RESTORING: The Rule of Law (mostly US-related)

Welcome to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Are you concerned that the government's warrantless surveillance, detainee policies, and other post-9/11 laws and policies undermine our basic civil rights and liberties and make our country less safe? Join the Bill of Rights Defense Committee's national network of people who are taking meaningful action to restore protections guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.

5 Reasons Why We Must Keep Fighting

1. The damage done to constitutional protections, civil liberties, and human rights is extensive. Repairing the damage will be a long slow process, especially with the new administration focusing on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. Historically, executive powers are often expanded but rarely reduced. It takes enormous pressure from the people to convince Congress and the President to reinstate the checks and balances required by the Constitution.
3. Congress has been complicit in the constitutional violations committed over the past seven years. To reverse these policies, implemented in the name of the “war on terror,” we must educate our congressional representatives and hold them accountable to their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.
4. President Obama has issued an executive order to close Guantánamo Bay detention center, but creating a process for trying and releasing the nearly 250 remaining prisoners that is constitutional, timely, and safe will be complicated and difficult after years of fear-mongering. We must provide vocal support for such efforts to counteract this culture of fear.
5. If we don’t fight to undo the damage to civil liberties, human rights, and other constitutional protections now, it will only get worse in the future.

Recent Threats to Liberties

President Obama Issues Executive Orders on Open Government, Guantánamo, Torture

In his first days in office, President Obama has given us reason to be hopeful about his intentions for civil liberties and constitutional protections: on his first day he instructed prosecutors to suspend trials at Guantánamo Bay, and on his second day he issued executive orders instructing his administration to “work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration,” and to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests. He also issued executive orders to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center within one year, to direct all U.S. personnel to follow U.S. Army Field Manual guidelines on the interrogation of suspects, and to end secret CIA imprisonment of terrorism suspects.

Unfortunately, these actions, which are discretionary and could be easily reversed in a time of perceived crisis, are not nearly enough. Obama’s actions on Guantánamo are an important first step, but they leave the door open for the creation or continuation of many problematic policies, such as the possibility of detaining so-called “enemy combatants” within the United States. Read more in BORDC's January newsletter.

FISA Ruling Approves Specific Use of Warrantless Wiretapping

On January 15, the FISA Court of Review made public an opinion approving a particular instance of warrantless wiretapping. An unnamed telecommunications company had sued the government to prevent it from violating the company's customers' privacy, but the court rejected the company's argument, and declared constitutional the specific application of the now-expired Protect America Act used in the case. Read more from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

BORDC (has MANY) Resources

UPDATED: The PATRIOT Act and American Business

BORDC has just updated our booklet detailing the ways that the PATRIOT Act and other laws and policies harm American business and how businesses can protect themselves and their clients' privacy from government intrusion. The latest version includes information on regulations going into effect in January 2009. Download The PATRIOT Act and American Business.

People's Campaign for the Constitution Toolkit

BORDC's initiative for the new Congress is the People's Campaign for the Constitution, a nationwide, nonpartisan, grassroots effort to hold Congressional representatives accountable to their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. Our newly revised and streamlined toolkit for the People's Campaign is now available in printable form and, as always, online. For all of the above and more, please go to BORDC dot ORG
here

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