Mike Stark didn’t just wring his hands about FISA, he decided to use Obama’s own tools from Obama’s own website to lobby the Senator. Stark realized that, per Obama’s own advice, we are the change that is needed, and it’s our job to create change. In just one week, the Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right community has become the largest group on Obama’s website. Now they have a press release:
Dear Senator Obama,
On October 24, 2007, your campaign spokesman said, “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”
On June 20, 2008 you said, of retroactive immunity, “I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”
As the largest grass-roots group on your campaign website, my.BarackObama.com, and in the spirit of your open/responsive government campaign pledges, we wish to share our ideas for how we may work together to further the goal of eliminating retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. Although this is only one of the problems we see with legislation allows the government to wiretap the communications of its citizenry without a warrant, it’s the area we think we can help you the most.
First, Senator Obama, we ask that you make the same tools that we used to call undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire available for us to call our fellow citizens in West Virginia, Nebraska, Delaware, Florida and other states that have Senators committed to voting against the amendment that would strip telecom immunity. You have the tools and we have the people power. Together, we are confident we can bring Change; we can make the government listen to the people instead of the telecom lobbyists.
Second, Senator Obama, we ask that you attend the Senate debate and schedule floor time to speak about the violence done to the rule of law when Congress retroactively immunizes the illegal conduct of a special interest. We know you understand that justice should not be sold to the highest special interest bidder; we also know that you can persuade other Senators that are not so clear on the issue. Of course, if you do this, our committed members will surely capture the video of your inspiring oratory, load it to YouTube and spread your words to our friends and family far and wide. We trust in your ability to bring a new way of doing business to Washington and look forward to helping you make that Change a reality.
Senator Obama, the my.BarackObama.com caption reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” We’re ready to put these words into practice.
Thank you.
The 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of “Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right”
The 15,000 member strong community is making a reasonable request. If Obama is truly committed to stripping immunity from the FISA bill he will provide the phonebanking tool on his website to activists interested in contacting constituents in key member’s states. It’s Obama’s move.
I joined this group 2 days ago and my inbox is drowning in email but the responses are fascinating. Obama advocates are fired up and for the most part the responses are highly intellectual with good perspectives. Plus, it proves there is a strong constituency against this FISA bill and a non existent one in favor of it.
You can change your setting to get a once-a-day digest with all the emails in it, or even to get no mail and just read it on the Web.
I went in and stopped the emails. A great relief.
Yeah – works better that way.
But hey – I’m officially freaking out now. I just posted a blog there to the FISA group – the same one I posted here – I’m not marrying Obama – and now I can’t get into my.barackobama.com. Is anyone else having trouble or did they just shut me out???
I didn’t see that when I signed up, probably because I did so on a lap top with a small screen. Apparently the choices are at the bottom of the screen. I ended up with a serious e-mail situation due to the flood of e-mails. It took me a day to work through the problems. I wish every place this web link is posed there would also be a warning about the potential for an e-mail flood and how to avoid it.
I signed up almost immediately after it went up and checked the “receive all” box. When I finally got around the next day to opening up my e-mail there was something like 298 e-mails sitting in the in-box just from this. Good thing I didn’t wait a couple more days. Pity the fool who signs up right before they go on vacation. Lots of deleting ahead for them.
Can shut down your e-mail if your employer or other service provider decides something is wrong or you exceed capacity.
Bravo, Mike! And I just added my name to the group. Thanks for the link.
they’re up to 15,763 members. Get a number below 16,000 while they’re still available.
you are on a roll…after that mini vacation in Italy; what did they put in your antipasta? Coconut cream?
I’m down to my pin feathers and join with Huffpost: Arianna Huffington
TPM gathers the timeline of Obama’s FISA flip flop
Perhaps Obama will take cover, get some spine with this new ruling by federal judge on FISA: NYT- Judge Rejects Bush’s View on Wiretaps
greenwald has an excellent analysis and overview of walker’s decision, and how it relates to the current fisa debacle…The Al-Haramain ruling and the current Congress:
there’s lots more there.
they’re all blowing smoke.
That link worked a minute ago. Do you think the Obama team is shutting it down????
my conn says they’re doing maintenance. bet the hamsters are getting tired.
shutting it down would be a pr disaster…surely they’re not that stupid.
Well, I can’t help but think that doing “site maintenance” is also a great way to make people feel that group no longer exists – especially those trying to get to the site for the first time. Buys them time.
that site isn’t the only avenue available for making your views known, as you are well aware. there are alternatives, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE for starters.
Don’t panic, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide would tell you. I got in while the numbers were still below 400, and the next day when I went back in to redo my email options and stop the onslaught, the site was down for maintenance. It eventually came back up. They may just be overwhelmed.
The link is now working again. I think the groups area of the site has been overwhelmed this morning. I finally joined and got #16,885. Then I putzed around the site for a couple minutes and checked again. There were 16,968 members. Right now there are 17,009 and counting…
To my knowledge, it would be illegal for supporters to be given access to those lists for any other purpose that to support Obama. Voter registration lists are given to a campaign solely for the use of that campaign.
he has some powerful tools there. from my email he has determined exactly where I live. I’ve blocked all emails from the campaign but it’s been over-ridden.
There’s nothing sinister about it. Any campaign can pay a varying amount of money (varies per county/state) to purchase voter records. You can’t hide that from a campaign.
You also, legally, cannot have your email blocked from a campaign. The campaign can offer you tools to unsubscribe, if they want, but they don’t have to, by law.
Voter records include email addresses? How does that work? I don’t recall giving an email when I registered to vote. Even if someone gave their real name when signing up for email, that info is usually under the privacy policy, and most real names are not that unique anyway. I think this bears looking into and would like more info from idredit about this.
and people wonder why the fisa legislation is a bad idea?
when it’s that easy for a presidential candidate, a sitting senator, and his campaign to have access to that kind of detailed information…fill in the blanks…you DON’T HAVE ANY PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET!
welcome to the future
did I say there was anything sinister?
You also, legally, cannot have your email blocked from a campaign. The campaign can offer you tools to unsubscribe, if they want, but they don’t have to, by law.
well I just did. that email is no longer accepting.
No, nor did I say you did. I was just explaining it’s routine for campaigns to gather that kind of info, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.
Well too bad…. because there are ways to prevent being harassed…there are software tools available.
In case you’re not following indirect replies, could you elaborate on this? They had nothing but your email and produced a real world address? Is your email info associated with your address anywhere where it could have been automatically extracted? Otherwise, we seem to be talking about correlating IP addresses, which raises questions.
They obviously got his address from a voter registration file. All campaigns buy those.
Lisa, you’re not getting it. If all they have is an email address, they have no way of looking up the address in the voter registration files. If I all know about you is the gte email address associated with your post here, I could have every voter registration in the country in a database, and I still have no idea which one belongs to “lpease”, because that information is not part of the voter reg file. Even if I were able to infer your true name, a) I would have no way of knowing it is correct, and b) I would have no way of knowing which of the various “Lisa Pease’s” you are, assuming that is your name, which I have only a weak basis for doing.
They’re getting supplemental info from somewhere, and while it’s easy to come up with possible sources – starting with the ISP and the NSA – none of those sources look legitimate. Perhaps this is more innocuous than it looks, that’s is why I asked for more info, but it doesn’t look innocuous.
your ISP has your address which should not be made available to unauthorized private third parties – campaigns would fall within that category.`
Just signed up.
Mike Stark’s letter is a thing of beauty. The tone is respectful, but firm. It seeks common ground, but says “I’ve got the facts, so don’t try to feed me cheese whiz and tell me it’s brie (to use a family-friendly metaphor).” It will be very interesting to see how this is handled. FWIW, I’m sitting on my checkbook until I see how it plays out…
Mike Stark: “…For Great Justice.”
Here are some vital sights for the Anti FISA Obama group.
http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/
Media coverage
http://get-fisa-right.wetpaint.com/page/Coverage
I really wonder if anyone on the Obama campaign has the foresight to actually pull Barack aside and tell him the positives of blocking this FISA bill. They could even sell the group’s formation as a major reason for his motivation to kill FISA and give it an as example of listening to his constituents who want change and value holding political leaders accountable.
I shutter to write about this thought but what about the Barack Bubble? How much is he listening to his supporters who helped him destroy a political machine? Or is completely glued to DC insiders worried about picking up 2 points in Ohio, aka Mark Penn?
Obama used outside of the box thinking to pull off a historic upset but now is relegating himself to Washingtonian wishy washy crap. The evidence is quite apparent to anyone following this campaign closely and his record of present Illinois state house votes now loom clearer to me.
There is no “center” in this looming watershed election and the electorate is going to shift rapidly to the left. Obama should be waiting for it and not vice versa.
Obama’s 50 state plan is still genius but only a politician with conviction and strong leadership will be able to pull it off.