I have a ton of action alerts for you today and that will probably continue to be the situation until the house takes its recess. They are trying to ram a bunch of bills through and unfortunately that means they will be pushing lots of bad legislation. Please continue fighting for our freedoms and take the time to email AND call for each of these issues. A call makes your voice 10 times louder and without your calls we wouldn't have been able to defeat legislation like the NAIS. Until the recess happens, we need to continually pressure congress to do the right thing.

Thanks for Christian for the heads up on this. The Department of Education is conducting a survey about technology in schools. Many of us have been trying to get free software in schools and running into block after block as to why they won't use it. For many people this block has been that the state/national Department of Education doesn't really support Free Software and won't support it. The same problems happen when we want our schools to use open formats. Please use this opportunity to give the department of education you thoughts on Vista, Free Software, DRM, and our children's future.

Thanks to DownsizeDC for keeping track of all this legislation. Earlier this week (or was it last week?) I asked you to oppose the NAIS (national animal identification system) which would require all livestock to be register with electronic tags. Thanks to pressure from you NAIS is no longer a threat to our privacy, wallets, and rights. However, there is something right now that is a threat. Congress has been continually pushing to regulate grassroots organizations like Binary Freedom and once again they are trying to slip it into another bill.

Brothers and Sisters,

Week by week, month by month, the pressure has been slowly rising.
First it was a few voices, then a few dozen, a few hundred, and now
even more. First it was a mailing list, then a site, and now a
movement. We got Open Source organizations to back us and the BBC was
still ignoring us. Now they have begun negotiations, but we aren't
there yet. We need to keep on the pressure and we need to bring the
point home. So here it is, the Free The BBC International Day of
Action. Mark your calendars, the day is Tuesday August 14, 2007. On

Like an animal backed into a corner, REAL ID is fighting for its life. We have defeated it multiple times and now it's getting desperate. It tried to slip into the immigration bill and we caught it before it got too comfortable. And now it's trying to slip into another bill. This bill is on its death bed but if we aren't careful, it will make a comeback. From DownsizeDC:
"State governments are revolting against the REAL ID Act. Big Brother politicians on Capitol Hill are responding to this resistance by trying to bribe the states with your tax money.

Despite our tireless efforts of protests, phone calls, and emails REAL ID is still a very real threat. We killed it. Several times. We killed it in the Immigration Bill (in fact, according to the ACLU, it's what killed the immigration bill) and once again we need to kill it. No matter what we do, it seems to keep coming back but if we keep coming back and bringing the rage it will stop. We asked you to call and now we're helping the EFF and ACLU get in more calls. Please take the time to call, email, and report your calls. From the EFF Effector:

From Speed Matters:
"Senator Dick Durbin wants your help.

Today he's beginning a novel experiment: a series of online discussions to get input from regular Americans on his upcoming universal broadband bill.

This is a brand new way of writing legislation, and it's fitting that Senator Durbin is trying it with a bill to bring high speed Internet to all. This issue touches every American, because universal broadband is essential for a strong economy and equal opportunity.

Make sure your voice and your ideas are heard. Check out the discussion happening now and add your own thoughts:

I emailed you a few days ago asking you to please oppose Senator
Reid's amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 2008
that would put colleges in the sights of Congress like they were in
the sights of the RIAA. I know that many of you made phone calls to
your elected representatives and now the Electronic Frontier
Foundation has picked up the story as well. Please participate in
their campaign to defeat this dangerous legislation and refer to my
previous announcements (http://binaryfreedom.info/node/172). The EFF

Based, almost completely, on letter from DownsizeDC.org

A small cabal of organizations and members of Congress have dreamed and schemed for a long time to regulate grassroots organizations like Binary Freedom.

First, they came for the blogs and web activists. We beat them there.

And already this year, we've clobbered this proposal three times, fair and square, when their target was grassroots organizations who use mass media tools, including the web.

But now, there's a very real danger that this cabal may cheat in order to get what they want anyway.

[[From Defective By Design]]

Using Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to lock down citizens is unethical. It strips us of our rights to control the devices and computers we own, and takes away the traditional uses we have made of music and video. We don't want these handcuffs on our society! Why do they think they can get away with imposing this on us?

Send a message to Steve Jobs, Bono and Edgar Bronfman Jr. today at http://www.defectivebydesign.org/actions/media_execs_have_their_heads_sa...

Comrades,
[[From ACLU National]]
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law on July 4, 1966, he gave the American people a powerful tool to shine the light of openness and accountability into the darkened corners of government agencies. As it stands today, however, government agencies often take months or even years to respond to FOIA requests. Some delays have even lasted 20 years or more!

Comrades,
[[From ACLU National]]
The Real ID Act of 2005 is poised to turn your driver’s license into a national identity card. It requires all Americans to reapply for new, federally defined licenses at state DMVs, and will store their personal information in a new, national ID database.

Seventeen states have launched an unprecedented revolt against this law, passing legislation either rejecting it or calling on Congress to repeal it.

Dear Comrades,
This action alert is extremely urgent. I got it through a forward of a forward and it is absolutely critical that we come out en masse to oppose this new amendment that would target universities in the same way that the RIAA and MPAA have been doing for several months now.