Chelsea Manning Releases Surveillance Reform Bill, Pens Opinion Pieces on The Guardian and Medium

For Immediate Release: November 3, 2015

Contact:
Christina DiPasquale, 202.716.1953

Chelsea Manning Releases Surveillance Reform Bill, Pens Opinion Pieces on The Guardian and Medium

**Read Chelsea Manning¹s bill and Fight for the Future Petition Telling Lawmakers to read it here: https://www.freechelsea.com/**

Today, Chelsea Manning released a 129-page surveillance reform bill representing concrete alternatives and policy changes. The bill proposes the abolition of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, moves the surveillance court powers into federal district courts, and contains a privacy and civil liberties-friendly version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).

Read the bill in full here: http://bit.ly/1k7RfCN

The Guardian today published Manning¹s opinion piece: “Fisa courts stifle the due process they were supposed to protect. End Them.”

In it, Chelsea Manning writes:

“If Congress did abolish the Fisa courts, the Second Circuit ruling earlier this year would no longer be symbolic. In spirit and in law, the entire surveillance review system would end up where it probably should have started in the first place after the Church Committee: in a tried and true, real and historically viable court system. And the American people could have more faith that our judicial branch wasn¹t completely beholden to structures put into place by the executive and legislative branches to limit accountability.”

View her Medium piece here: http://bit.ly/1XMeyAn

The digital rights group Fight for the Future just launched a petition telling lawmaker¹s to read Chelsea Manning¹s bill at https://www.freechelsea.com/.

The petition reads:

"Dear legislator: I am deeply concerned about the U.S. government's mass surveillance programs that violate American citizens' 1st and 4th amendment constitutional rights and the human rights of people around the world. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning has written a bill that is intended to address these privacy concerns and fix our nation's broken surveillance policies. I strongly encourage you to read Chelsea's bill and take her analysis into account on all votes related to privacy and surveillance."

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