 Tell Rep. Young: It's outrageous you'd allow warrantless spying on Americans. Dear Melissa, Rep. Todd Young, who represents you in Congress, recently voted to renew a sweeping, Bush-era law that allows our government to trample our constitutional rights in the name of "national security." The legislation, known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, was ostensibly designed to target people on foreign soil who don't enjoy the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure afforded to American citizens. However, in practice this allows government spy agencies to suck up and store vast amounts of electronic information about people. And due to loopholes in the law, this information collection includes massive amounts of warrantless spying on innocent Americans. Tell Rep. Young: It's outrageous you would trample our constitutional rights by allowing the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. Click here to automatically sign the petition. The FISA Amendments Act will expire unless it's renewed before the end of the year. But rather than carefully review the effects of the law or seek ways to safeguard our constitutional rights, Rep. Young joined a majority of the House and rubberstamped a five-year extension of the law. For an elected official bound to uphold the Constitution, it was deeply irresponsible for him to do so. Among other things, we don't even know how many Americans have been affected by warrantless spying due to the law. But all indications are that the numbers have been massive. In fact, when questioned by two senators on the Intelligence Committee about the number of Americans spied on "unintentionally" by the NSA, the Director of National Intelligence responded by saying that "it's not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority of the [FISA Amendments Act]." In other words, four years after the law was implemented, it's not even possible for American spy agencies to figure out how many Americans they've spied on without a warrant. There are ways to fix the law to balance legitimate national security needs against the constitutional rights we all enjoy as Americans. But Rep. Young didn't do that. In fact, he didn't even try. We need to stand up for our constitutional rights and end warrantless government spying on Americans. And we need to hold elected officials accountable who will sacrifice our constitutional rights in the name of political expediency. Tell Rep. Young: It's outrageous you would trample our constitutional rights by allowing the government to spy on Americans without a warrant. Click the link below to automatically sign the petition: http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6967820&p=fisa_house&id=48443-4888946-UKX0%3DAx&t=9 Thank you for speaking out. Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
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