[bestbits] Input needed on options for delivery of international civil society letter to Congress on NSA

[genekimmelman at gmail.com]

+1 with a few groups available for follow up by phone/email

-------- Original message --------
From: Nnenna Nwakanma <nnenna75 at gmail.com> 
Date:  
To: Gene Kimmelman <genekimmelman at gmail.com> 
Cc: Deborah Brown <deborah at accessnow.org>,michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>,Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>,Kevin Bankston <kbankston at cdt.org>,"<bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>" <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>,irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org,webwewant at googlegroups.com 
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Input needed on options for delivery of international civil society letter to Congress on NSA 
 
Thinking it might be good to send as  BEST BITS COALITION of  International Organisations, represented by a "member" known to congress and "Dear Senators and Representatives"

Upside, the "international" character is there, and the influence + national recognition will be kept. If there is follow-up, it will come via the COALITION representative, supported by other Best Bits signatory "members"

My 2 cents

Nnenna


On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Gene Kimmelman <genekimmelman at gmail.com> wrote:
I think it should be addressed to each senator and representative ("Dear Senators and Representatives") -- no need to be individualized unless someone can just send it through an existing list.

I think it should be sent from Best Bits, with a characterization of who we are, plus any organization/individual involved (with phone and email contact person) that desires to field inquiries from Congress -- so long as the list isn't bigger than 5-6 people/groups, I think that gives members of Congress a sense of who they can reach out to for more information.  Obviously, those who volunteer would need to agree to provide responses, and limit their engagement under the Best Bits rubric to the substance of the letter (and speak separately for their own organization).

On Jun 16, 2013, at 11:36 AM, Deborah Brown wrote:

Hi all, 

I wanted to send a quick note regarding delivery of the letter to Congress. I've been working with CDT and Free Press to figure this out and we now have a few options to bring back to the group. 

From what we were able to determine, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is best equipped to send the letter to Congress through their backend and they could route it through whatever email sending address we want. 

Kevin, can you confirm that's correct?

Assuming this is correct, we need to figure out what group should be the "sender". A few factors that play into this decision are:
Recognition in Congress (so that it's opened)
Sufficiently international/reflective of the broad group working on this
Capacity for follow up, should staffers/media reply
Are there other factors we should be considering?

Here are a few other options (in no particular order), with some initial thoughts on pros/cons. Please add commentary and feel free to disagree. 

1) Send it from a higher profile international group, like HRW. upside: we'd be most likely to get the attention of the staffers. downside: May not be able to get confirmation from HRW to send it in time.

2) send it from a Best Bits email address. upside: reflective of actual authorship, already has buy-in from group members. downside: minimal recognition in Congress. Does Best Bits have the infrastructure to manage response or follow up?

3) Send it from a US org with int'l operations, such as EFF or CDT. upside: has recognition in Congress.downside: Are EFF/CDT perceived as int'l enough to represent this coalition? Would also need to check on their capacity to respond.

4) Send from ACLU: upside: they've got the system and name brand recognition. downside: they're very American, and it may be problematic to have the letter delivered by a group that was not involved in its drafting. Would also have to see if they have the capacity to respond

5) Send from the Web Foundation. upside: they're international and well established. downside: not sure about their recognition in Congress. Would need to see if they have the capacity for follow up.

I should add that Access is happy to be the "sender", and we have the dedicated staff/capacity to do follow up. Our recognition in Congress, however, is minimal, and while we consider ourselves an international org., I can't judge whether we're perceived as int'l enough to send the letter on behalf of this coalition.

What options are missing here?

I realize people working for many of the above-mentioned organizations are on these lists, so please feel free to jump in.

Another question I've raised a few times here is *who* exactly we're planning to send the letter to? All members of Congress? Or relevant committee members in the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Looking forward to yuour feedback on this.

All the best, 
Deborah 



On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:17 AM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
Significant typo at end of last sentence on paragraph 4 "fatally impacts consumer’s trust on all American (…) that provide worldwide services." (word missing--likely "companies"

 

Otherwise great job everyone.  Sorry that I wasn't around to edit at the end… family stuff kept me off the Internet all day… but whoever did it did a great job…

 

M

 

From: webwewant at googlegroups.com [mailto:webwewant at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 7:58 PM
To: Kevin Bankston
Cc: bestbits at lists.bestbits.net bestbits at lists.bestbits.net> irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org; governance at lists.igcaucus.org; webwewant at googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Re: Delivery of International civil society letter to Congress to follow up from HRC statement

 

On 14/06/2013, at 7:48 AM, Kevin Bankston <kbankston at cdt.org> wrote:




A few typos:

 

Paragraph 4 includes the sentence "That was clearly not the case with the latest practices of the US Government (this is inconsistent with references to “allegations” above)"  I assume we want to cut the parenthetical.  To address the comment in the parenthetical, perhaps change "clearly" to "apparently"?

 

Paragraph 5: "detailed" is misspelled "detailsed"

 

Paragraph 6 begins and ends with quotation marks that need to be deleted.  The phrase "which constitute an almost certainly human rights violations" should be "which constitutes an almost certain human rights violation".  

 

Fixed, and I also linked between this letter and the last one to the UN Human Rights Council.

 

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