Tuesday Panel Examines Future of Domestic Surveillance Controversy

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is pleased to announce that
tomorrow, as part of the National Whistleblower Assembly conference currently
underway, a blockbuster panel discussion will be held on Capitol Hill examining
the past, current, and future state of the controversy surrounding the
warrantless wiretapping scandal.

The discussion, "Domestic Surveillance: The Next Steps," will run from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Russell Senate Office Building 385, tomorrow (Tuesday) March 10. The
panel will feature prominent individuals and nonprofit leaders involved with
the secret surveillance scandal since the story broke in 2005. The panel will
be moderated by GAP Homeland Security Director Jesselyn
Radack, herself a Department of Justice whistleblower. Topics
covered will include: the current FISA provisions; lawsuits against the Justice
Department regarding Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the use of
domestic surveillance; the Obama administration's public stance on the
matter; and what interested citizens, advocacy groups and politicians can do to
ensure privacy rights. Participants in the panel include:

• Thomas
  Tamm: In his
  first public speaking appearance, Tamm, the subject of a recent Newsweek cover story, will discuss
  his experience of working in the Justice Department unit handling wiretaps
  of suspected terrorists and spies when he stumbled upon the existence of
  the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, which
  deliberately circumvented the FISA
  Court. He blew the whistle to the New York Times, which didn't
  report the story for 18 months, after which President Bush condemned the
  leak as a "shameful act." The Times won a Pulitzer prize for the story, but Tamm became
  the subject of a criminal leak investigation, and had his house raided,
  property seized, and friends and family interrogated
• Marc
  Rotenberg: The
  Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) will
  discuss how EPIC is the lead plaintiff in a FOIA lawsuit to release the
  Justice Department's most controversial Office of Legal Counsel
  memos on secret surveillance.
• Michael
  Macleod-Ball:
  The Chief Legislative and Policy Counsel for the ACLU will discuss how the
  ACLU legislative agenda is geared toward addressing ongoing surveillance
  issues. In particular, he'll touch on the expiring pieces of the Patriot
  Act, NSL reform, and the ACLU's call for accountability of executive
  branch abuses in recent history - including a review of surveillance
  policies.

This panel is part of the National Whistleblower
Assembly, an annual national conference of whistleblowers, which seeks many goals
including raising awareness of pending federal whistleblower protection
legislation to be introduced by the House this month. Last month, legislation
that would have granted federal employees involved with stimulus funds the
right to blow the whistle on uncovered wrongdoing, waste and fraud, was
stripped out of the House-Senate conference committee that reconciled the $787
billion "Stimulus Bill."

The NWA started on Sunday and has events running
throughout Wednesday. Click here for a full list and updated schedule of events
for NWA: https://makeitsafecampaign.org/news/?page_id=485

Individual co-sponsors of the NWA include GAP, the
Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Public Citizen, Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS), National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), National
Whistleblowers Center (NWC), the University of the District of Columbia David
A. Clarke School of Law (UDC-DCSL), Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest,
and the International Association of Whistleblowers (IAW).