Tell Obama: "If you really care about the Internet and our right to free speech, veto CISA."
We're up against some of the most powerful corporate lobbyists in the country, but that hasn't stopped us before. If a critical mass of citizens speak out against CISA, our voices will be impossible to ignore.
In the weeks since the Senate approved CISA, Speaker Paul Ryan has been busy stripping privacy protections from the bill. Now CISA is much worse than the version Obama threatened to veto—but Ryan is adding it as a rider to a must-pass budget bill that Obama can't veto without shutting down the government. The latest changes turn CISA from a mass surveillance bill to a mass incarceration bill:
Click on the logos below to learn why.
This project originated in a desire to update EFF's "Stand Against Spying" scorecard covering legislative activity in the 113th Congress (2013-14), to take into account votes taken in the legislative battle over Section 215 renewal and the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided limited reforms of Section 215. It is a joint project of Restore The Fourth and Fight for the Future, with the key participants being Alex Marthews and Zaki Manian of Restore The Fourth and Tiffiniy Cheng and Jeff Lyon of Fight for the Future.
We decided early on that, like with "Stand Against Spying", the scorecard should be objective: That is, it should not contain value judgments about the quality or trustworthiness of legislators' public statements on mass surveillance, or about how the legislator was generally perceived to stand on that issue, but should consider only the votes they actually took, and decisions to sponsor or cosponsor legislation introduced in Congress. This important limitation means that, for example, House Majority Leader John Boehner, who has a general practice of not voting on bills unless he has to to break a tie, does not have a score in our scorecard and is therefore graded at "?", despite voluminous press reports suggesting that he is generally opposed to surveillance reform; and that Curtis Clawson (R-FL) and Ruben Hinojosa (D-FL), whose voting records are too sparse on this topic to enable a clear judgement to be made, are also graded at ?.
The major challenge for a surveillance scorecard is interpreting votes on the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. Being against this Act was not a clear signal of being for or against surveillance reform. For many organizations, including ours, and for many legislators as well, the USA FREEDOM Act was far too weak and limited to represent any kind of surveillance reform, and also modernized certain powers of the surveillance state. Its passage even posed a risk of derailing real surveillance reform by enabling legislators to make the political claim that it had dealt with the problem of mass surveillance. A Yes vote on the USA FREEDOM Act could therefore potentially mean that the legislator thought that it was a good, if incremental, step towards reform; but it could also, as it turned it for some legislators, be thought of as the most feasible way to preserve surveillance authorities against the threat of the outright expiration of Section 215. A No vote could mean that the legislator thought the USA FREEDOM Act didn't go nearly far enough; but it could also mean that the legislator could not accept even its very weak reforms, and felt that Congress should not restrict surveillance authorities at all.
In consequence, we needed some objective indicator of a legislator's underlying desire for surveillance reform, in order to assign points correctly to their votes on the USA FREEDOM Act. For the Senate, we found an indicator, in the form of the Senate's vote on whether to do "straight reauthorization" of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. If a Senator voted Yes on straight reauthorization, that was a much clearer indicator that they wanted no surveillance reform whatsoever, and therefore that if they then voted No on the USA FREEDOM Act, it was because they believed it went too far. Conversely, a Senator voting No on straight reauthorization and then No on the USA FREEDOM Act likely felt that the USA FREEDOM Act was far too weak. For the former group, we coded a No vote on USA FREEDOM as -4 points; for the latter group, we coded the same vote as +4 points. In the House, we went back to EFF's "Stand Against Spying" scorecard and analyzed the grades of the 88 House members voting against the USA FREEDOM Act, and found that in almost all cases their grades on that prior scorecard were very high. Consequently, we felt comfortable coding all House No votes on USA FREEDOM as +4. After much discussion, we felt that most legislators voting Yes on USA FREEDOM in either chamber probably voted Yes because they felt it was a positive step towards reform, so we coded such votes as +1.
For the prior votes on the 2014 version of USA FREEDOM, we adopted EFF's approach, and scored the version before it was gutted at +2 and the version after it was gutted at -2.
The rest of the coding was relatively straightforward. Voting for or cosponsoring measures that advanced surveillance reform gained points for the legislator; voting against such measures, or cosponsoring anti-reform measures, lost points for the legislator. The number of points gained or lost represents our collective value judgement as to how much the measure, if passed, would advance the overall project of surveillance reform. For example, the wholesale repeal of the surveillance state represented by the Surveillance State Repeal Acts of 2014 and 2015 merit four points each; the FISA Reform Act of 2015, briefly introduced as an attempt to provide a weaker substitute for the USA FREEDOM Act, merits -3 points.
Summary of Points Allocation
As further relevant votes come up, such as those on CISA, we will add them to our points system. At the beginning of the 116th Congress, we intend to remove the point allocations for the 113th Congress, to keep the scorecard relevant to legislators' recent activity.
113th Congress (2013-14):
114th Congress (2015-16):
Implications of the Scorecard
This project threw up several important findings relevant to journalists reporting on surveillance, and to members of the public deciding how to vote and whom to fund.
First, and most importantly, party affiliation is not a guide to your legislator's stance on mass surveillance. Unlike for almost any other issue, both support for and opposition to surveillance reform crosses party lines. Strongly liberal legislators usually get A+ (as with Rep. Barbara Lee or Sen. Bernie Sanders) or As, but Charlie Rangel gets only a B+, and there are two Democrats, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Terri Sewell of Alabama, who get Fs. While strongly conservative legislators do most often get Ds and Fs, there are conservatives not closely identified in public with the surveillance reform fight, like Louie Gohmert of Texas and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, who get A+. So while not entirely useless, party affiliation is highly unreliable, and journalists should steer clear of identifying a party-based stance on surveillance in their reporting.
What does play a role?
Several tendencies seem apparent, but are not a given. African-American legislators are systematically more likely to support surveillance reform. Legislators with a military background, or service on an intelligence committee, are systematically less likely to support surveillance reform. Legislators who identify with the Ron Paul movement, such as Reps. Massie and Amash and (of course) Sen. Rand Paul, tend strongly to support surveillance reform, and are a vocal and passionate minority of Republican legislators. More recently elected legislators of both parties tend to be more supportive of surveillance reform, probably because they have run first for their office during a period when the issue was especially salient. Legislators in leadership, and particularly on the Armed Services or Intelligence Committees, are more likely to oppose surveillance reform. Southern legislators are generally more opposed to surveillance reform - no Arkansas legislator rates above a D, and if an F- had been available, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) would have been the only legislator with one. Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest and Northeastern legislators are generally more favorable to surveillance reform - no Vermont legislator rates below an A. However, considerable variation within states is the norm, even in smaller states like Idaho and Iowa.
We can see, therefore, that in key 2016 races around the country, the candidates running from both parties have sharply different positions on surveillance, and we have no reason to suppose that this will change in future cycles.
This project originated in a desire to update EFF's "Stand Against Spying" scorecard covering legislative activity in the 113th Congress (2013-14), to take into account votes taken in the legislative battle over Section 215 renewal and the USA FREEDOM Act, which provided limited reforms of Section 215. It is a joint project of Restore The Fourth and Fight for the Future, with the key participants being Alex Marthews and Zaki Manian of Restore The Fourth and Tiffiniy Cheng and Jeff Lyon of Fight for the Future.
We decided early on that, like with "Stand Against Spying", the scorecard should be objective: That is, it should not contain value judgments about the quality or trustworthiness of legislators' public statements on mass surveillance, or about how the legislator was generally perceived to stand on that issue, but should consider only the votes they actually took, and decisions to sponsor or cosponsor legislation introduced in Congress. This important limitation means that, for example, House Majority Leader John Boehner, who has a general practice of not voting on bills unless he has to to break a tie, does not have a score in our scorecard and is therefore graded at "?", despite voluminous press reports suggesting that he is generally opposed to surveillance reform; and that Curtis Clawson (R-FL) and Ruben Hinojosa (D-FL), whose voting records are too sparse on this topic to enable a clear judgement to be made, are also graded at ?.
The major challenge for a surveillance scorecard is interpreting votes on the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. Being against this Act was not a clear signal of being for or against surveillance reform. For many organizations, including ours, and for many legislators as well, the USA FREEDOM Act was far too weak and limited to represent any kind of surveillance reform, and also modernized certain powers of the surveillance state. Its passage even posed a risk of derailing real surveillance reform by enabling legislators to make the political claim that it had dealt with the problem of mass surveillance. A Yes vote on the USA FREEDOM Act could therefore potentially mean that the legislator thought that it was a good, if incremental, step towards reform; but it could also, as it turned it for some legislators, be thought of as the most feasible way to preserve surveillance authorities against the threat of the outright expiration of Section 215. A No vote could mean that the legislator thought the USA FREEDOM Act didn't go nearly far enough; but it could also mean that the legislator could not accept even its very weak reforms, and felt that Congress should not restrict surveillance authorities at all.
In consequence, we needed some objective indicator of a legislator's underlying desire for surveillance reform, in order to assign points correctly to their votes on the USA FREEDOM Act. For the Senate, we found an indicator, in the form of the Senate's vote on whether to do "straight reauthorization" of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. If a Senator voted Yes on straight reauthorization, that was a much clearer indicator that they wanted no surveillance reform whatsoever, and therefore that if they then voted No on the USA FREEDOM Act, it was because they believed it went too far. Conversely, a Senator voting No on straight reauthorization and then No on the USA FREEDOM Act likely felt that the USA FREEDOM Act was far too weak. For the former group, we coded a No vote on USA FREEDOM as -4 points; for the latter group, we coded the same vote as +4 points. In the House, we went back to EFF's "Stand Against Spying" scorecard and analyzed the grades of the 88 House members voting against the USA FREEDOM Act, and found that in almost all cases their grades on that prior scorecard were very high. Consequently, we felt comfortable coding all House No votes on USA FREEDOM as +4. After much discussion, we felt that most legislators voting Yes on USA FREEDOM in either chamber probably voted Yes because they felt it was a positive step towards reform, so we coded such votes as +1.
For the prior votes on the 2014 version of USA FREEDOM, we adopted EFF's approach, and scored the version before it was gutted at +2 and the version after it was gutted at -2.
The rest of the coding was relatively straightforward. Voting for or cosponsoring measures that advanced surveillance reform gained points for the legislator; voting against such measures, or cosponsoring anti-reform measures, lost points for the legislator. The number of points gained or lost represents our collective value judgement as to how much the measure, if passed, would advance the overall project of surveillance reform. For example, the wholesale repeal of the surveillance state represented by the Surveillance State Repeal Acts of 2014 and 2015 merit four points each; the FISA Reform Act of 2015, briefly introduced as an attempt to provide a weaker substitute for the USA FREEDOM Act, merits -3 points.
Summary of Points Allocation
As further relevant votes come up, such as those on CISA, we will add them to our points system. At the beginning of the 116th Congress, we intend to remove the point allocations for the 113th Congress, to keep the scorecard relevant to legislators' recent activity.
113th Congress (2013-14):
114th Congress (2015-16):
Implications of the Scorecard
This project threw up several important findings relevant to journalists reporting on surveillance, and to members of the public deciding how to vote and whom to fund.
First, and most importantly, party affiliation is not a guide to your legislator's stance on mass surveillance. Unlike for almost any other issue, both support for and opposition to surveillance reform crosses party lines. Strongly liberal legislators usually get A+ (as with Rep. Barbara Lee or Sen. Bernie Sanders) or As, but Charlie Rangel gets only a B+, and there are two Democrats, Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Terri Sewell of Alabama, who get Fs. While strongly conservative legislators do most often get Ds and Fs, there are conservatives not closely identified in public with the surveillance reform fight, like Louie Gohmert of Texas and Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, who get A+. So while not entirely useless, party affiliation is highly unreliable, and journalists should steer clear of identifying a party-based stance on surveillance in their reporting.
What does play a role?
Several tendencies seem apparent, but are not a given. African-American legislators are systematically more likely to support surveillance reform. Legislators with a military background, or service on an intelligence committee, are systematically less likely to support surveillance reform. Legislators who identify with the Ron Paul movement, such as Reps. Massie and Amash and (of course) Sen. Rand Paul, tend strongly to support surveillance reform, and are a vocal and passionate minority of Republican legislators. More recently elected legislators of both parties tend to be more supportive of surveillance reform, probably because they have run first for their office during a period when the issue was especially salient. Legislators in leadership, and particularly on the Armed Services or Intelligence Committees, are more likely to oppose surveillance reform. Southern legislators are generally more opposed to surveillance reform - no Arkansas legislator rates above a D, and if an F- had been available, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) would have been the only legislator with one. Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest and Northeastern legislators are generally more favorable to surveillance reform - no Vermont legislator rates below an A. However, considerable variation within states is the norm, even in smaller states like Idaho and Iowa.
We can see, therefore, that in key 2016 races around the country, the candidates running from both parties have sharply different positions on surveillance, and we have no reason to suppose that this will change in future cycles.