[bestbits] RE: International civil society letter to Congress to follow up from HRC statement

[Andrew Puddephatt]

Hi everyone

As we are referring to specific US legislation - Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the State Secrets Privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act I'd like to understand the legislation.  From what I can read FISA talks about establishing a court  "which shall have jurisdiction to hear applications for and grant orders approving electronic surveillance anywhere within the United States" and Section 215 then expands the scope of records searches dealt with by the court.  This is obviously a concern to US citizens but a letter from international organisations should pick up on the issue of non US citizens.

Can someone direct me to any relevant legislation that refers to non US citizens, if there is such legislation?  Can our US friends tell us which bit of legislation, if any,  allows the surveillance of non US citizens?  I want to be clear whether this is happening outside of the law (an executive branch responsibility) or within the law (the legislative branch)

Andrew Puddephatt Executive Director
GLOBAL PARTNERS DIGITAL
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From: webwewant at googlegroups.com [mailto:webwewant at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: 12 June 2013 05:02
To: bestbits at lists.bestbits.net
Cc: webwewant at googlegroups.com; irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
Subject: International civil society letter to Congress to follow up from HRC statement

This follows on from a telephone call organised by the Web Foundation yesterday, in which APC was asked to coordinate a civil society letter to the US government from international organisations.  That letter would follow on from our joint statement to the Human Rights Council, and we would invite Human Rights Watch and Privacy International to participate in drafting.  APC agreed to do this and suggested continuing to use Best Bits as the coordinating coalition.

Here is the first rough draft of the text that Joy from APC and I have begun to put together, which awaits your comments and improvements:

http://igcaucus.org:9001/p/your_name_here (sorry for the dumb URL)

Although I'm cc'ing the IRP and Web We Want lists, to avoid fragmentation of discussions on the text like happened inadvertently last time, can I suggest, if nobody objects, that we centralise on this list, and that if you are not a member you can join at http://lists.bestbits.net/wws/info/bestbits.  To bring in others, you can point them towards this list too.
--

Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Policy Officer
Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers
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