In light of Attorney General Holder’s April 4, 2011, announcement regarding the prosecution of the alleged planners and co-conspirators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the undersigned organizations request that the Department of Defense open the process for issuing regulations for the military commissions to allow meaningful pre-promulgation public participation. Certainly, future commissions will result in intensive public scrutiny of the system. Therefore, the Department should uphold the President's promise of openness in government by reforming the military commission rulemaking process.

Thank you for your letters to Secretary Panetta dated July 5, 2011 and October 3, 2011, concerning military commission proceedings and related issues of access by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Department of Defense is committed to making military commission proceedings transparent and accessible to the public, consistent with protecting national security, the safety of individuals, and the rights of the accused. … Recently, we have been working to improve public access to military commission proceedings and materials.

We the undersigned consumer rights, human rights, technology, and civil liberties organizations, members of the EPIC Advisory Board, and members of the general public submit this Petition to the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) to urge the Agency to conduct a rulemaking to address the threat to privacy and civil liberties that will result from the deployment of aerial drones within United States. The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 provides a timely opportunity for you to address this critical question.

We write today to urge you to support reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to guarantee that every American has full constitutional and statutory protections for the emails, photos, text messages, and other documents that they send and share online.

We represent a wide range of privacy and human rights advocates, technology companies, and trade associations that hold an equally wide range of positions on surveillance reform. Many of us have differing views on exactly what reforms must be included in any bill reauthorizing USA PATRIOT Act Section 215, which currently serves as the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata and is set to expire on June 1, 2015. Our broad, diverse, and bipartisan coalition believes that the status quo is untenable and that it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform.

To Director of National Intelligence Coats: The undersigned organizations write to express our dismay at your decision to abandon the effort to estimate the number of Americans whose communications are incidentally collected pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We ask that you reconsider.

To Chair Goodlatte and Ranking Member Conyers: ... If Director Coats remains steadfast in his efforts to evade oversight by the public and this Committee, we urge you to use all powers at your disposal to obtain this number.

The undersigned civil society groups write to express our concerns about recent reports of an order issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that compelled Yahoo! to scan the emails of all of its users, in real time, for a “signature” associated with a foreign power. We believe such a massive scan of the emails of millions of people, particularly if it involves the scanning of email content, could violate FISA, the Fourth Amendment, and international human rights law, and has grave implications for privacy. 

NACDL undersigned a letter on March 19, 2013 addressed to Michael Daniel, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, to encourage the White House to renew its promise to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

NACDL submitted comments to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on April 23, 2013 in response to the Request for Comments on the FAA‘s proposed approach for addressing the privacy questions raised by the operation of unmanned aircraft systems within the test site program.

NACDL undersigned a letter to the U.S. government on July 18, 2013 urging greater transparency around national security-related requests by the US government to Internet, telephone, and web-based service providers for information about their users and subscribers.

NACDL applauds the PCLOB for its premiere report on the telephone records program conducted under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). NACDL recognizes that the 702 surveillance program remains subject to more classification authorities than the 215 program, and understands that the PCLOB‘s report on the 702 program may be more limited in its public analysis than the 215 report. However, NACDL encourages the PCLOB, to the maximum extent consistent with national security, to make its report public, with limited redactions.

We write to urge you not to renew the Section 215 Bulk Telephony Metadata Program when the current order expires on June 20, 2014. The program is not effective. It should end.

Letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding proposed changes to the Deliberate Misconduct Rule (79 Fed. Reg. 8097) that would broaden the provision to include those deemed to have acted with "deliberate ignorance."

We strongly urge you to veto the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA) — if the conference bill, which is being negotiated now, impedes your ability to close Guantanamo. Specifically, we urge you to veto the NDAA conference bill if it restricts the Executive Branch's authority to transfer detainees for repatriation or resettlement in foreign countries or for prosecution in federal criminal court. … We urge you to veto the NDAA if any of these restrictions are included in the final bill sent to you by Congress.

The undersigned civil liberties and human rights organizations write regarding the Periodic Review Boards (PRBs) for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the Department of Defense has announced will commence shortly. …should the administration proceed with PRBs, we encourage you to take appropriate steps to ensure the PRBs, as established by Presidential Executive Order 13567, have the required processes in place for meaningful review of a detainee’s detention status at Guantanamo.