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Edward Snowden is the 29 year-old whistleblower who recently leaked the vast surveillance capabilities of US spy agencies, exposing to the public just how much the government is spying on American citizens. Within days, Senator Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused Snowden of committing treason.

Join us to tell Senator Feinstein: Truthtelling is NOT treason, and the American people deserve privacy and government transparency!

Sign the petition

To: Senator Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee

Treason? You think Edward Snowden committed an act of treason by revealing that the U.S. Government is unlawfully spying on Americans citizens who have no connection whatsoever to terrorism?

Senator Feinstein, what Edward Snowden did was not treason. It was a tremendous public service at the expense of his own career, his own future. What the NSA has been doing, with your support, is un-American.

The U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

The NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Americans. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information", including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on you, as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on you to immediately and publicly:

1. Reform Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited

2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance

3. Hold a series of public hearings with representatives of the nation’s most respected civil liberties groups

4. Apologize to Edward Snowden and call for him not to be prosecuted.