August 29, 2014 To President Obama and Members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board: We, the undersigned former government officials, organizations, and members of Congress, write to express our concerns about the U.S. government’s surveillance activities conducted under the authority of Executive Order 12333. Many involve communications that are protected by the U.S. Constitution, and all implicate international human rights law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a party. These activities undermine the fundamental rights of internet users everywhere. We call on the President to declassify and make public all current and future legal opinions or interpretations concerning surveillance under Executive Order 12333 and the surveillance-related regulations issued thereunder. Secret law is a threat to democracy. We further call on the President to ensure that there is no disproportionate or unnecessary collection or retention of users’ communications and personal information and to implement meaningful privacy protections for all users, U.S. and foreign, in surveillance activities conducted under E.O. 12333, including the privacy recommendations of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. We call on both the President and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to engage in a searching examination of surveillance under E.O. 12333, to insist upon declassification of information that would help the public understand the nature and extent of this surveillance, and to suggest mechanisms and specific steps to implement the above recommendations as soon as possible. We will continue to work to build support for further privacy protections for all users in surveillance activities conducted under E.O. 12333. For questions or followup, please contact Amie Stepanovich: amie@accessnow.org Sincerely, Members of Congress Representative John Conyers Representative Alan Grayson Representative Rush Holt Representative Zoe Lofgren Former Government Officials Ed Felten, former FTC Chief Technologist Ian Schuler, former State Department official John Tye, former State Department official Organizations Access Advocacy for Principled Action in Government American Civil Liberties Union American Library Association American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) Amnesty International Association for Progressive Communications Avaaz Campaign for Digital Fourth Amendment Rights Center for Democracy and Technology Center for Digital Democracy Constitutional Alliance Council on American-Islamic Relations Cyber Privacy Project Defending Dissent Foundation Demand Progress DownsizeDC.org Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Free Press Action Fund Freedom of the Press Foundation Global Network Initiative Government Accountability Project Human Rights Watch Libertarian Party Media Alliance National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers National Coalition Against Censorship National Security Counselors Open Net (Korea) Open Technology Institute at New America Foundation OpenMedia.org OpenTheGovernment.org PEN American Center Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Restore the Fourth RootsAction.org Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) Silent Circle Student Net Alliance Sunlight Foundation ThoughtWorks