks for joining us!

Mark: has anyone read the actual bill reported last Tuesday by Sen. Leahy? I got a copy, what I see is not what we want but it's a lot stronger than my understanding of waht the committee passed.

Mark: I called the committee majority councle. No report, no English language summary, but it has gone through and has some really neat things in it that I was not aware was in the bill a couple weeks ago.

Mark: do we have a legislative type lawyer amongst us?

Jon: Chip, who is not going to be on this call, has strong legal knowledge. Hopefully Mandy from ACLU will beo n the call, might be able to see who they have on it. Very interesting information!

Jim, Mark, Harry, Jon, Jim, Brandon, Jo here so far

Brandon: House judiciary committee bill dropped an hour ago. Conyers has posted a press release about it. Conyers/Nadler/Scott. HR 3845

Brandon: not full text of the bill, but press release has plain English summary of the different sections

Jim Babka, Kevin Bankston, and Sally just joined us as well

[Comment From Jim Babka]
Jim Babka, DownsizeDC.org, also here -- not sure anyone heard me


jon: hi Jim, thanks for joining us!

Jon: Mark describing SJC bill differnet than expected.

Mark: items that caught my attention. In the bill as of now, NSLs are repealed in their entirety effective Dec. 31, 2013.

Mark: Judicial review of FISA and NSLs and related stuff is authorized as of now or 90 days. Requirement for minimization compliance, judicial review of miniimization compliance, and requirement for jduicail review of sneak and peak warrants, and cut from 30 days lead time to 7 for sneak and peak warrants. Whole bunch of stuff on IG reports to congress to show compliance with variance provisios, minimization, and so forth.

Mark: not all in the bill as I understood it having watched the markup

Mark: the bill that was reported from the committee was reported by Sen. Leahy last Tuesday (Oct 13). S1692, but designation parenthesis RS is opposed to paraenthesis IS. IS refers to introduced senate, which was Leahy Cardin bill, IS gets referred to committee.

Jon: specifically this is the bill coming out of committee.

Mark: 1692 (RS)

Jon: the house, Brandon, any quick responses of how strong the house bill 3845?

Brandon: my quick view of it is that it's a pretty great bill. For libraries, have a specific carve out from 215. No persoanl identificaiton can be obtaiend by 215 order. Other great stuff too---judicial review for gag orders, NSLs are tagged, in order to get NSL agency has to document at hte time that the information sought pertains to a foreign power or agent of foreign power.

Brandon: documentation kept on their files, but that forces them to create a record at the time they want the letter tying to a foreign power


[Comment From Guest]
Are tere pointers to the texts of these?

Kevin: that is really really good. Doesn't do everything we would like, but does an enormous amount of things. As notably, they introduced two bills today, notonly a patriot reform bill, but also a FISA amenmdent refomr bill.

Kevin: separating it out shows that they are not inttereseted in FISA slowing down patriot renewal.


[Comment From Melinda]
Hello. Sorry to be late to the discussion.


[Comment From Jim Burrows]
(Sorry, JimB asking for pointers)


Jim Babka: Who introduced these wonderful bills?

Kevin: I have not seen copy of bills yet


jon: Jim: Conyers, Nadler, and ... um not sure


jon: We're working on getting links

Kevin: this group has done a great job of putting hte focus on JUSTICE. at this point though, therea re no returns in it.

Jon: at one call we discussed this, need to find a new theme going forward.

Jon: any word on timing in the house or for htat matter in the senate?

Kevin: House patriot bill markup in two weeks. Not sure if htere is an immediate plan to bring othe rup for a markup. Senate we don't know, depends on health care.

Kevin: impasse on heatlhcare, could hit the floor very soon


[Comment From Jim Burrows]
To answer my own question, tere's some info here: http://judiciary.house.gov/news/091020.html

Mark: on senate calendar. Harry Reid can bring bills up as he chooses. that's what to look out for

Jon: next action points are house committee markup and whenever it coems to senate

Kevin: on the house, a bit more specificaly, could really use more judiciary committee members as authors. For both bills obviously

Kevin: can go out to the whole house, but going into markup focus on members on committee

Kevin: if you can only target a few people, target committee democrats.

Brandon: another thing I have heard is another option for targetting is thinking about new members. Judy taking Sherman seat's on the committee could use encouraging. Also the house intellgience committee which will weigh in will help. Part of what we saw on the senate side is the intel people got a scary briefing and they watered the bill down big time.


Jon: leads us to next topic on lessons learned from first skirmish. Before we go on, toher questions on short term legislative situation?

Jim: bills sound good

Jon: the spnosors are conyers, nadler, and bobby scott

Jon: as Brandon says when of the learnings here is that once again they did last minute briefing trick, and it worked. That's a tough one.

Jon: what lept up to people about what worked better/well in SjC battle? Brief discussion on blog, but curious what people have to say.

Jim: I don't know how we deal with this "if you knew how I knew" last minute briefing thing. That's a tool we don't have, not necessarily a trump card, but it certainly urts us.

Brandon: judging by what Drubin/FEingold/Staffers I've heard from are saying ist hat there are poeple in these briefings not convinced. Wish there was a way to get them to speak out

Brandon: I think we should find a way to make sure the folks getting these briefings to be more vocal

Jim: Feingold was vocal during the markup

Jon: one thing Feingold said that was critical in terms of framing is that the intelligence service framing is we have htese investigaitos gonig on, can't do anytign to hamper then. feingold saying that there is nothing in these freforms that has evidence tha *** will hamper legislation. Is a quesiton of where the burden of truth

Jo: Why not have one investigation, say we do it after, implement new reules

Branodn: will be provision in hosue bill that says exactly that, grandfathers in investigations

Mark: central problem that we face with national securty issues has been evident for a number of years. American people generally are perfectly wiling to surrender the entirey of their freedoms nad constitution in order to "stay safe".

Mark: If I ever get well one of these days I"m going to do a blog about he fact htat it's not hte first responsiblity of hte presidnet ot keep the american people safe. If Chruchill wanted tod o that we would all be speaking German. First responsibility of gov is to to serve/protect constitution

Mark: really intellignet, really liberal, with it people these past few years are on the other side. Don't care about any privacy inconveniences

Jon: it's really true and it shows int he media coverage. Waht was your take on the media coverage so far? Was it expected, successes to build on?

?: I was astonished by the lack of coverage. My one great hope, even though it wrpobaobly wouldn't change naything, is where are the MSNBC folks like Maddow/Olbermann? Has anyone seen them do anythign on this?


Jim Babka: The problem with this issue is that there are too many moving parts, with too much lingo, and it seems so removed from most American's experience.


Jim Babka: How do we simply and personalize?

Jim: they come closer to covering htis kind of thing than anyone else. Taht's thep athetic thing, is even those poeple who have been calling out the gov on these things haven't been paying attention to this.

Jim (other Jim): importnat to know that esp for Olbermann is he was jumping on the GOP for this, a lot of these people are very partisan in that. When it's attached to Obama is there is reluctantce

Kevin: I dsiagree, I appeared on Olbemrann criticizing Obama on his position on NSA litigation a few months ago

Jim: I take that back then. In genearl, not much coverage. Washignotn Post dropped the ball, is osmethign they would ahve covered during the Bush eyars. Something I was able to succeed at doing as an individual that might work more than tweet, is incredibly old fashioned, but is writing letter to editor.

Jim: if a third of peopel read that letter ot editor, that is 20,000 veiws. By number of views, older poeple who tend to be politicall active, not going to see teh tweets.

Jim: if I advocate for anythign is to advocate doing osmething offline

I see twitter as focusing on targetting media

Jon: letters to the editor has come up several timek, Is complementary. We as agroup have not followed up on it, have passionate poeple spread across the country. How do we get people motivated, but a lot is giving people the confidnece to do this. Giving them a tutorial, support, feedback when they are doing drafts. Ways to do more of that?

Sally: I'm not sure about that, we have a bunch of people motivated for healthcare reform. They have become newly active, and may also be interested in this issue, lot of overlapping constiuency there.

Mark: I've posted various stuff ac ouple of weeks ago on the OFA website and Jon and others have as well.

Sally: more groups though too

Jo: I've been invovledin a lot of groups that get people to do letters, send out milions a year, and I wanted to say that I agree it's a really nice blend with your younger folks, the social networking has to be primo, but with older sets letters to editors.

Jo: specifically, about getting people to do letters to the editor, can basically kind of do it for poeple, give them talking points, have it set up for papers near them. In this world, when 75,000 organizations will pretty much do it for you, lots and lots of us, i'm sorry to say, but will go to where it's easier to do things

Jon: yeah, who has the time with competing demands.

Jim: I didn't mean to denigrate social media, but I thinkw e need to go offline as well as online


Kevin: the offline strateige,s in paritcualr getting editorial boards interested and letters ot ediotr, traditioanl gorups have been implemtning that strategy, doing it for a while, nto ghaving a great success. I don't see what we would do that would chagne that. I feel like what this particualr organization if we want to call it that offesr is the new medai stuff, in partiucalr a way for poeple to voice their concerns in a way that is not as time consuming as letters to hte ditor.

Kevin: of course offline is importnat, have groups working that angle. Waht you don't have is anyone working agggressivley the new media angle

Kevin: I'm talking about organizing poeple to do things on twitter

Jon: exactly. I'm working on a post looking at hte learnigns psecifically on twitter. It's really remakrable, even someone like CREdO action with twitter integraiotn in prietition, but didn't focus it as feedback for politicains, only one I could find was our petitions to specter, feingold, etc. Evne at those small numbers they got noticed by staffers.

Jon: point taken Kevin, but still there is value in getting a grassroots effort here to compliment on letters ot the editor.

Jim: I'm wondering, for instance, Olbemrann/Maddow have not gone as easy on dems as fox on GOP. Tehir websites have email, is it reaosnable for us to try to target htem? Can we use new media for campaign ot send email directly to them?

Jim: essentially letters to editor to MSNBC/CNN to try to move the media in the direciton we want to move them in

Sally: don't forget, Amy Goodman is covering it a lot. As is Laura Flanders.

Jim: amy is wonderufl but she doesn't pread into the MSM much at all. Sometimes you can get Olbemrann to fight with Fox, that spreads into the rest of MSM

Kevin: Maddow/Olbermamnn have twitter feeds, could be a twitter action

Jon: we're coming up with several things here, I'm going to ask people to take the leads on the enxt steps.

Jon: letters do the editor, Jim can you send in link to yours? Can someone send in blog post letting poeple know what to do, some directory letting htem know letters ot editor in the area, making it dirt simple to people like Jo said.

Jim: will write up bullet points on house bill, get it to you

Jon: someone have time to convert that into a blog post along with recommendations?

Sally: I can try

Raphael just got on the call

Sally: I'm searching Change.org, haven't seen anything new.

Jon: If anyone has time to help that'd be great

Kevin: is there an easy to refer to resource to see which representatives are on twitter? Nadler/Conyers/scott ont wtiter, we shoudl be thanking htem

Jon: tweetcongerss does that

Jon: Harry can you do a similar one for house as you did for senate (listing of social medai accounts)


Not a problem

Jon: will get up thank you tweets to Conyers/Nadler et al

Patrick is here too

Jon: targetting Olbermann/Maddow, great insight that these are the most leveraged places. For twitter for Maddow, is Olbermann still blogging on Kos?

Jim: have published email address on their websites, if they got repeated email might response

I'll be taking the lead on twitter aspect of this

Jon: if someone finds the email links, if someone wants to write up emailing instructions we can get that out to the lists as well. 2,400 hundred people on OFA list, maybe a 100 poeple on twitter. Lot of poeple we can coax to send email that can't do tweet

Harry: point taken

Jim: can write on Kos, few other email lists I can ehlp wtih to get to key people.

Jon: that's great, it would be great to get Kos more engaged. Marcy Wheeler, Greenwadl have been covering the issue well, neithe has focused on the activism effort. Has almost been completely missing from Kos/other blogs

Jon: progressive lbogopshere was key part last summer in adding energy. Seeing it much mroe on libertarian side. Point taken that it's Obama now, but general feeling that htis is not hte chagne we voted for. how do we tap into that dynamic?

Sally: I'm not srue, a lot of poeple who feel that way have given up

Jo: as OFA person/organizer, whose heart is broken from what I've see, many I work with are all in the same boat. We have pooled to obama because of his policies, but now see him standing for coprorations, not the poeple

Jon: seems like such an issue to tap into that feeling on. So many I talk to say that Obama's FISA vote was when I realized he was a politicaian like anyone

Jon: Sally/Harry on GFR blog have been talking about whether now is the time to do another open letter. Marcy Wheeler had gerat point that Obama is hiding behind Jeff Sessions, does it make sense to embaras Obama on that?

Jim: if you don't display independece, don't have a push to leverage

Jon: does another open letter, I dont' know the exact timing for this to hit. Whatever pressure we can get on Obama would be great, but once again getting poeple involved in this, getting same kind of dynamics that led to media coverage last year

Jim: one thing that disheartend me is that I got email from Wexler saying he's retiring in January. On House judiciary he would be osmeone we would be targetting, ahs al the right instincts. Wondering, do we have anyone who is a constituent of his?

Jim: seeing if he can get the ball rolling

Jon: good point, add Wexler to list along with Judy Chu amognst intersting people to target

Jon: Harry si taking detailed notes, will do a blog post to send out to OFA list, let poeple who RSVPed to facebook know. try to digest it down into actions, send it out.

Jon: back to Kevin's point, we are the gorup of people thinking the most about how to use new media to exert pressure. ACLu doing a wonderufl job of tweeting, but how do we convert this to pressure on politicians. On twitter have a decent mechanims with these targetted petitions. Facebook is blurry, have a 1,000 poeple in the group, if you get something wtih right characteristics it could go viral. But what?

Jon: experimented iwth status change, good for getting word out, not good for pressuring

Jim: doesn't erally pressure anyone

Jim: if you can get standard rsponse from advertisement, which is low, 4/5%, why don't we try to send mail to Maddow/Olbemrann, 40/50 email messages might get noticed

Sally: media person who might also be a good target is Bill Moyers

Jon: specifically, what message do we want to send to them? more than cover this issue pelase. Where's the story here?


[Comment From Soren]
Recent Kos diary on what I've done on the Weiner amendment: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/19/795083/-Facebook-group-in-support-of-Weiner-amendment-150+

Jon: sense of weariness, talking about patriot act again

Sally: Moyers has come out with book on the subject

Jim: watering down that went down during SJC, using last minute confidential briefings, Feingold/Leahy/Feinstein process, in my small numbe rof peopel was able to energize iwth that

Jim: if we focus on how this isn't the change we are going for, it is being watered down. More and more poeple getting fed up with democrats chasing GOP approach.

Last summer, media focused on dems vs dems. Can tie with healthcare in that Obama and conservative dems are standing behind veil of "GOP making us do this" while that is not the case. No one is covering it though.

?: idea about rallying behind champions. House Dems following through on promise of reigning in imperial presidency.

Jon: highlights wiht what Chris Bowers on Open Left has been covering, from healthcare, House has been flexing muscles. another way for progressives to standup in the house

Harry: I like that a lot

Jim: is somethign that's a good hting that others want to join. If narrative can be, here is bold progressives taking meaningful steps.

Jon: while thinking here, can we get beyond progerssives, libertarian factor is important here. Difference between healthcare debate, lot of gov spending invovled, but libertarians on same side on civil lbierties

Jon: particularly, was impressed by Ed Brayton, Julian and CATO institute being all over this. Way to gbuild on that strenght, make that a story?

Jim Burrows: Moyers email via web: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/feedback.html MSNBC email addreses: rachel@msnbc.com + Countdown@msnbc.com

Sally; where is Ron Paul on this?

Jon: someone was goign to talk to his legislative analyst. WE should target him, just cause. Interesting in that our itneractions iwht specter, we were polite/respectful, and he did the right thing. REally stood out.

Jon: everyone else on his page, from ehalthcare, was you better do this or you

Harry: Ron Paul is workign with Alan Grayson on FED issues. Try to connect Progerssive block and civil libertarians through Open Left connection (Matt Stoller, Grayosn legislative aid, was a founder of that blog)

Jon: we will post links to blog, send to list with all details forwarded to me/in general after the call

Jon: recapping, several prongs we want to proceed on. Letters to editor, Jim Babka going to draft bullet points, Sally will help, get into blog post format. Jo will consult with as well, how to make easy for people

Jon: two, targetting Olbermann/Maddow/Moyers and others, both via tiwtter and email.

Jim: I didn't volunteer to writing the talkign points, I think that was the other Jim (Jim Cook)

Jon: on things to Maddow et al, what I heard is that we have an idea of what the story is here. The best way forward is doing a short blog post, we think this is abig story worht covering. And then, on twitter, oyou can tweet that iwth the link, via emial peple can use that as a basis for their email.

Jim: I heard several peices of the story, useful to put on the wiki, make a first draft of it

Jon: who wants to do first draft? I guess I'll take that, send it out.

Jon: following that, Harry will take the lead on twitter, someone on email as well.

Jon: If ther is anyone else who wants to be an admin on FB I'll try to add

Jim Burrows: i'll join you on that

Jim Burrows: I can admin facebook


Soren: I would be willing to help admin facebook group

Jon: if you're in the FB group will get update that way. Jim will do updates ont hat

Jon: in short temr, do thank you to conyers/nadler/scott. That is more time sensitive, that will be first hting I'll do after the meeting is get act.ly pettiion up. Will work on twitter, if people on FB, if you want to do a post on that congressman's wall, or if there is a discussion board, kicking something off here would be gerat. post something on FB wall page woudl be good too, easy to coordinate there instead of a lot of email


Soren: Can anyone afford a facebook ad campaign? you can target networks like Congress

Jim: for poeple to target, Grayosn is osmeone with reputation that he fights the way republicans do. In your face way. Wonder if there is a way to leverage him. This has not been his issue in the past, but if he would come out and say somethign newswort and in yoru face even just once it would catch the attention in the media


Soren: or fans of Maddow, etc


jon: From Jim Cook: Here's the administrative courts report pdf: http://irregulartimes.com/AOUSCreportonsneakandpeekjuly2009.pdf and here's a blog post I wrote on it with a graph: http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2009/10/15/report-usa-patriot-used-to-sniff-out-druggies-guns-and-fraud-not-terrorism/ I'll send letter to the editor information to you tonight, as a first draft.

OpenLeft has ties to Grayosn, they can become much more involved. They also appreciate pressur eon Specter, so generally mgiht be amenable to the issue.

Jon: don't have a great answer for how to do this on FB. On twitter, suggest more of hte smae. Should expand to all judiciary members.

Jon: Harry do you have time to get this going on twitter?

Harry: I can do a bunch on it.

Jon: anyone who wants to take lead on FB? Patrick you did a great job gtting JUSTICE group up and going, took a lot of time I know, but was well worht doing.

Patrick: I think I worked on just that one event

Jon: Ben Mazel got that up, yeah

patrick: I would be glad ot help. FB is where I enjoy spending a lot of time



Soren: I can probably get groups of constituents into visit Rep Ellison, Rep. McCollum and Kline (intelligence)

Jon: think about how best to give feedback to politicains, what works best for you. Wall writing, discussion boards, i'm not sure what will work. Once we know date of house jduiciary hearing should also set up evnet on FB

Jon: ok, that's a chunk of stuff for next steps. Oh, Open letter ot Obama remains open. When the time is right poeple will step forward. If you ahve initial ideas, cans et up a page on the wiki to sratr drafting, watch it atke shape

Jim: open letters houdl play into media picking up dems vs dems story

Jon: open letter publish online, make enough noise so it gets responded to

Jon: was one open letter we delivered to senate office last itme. great photo opporutnity, but not what influenced the response

Jim: did get media attention though

Jon: not nearly, photo didn't make it far into the media. Focus was on the online stuff. As Kevin says, what's unique about Get FISA Right's origin is it's a soical network acitivsm gorup that started in this unqiue online enviormment ast the same time as this whas where the election was being fought. That's what situates us as an online gorup

Patrick: dem on dem ange, occurred to me that that might also have appeal to MSM

Jon: yeah

Patrick: open letter wanted to put it out htere of combining it with a petition. especially in reference ot what you were talking about OFA list, some poeple won't tweet but htey'll send an email, that type of thing. might be hlepful, i don't know.

Jon: great point, once we get something we're happy with circulate broadly for eveyrone to sign. Not jsut OFA members.

jim: faxes? Get it right out of the machine

Sally: great healthcare faxsite. onepyaer.net. can customize, fax out to hwomever

Jon: fax campaigns are very expensive to do

Jon: alright, bunch of things taking stuff fowrad.

Sally: back on the blog, I posted the note that I wrote hte president on his nobel peace prize win, live up to it. If anyone wants to comment/tweet out, may be too late

Jon: I think it all ties in, quite possily this is one of the thigns i was thinkign about, let's put that in our first draft of hte opn letter. can be a basis for the future

Jon: hosue meeting again, act on this in a couple weeks. does it make sense ot schedule another call next week?

Harry: I say it does, build momentum

Others: yeah

Jon: same time/location?

Jon: patrick, can you set up FB event for that, based ont he event I did this time?

Patrick: set it up for next tuesday, same time.

Jon: yeah

Jim: any inroads to Greenwald? When we do open letter to Oama, thing you want to do with it is get a lot of attention. Talking about Moyers/Maddow/Olbermann to attend to issue in general, if we're lookign fo ra specific thing is one thing he makes noise and a lot of his peeopople go off and make nosies in other blogs and the like

Jim: if we had an event and caught his attnetion, got him to blog about it, that alone would cause it to get out to the blogosphee to the extent that would probably would attract MSM attnetion

Jon: I think your'e right. Our first chance to do this is we're starting to work on the open letter. if we even have a draft up we can touch base, hope he's interested

Jon: maybe write it on his wall

Jon: not about hte facts, he's been writing about it. Turnign it to action. Analytical blog posts not enough to get media attneiton, needs to be new hook. ONce we have draft post up, writing it on his wall, that could be veyr useful.

Jim: if he blogs about it and his poeple hit other blogs, that can snowball

Jon: may have to hit him multplke times to get him to pay attention.

Jim: multiple ways, focus on one event.

Jon: feel like open letter is the one event?

Jim: yeah

Jon: ok, so that means we need guidance from peole who are better plugged in in congress than we are about right itming. Goose the house judiciary committe, shoudl find that out as well.

Raphael: Gabe Zimeran good contact. Tuson. Constituent sevice superviosr. 520-881-3588

Jon: great


Harry: Great call everyone!