Home » News & Events » E-mail Alerts Archive » Legislative Action Alert

ACLU launches "Don't Spy on Me" campaign

NSA Campaign Launch

Yesterday ACLU successfully launched the "Don't Spy on Me" campaign with a national teleconference attended by more than 30 journalists, including from Associated Press, USA Today, The New York Times, NPR, BusinessWeek and numerous regional outlets.

The Associated Press story, reprinted below, is currently running in over 300 online outlets. ACLU had national and affiliate spokespeople on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and NPR. The Florida affiliate was featured on several local NPR stations.

For more information about the NSA Campaign access either the ACLU National or ACLU of Florida websites. You can also click here to go directly to the 'Don't Spy on Me' web page.

ACLU Files Complaints Over Government Phone Snooping

By Larry Neumeister
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 25, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) - A civil rights group filed complaints in more than 20 states Wednesday, including Nevada, and asked the public to help force probes into whether phone companies broke laws by sharing customer records with the government's biggest spy agency.

The American Civil Liberties Union announced its "Don't Spy On Me" campaign with the complaints to state utility commissions and attorneys general and with a demand that the Federal Communications Commission in Washington look into the matter.

In ads in eight big-city newspapers, the ACLU asked readers to join the formal complaints because, as it said in bold type: "AT&T, Verizon and Other Phone Companies May Have Illegally Sent Your Phone Records to the National Security Agency."

The campaign, symbolized by a telephone with an eye on it, urged the public to add names to complaints on the ACLU web site about allegations that phone companies illegally allowed the NSA to collect calling information patterns on Americans.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a teleconference Wednesday that the organization was demanding investigations by oversight bodies after Congress has been "curiously silent" on the issue.

Romero said the organization believes a full investigation by independent fact finders was necessary to understand the full extent of "mass surveillance on American citizens who have done nothing wrong."

Romero said the ACLU believes the phone program was the latest example of "a longer-term abuse of power by the executive branch."

He called it "an effort to undercut judicial role, to seize law enforcement powers that it should not have and that Congress did not grant to it and an effort to hide information from public scrutiny and public involvement on important issues that effect the basic rights of ordinary Americans."

Romero said the ACLU also sought to pressure the FCC and its chairman, Kevin Martin, to investigate the telephone records program even though Martin has said the agency does not have the power to review classified information.

A Democratic FCC commissioner, Michael J. Copps, said last week that the agency should investigate phone companies involved in the NSA program.

President Bush and other administration officials have neither confirmed nor denied a USA Today report that the NSA is collecting the calling records of ordinary Americans in its effort to detect the plans of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations.

Bush has said the administration's anti-terrorism surveillance programs are legal and constitutional.

Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for government lawyers in New York, declined to comment on the subject Wednesday.

The ACLU set up special Web pages as part of its campaign. The pages featured a banner on top with the words "Don't Spy On Me" over a black background and a logo of a white telephone with a dark eyeball in the middle of it.

The civil rights group asked the public to "tell the Federal Communications Commission to get the spies off the line."

Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU in Massachusetts, said four mayors had complained to the state's utility regulatory board because state law requires the board to conduct public hearings when a mayor complains.

"If Congress isn't holding the public hearings then it is important that we find other forums where we can actually find out what's going on," she said. "We have a situation where the government is vastly increasing its power to spy on us but at the same time the citizenry isn't able to find out what their government is doing.

"It's the very antithesis of open and transparent democracy," she added. "So we're trying to use the levers of democracy that are available to us to try to restore the system of checks and balances and to stop the abuse of power that's going on."

Chicopee, Mass., Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette said he joined the requests because privacy was fast becoming the key civil rights issue facing the country.

"Truth is the best disinfectant against this type of dangerous alliance between big government and big business," he said. "This is likely the greatest invasion of consumer privacy in our nation's history."

Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida ACLU, urged the public to join the fight because "the rule of law" was at risk.

"These laws cannot be allowed to be set aside simply on the whim of the president and we cannot allow Congress and administrative agencies to remain asleep at the switch," he said.

The ACLU said its complaints were filed in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

The ads were taken out in newspapers in Portland, Ore., Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, Boston and San Francisco.

Larry Helm Spalding
ACLU Legislative Counsel
Tallahassee, Florida

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.
In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead