Final Fantasy Fan Film Kickstarter Project, Apparently With Square Enix's Tacit Approval

from the good-signs dept

Video game giant Square Enix has never had a great track record when it comes to opting for lawyers over any kind of fan-created works built off of its properties. In fact, far from even making any attempt to encourage its fans, Square instead seems to enjoy the sledgehammer approach. Whether it was shutting down a fan-game set in the enormously popular Chronno Trigger universe, or a similar effort to create an OpenCarmageddon, the trend you’ll notice is that these legal moves are made against some of the most rabid fans of some of the most beloved game franchises around.

So what would Square do if someone wanted to build off of what is almost certainly its most beloved franchise, the Final Fantasy games? Well, apparently the company will quietly okay it. At least, that’s the case with the Kickstarter project for Final Fantasy 7: The Web Series, which has reportedly secured some of the necessary rights from Square Enix to move forward.

Today the team launched a Kickstarter to raise $400,000 for the project, which is now a 5-6-episode webseries based on Square’s popular role-playing game. They say they’ve got the blessing of series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi—and the rights to use music from Final Fantasy VII.

“We have been in contact with SE for several months, and have attained full music rights,” producer Dan Purcell told me in an e-mail today. “We have not however been endorsed or backed by SE. We have passed all necessary steps, including Kickstarter’s review process.”

Now, this doesn’t explicitly say that the company, Square Enix, has given everyone involved the go-ahead for the project, but it’s hard to imagine the film creators going through the steps of securing music rights, contacting Sakaguchi, and then leaving it all to risk of the game developer’s lawyers. In addition, the Q&A on Kickstarter indicates that the filmmakers have been reaching out to Square, that Square’s general counsel is definitely aware of the project, and that the trailer for the series has even appeared on Square’s website. I would guess that there has been at least some assurance made that nobody is going to get sued over this and, before anyone rushes to point out that the fans went the route of securing rights, that’s only true of the music and no project of this kind is going to be able pay the kind of massive costs rights-holders have previously required. From all appearences, it looks like Square is playing nice.

And if that has indeed happened, it’s a huge step forward for Square, and a step that might just be becoming a trend. The company recently went a little more lax when OCRemix, famed video game music organization, wanted to pay tribute to Final Fantasy 6, and Square gave its blessing. If it was now to give a muted nod to this fan film project building off of one of its most popular games ever, it might just be an indication that the company is rethinking its legalistic ways. And that’d be good for all fans of the game, because the web series looks fantastic.

If the films are as good as the trailer, they’re a big old kick in the crotch to all those that decry fan-generated content. Not to mention a boon to those of us that go all teen-girl-at-a-Bieber-concert for anything related to Final Fantasy 7. I’ll be keeping an eye on this to make sure Square doesn’t poop the bed, but so far it looks like the company is probably going to play nice.

Filed Under: fan films, final fantasy, support
Companies: square enix

Irony Alert: Obama Opposes Amash Amendment Because It's A 'Blunt Approach' And Not A Product Of 'Open' Process

from the now-they're-just-fucking-with-us,-right? dept

Okay, someone in the White House just feels like giving people who believe in protecting civil liberties a giant middle finger today. As a quick review, the President and the administration have been hiding behind secret court orders with secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act to use a very blunt instrument: collecting pretty much all digital data around, and keeping the whole thing totally quiet for years. In response, Rep. Justin Amash is seeking to pull funding from one of the key NSA programs — the one that involved a secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act by a secret court to pretend that language that clearly applied to only limited data now meant the NSA could order AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others to hand over every call record on every phone call. And, this is a program that no one knew about until Ed Snowden leaked it to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Okay, having reinforced those basic points, check out the giant “screw you guys” the White House just pushed out in the form of a “statement” in response to the Amash Amendment. I’ll bold the key guffaw-inducing lines:

In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the President has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens. The Administration has taken various proactive steps to advance this debate including the President’s meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, his public statements on the disclosed programs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s release of its own public statements, ODNI General Counsel Bob Litt’s speech at Brookings, and ODNI’s decision to declassify and disclose publicly that the Administration filed an application with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. We look forward to continuing to discuss these critical issues with the American people and the Congress.

However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.

Let me repeat that again: This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. As opposed to the blunt process of collecting all data on everyone which was arrived at via an “informed, open and deliberative process — known as totally secretly interpreting the plain language of a law in a secret ruling from a secret court to mean something almost entirely different than what the language itself said?

This is a joke, right?

Only someone who really has a sick sense of humor would try to argue that a bill looking to slow down the rampant spying on pretty much all Americans comes from a lack of an “informed, open, or deliberative process” when the process to create that massive surveillance infrastructure was all done in complete darkness.

Filed Under: appropriations, barack obama, debate, irony, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, open, surveillance

DailyDirt: Boys Don't Make Passes At Girls Who Wear Augmented Reality Displays On Their Heads…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Smartphones and tablets are popular devices nowadays, but what’s going to come next? Smartwatches or smartglasses or smartshoes? Besides Google Glass, there are a bunch of wearable computers on the market already. So far, the smartglasses haven’t quite caught on, but maybe they just need a bit more time for people to get used to the interface. Here are just a few examples of smartglasses that you can buy if you want a glimpse into the “future” of electronic gadgets.

• The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset could be free someday (now $300), subsidized by a VR game subscription or with advertising (or both), perhaps. Oculus Rift CEO Brendan Iribe predicts that the hardware could become cheap enough that the device could be given away or bundled with software services. [url]
• The Recon Jet is a pair of sunglasses that’s also a wearable computer. It’s a bit bigger and heavier than Google Glass, and it puts its heads up display in the lower right corner of the user’s field of vision — so that it doesn’t make the user look towards the sun and because research has shown that looking down is easier than looking up. [url]
• GlassUp is another wearable heads up display that costs about $400 and pairs up with a separate mobile device so that it doesn’t use much power on its own. GlassUp puts its heads up display info near the center of a wearer’s field of vision — and early adopters can get a discount by supporting its Indiegogo campaign. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: augmented reality, gadgets, glasses, heads up display, headsets, hud, smartglasses, vr, wearable computing
Companies: glassup, google, oculus rift, recon

Senator Wyden: Public Has Been Actively Mislead By Government Officials Over Surveillance

from the indeed dept

While some Senators are insisting that we need to keep going with NSA surveillance and just trust them that the NSA and FBI aren’t abusing the law and the information they have access to, others are pointing out that it’s a lot of hogwash. Senator Ron Wyden, who has been leading the charge against these programs for years (and was mostly ignored for that effort), gave a great speech describing how defenders of the program are directly choosing to mislead the American public. A key point, though it comes late in the speech, is the following:

The public was not just kept in the dark about the Patriot Act and other secret authorities. The public was actively misled.

Most of the speech is detailing exactly how that happened, and the distortions defenders of the program try to tell the American people and why they’re wrong. We’ll highlight a few, but reading or watching the whole speech is worthwhile.

He notes that he warned, quite specifically (and publicly) that when the American public found out how the laws were being interpreted, they would be surprised. That, clearly, proved accurate:

When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.” From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans.

Furthermore, he points out that officials chose to directly mislead the American public.

If that is not enough to give you pause, then consider that not only were the existence of and the legal justification for these programs kept completely secret from the American people, senior officials from across the government were making statements to the public about domestic surveillance that were clearly misleading and at times simply false.

The misleading statements from the officials are based on how the government interprets the law as compared to how the public actually reads the law:

…there are effectively two Patriot Acts the first is the one that they can read on their laptop in Medford or Portland, analyze and understand. Then there’s the real Patriot Act the secret interpretation of the law that the government is actually relying upon. The secret rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have interpreted the Patriot Act, as well as section 702 of the FISA statute, in some surprising ways, and these rulings are kept entirely secret from the public. These rulings can be astoundingly broad. The one that authorizes the bulk collection of phone records is as broad as any I have ever seen.

And, of course, such a situation is clearly anti-democratic:

Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America.

Furthermore, Wyden digs into the ridiculous claim by defenders of the NSA — including from President Obama, Senator Feinstein and NSA boss Keith Alexander — that there is sufficient “oversight” in these programs because others in the government review them. That, of course, is ridiculous:

…when James Madison was attempting to persuade Americans that the Constitution contained sufficient protections against any politician or bureaucrat seizing more power than that granted to them by the people, he did not just ask his fellow Americans to trust him. He carefully laid out the protections contained in the Constitution and how the people could ensure they were not breached. We are failing our constituents, we are failing our founders, and we are failing every brave man and woman who fought to protect American democracy if we are willing, today, to just trust any individual or any agency with power greater than the checked and limited authority that serves as a firewall against tyranny.

As for the claims by defenders that the business records collection is no different than a grand jury subpoena, Wyden rightly calls bullshit on that:

For years, senior Justice Department officials have told Congress and the public that the Patriot Act’s business record authority which is the authority that is used to collect the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans is “analogous to a grand jury subpoena.” This statement is exceptionally misleading it strains the word “analogous” well beyond the breaking point. It’s certainly true that both authorities can be used to collect a wide variety of records, but the Patriot Act has been secretly interpreted to permit ongoing bulk collection, and this makes that authority very, very different from regular grand jury subpoena authority. Any lawyers in here? After the speech is over come up and tell me if you’ve ever seen a grand jury subpoena that allowed the government on an ongoing basis to collect the records of millions of ordinary Americans. The fact is that no one has seen a subpoena like that is because there aren’t any. This incredibly misleading analogy has been made by more than one official on more than one occasion and often as part of testimony to Congress. The official who served for years as the Justice Department’s top authority on criminal surveillance law recently told the Wall Street Journal that if a federal attorney “served a grandjury subpoena for such a broad class of records in a criminal investigation, he or she would be laughed out of court.”

Going even further, he trashes the claims that this is all okay because intelligence officials tell Congress “the truth” behind closed doors in classified sessions. As he notes, this means that they’re lying to the public, and that’s not right:

Sure, members of Congress COULD get the full story in a classified setting, but that does not excuse the practice of half truths and misleading statements being made on the public record. When did it become all right for government officials’ public statements and private statements to differ so fundamentally? The answer is that it is not all right, and it is indicative of a much larger culture of misinformation that goes beyond the congressional hearing room and into the public conversation writ large.

And all of this spying and deceit has a very real impact on our democracy:

James Madison, the father of our constitution, said that the the accumulation of executive, judicial and legislative powers into the hands of any faction is the very definition of tyranny. He then went on to assure the nation that the Constitution protected us from that fate. So, my question to you is: by allowing the executive to secretly follow a secret interpretation of the law under the supervision of a secret, nonadversarial court and occasional secret congressional hearings, how close are we coming to James Madison’s “very definition of tyranny”? I believe we are allowing our country to drift a lot closer than we should, and if we don’t take this opportunity to change course now, we will all live to regret it.

Democracy isn’t electing officials to lie to the public while enabling the vast intelligence community to spy on everyone via secret court orders. It’s time that the public spoke up and made it clear to our elected officials that this is not what we signed up for at all.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, fisa amendments act, james clapper, keith alexander, nsa surveillance, patriot act, ron wyden

NSA Defenders In The Senate Flip Out Over Amash Amendment To Stop Dragnet

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Not surprisingly, the NSA’s emergency lobbying to try to stop Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment that will stop the NSA from its bulk data collection program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act (while allowing lots of other surveillance efforts to continue) has drawn support from the Senate’s two biggest supporters of stomping out your privacy: Senators Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss. Together, they’ve put out a ridiculous statement defending the trampling of your Constitutional rights to support the efforts of the NSA and giant government contractors to spy on everything you do.

The FISA business records program has contributed to disrupting numerous terrorist attacks against our nation.

Name one. Seriously. To date, every example given falls apart under scrutiny, as it shows that the NSA’s mass data collection program was not necessary. Furthermore, just because such a program was used doesn’t mean the program makes sense. The bigger question is whether or not other, less intrusive methods, would have been just as effective and (more importantly) whether the country is okay with simply tearing up the 4th and 5th amendments. As stated, we’d probably stop lots of criminal activity if the government was able to put cameras in every room of every house. But we don’t do that because there are costs involved — such as giving up our privacy. Why won’t Senators Feinstein and Chambliss even address this part of the equation?

It has been reviewed and authorized by all three branches of government and is subject to strict controls.

Except that’s not really true. Multiple people in Congress have made it clear that they were not told the full details of the NSA surveillance efforts. And while Congress did “authorize” the program, it was done with a very weak debate and (specifically) public speeches by both Chambliss and Feinstein that were clearly designed to mislead Congress and the American public. As for the “judicial” branch overseeing it, that’s just the totally secret FISA court, with all of its judges selected by one man with no oversight or control, and with all of its decisions held in secret. That’s not quite the “judicial oversight” that most of the public thinks is legitimate.

Since the public disclosure of the business records program, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has explored how the program can be modified to add extra privacy protections without sacrificing its effectiveness.

They’ve done so in secret. The public hearings have been a complete joke with heavily misleading statements to outright perjury from intelligence officials.

We believe this debate in the Congressional Intelligence and Judiciary committees should continue and that any amendments to defund the program on appropriations bills would be unwise.

Yeah, sure. We’ve heard this before. Feinstein got Senator Ron Wyden to drop his hold on the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act (which has been interpreted to allow part of this crazy excessive surveillance) by promising him that there would be a debate in early 2013. That didn’t happen.

Feinstein claiming that there will be continued debate over this issue just isn’t credible. It’s the same line that she’s used to shut down previous attempts to hold these programs back.

Feinstein, Chambliss and the NSA still can’t show how these programs are actually constitutional or necessary. So they resort to their usual FUD. Hopefully, Congress realizes that the American public have had enough of this charade.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, justin amash, nsa, nsa surveillance, saxby chambliss

National Intelligence Lawyer Wonders Why People Are Fine With Sharing Data On Facebook But Not With The Government

from the deliberately-obtuse dept

It’s a point that’s been raised by many people in arguments about privacy and other aspects of government data collection. In a speech given last Friday, the general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, Robert Litt, broached the topic publicly. After defending the NSA’s programs as completely legal (thanks to the Third Party Doctrine), Litt asked more directly:

“Why is it that people are willing to expose large quantities of information to private parties but don’t want the Government to have the same information?”

It’s a valid question, but not when asked by the overseer of government intelligence agencies. Daniel Stuckey at Motherboard points out that there’s a big difference between voluntary and involuntary “exposure.”

Now, I’d hate to answer Litt’s question so simply by saying that consumers are extorted by their love of what they consume, but it’s part of it. And trust in companies that give us free things, that advance self-expression is an inalienable consumer right. If the government, theoretically, already knows everything there is to know—when we didn’t directly volunteer our information—it then provides momentum for a rally cry. The shame and disgust when Edward Snowden pulled back the curtain reverberates that government by virtue is supposed to be more clear, more holistic, and an idealized reflection of ourselves.

It’s a false equivalent. Thousands of people expose tons of information every day using social media platforms, but they do so with the implicit understanding that the free service is deriving some sort of benefit from their interactions. When the government scoops up the same data, there’s no perceived benefit, not even the supposed “targeting” of terrorists.

Furthermore, as Stuckey states, we want to believe our government is above snooping on our “private” interactions. (Private in the sense that they’re between individuals, no matter how many others can view or interact with the conversations.) If we initiate the exchange, we don’t feel victimized by the lack of privacy.

Beyond that, every social media service has some sort of privacy settings built in that limit what others can see. Most of these have only limited effectiveness, but the fact is that users have the option to exclude others. The underlying platform is the facilitator and therefore, has “earned” the “right” to mine data and can never truly be excluded, and we (for the most part) accept this. There is no “exclude government” option, other than Litt’s implicit suggestion: if you don’t want the government to see it, don’t post it in public arenas.

But the most troubling part of Litt’s question is this.

It’s great that the U.S. government behaves better than corporations on privacy—too bad it trusts/subcontracts corporations to deal with that privacy—but it’s an uncomfortable thing to even be in a position of having to compare the two. This is the point Litt misses, and it’s not a fine one.

This is the crux of the issue. When someone asks why we don’t value our privacy more, in terms of social networking, they have a point. When someone asks why we’re willing to give Facebook plenty of data but resent the government doing the same thing, the point is no longer valid. Handing data to advertisers is a lot easier to stomach than the impression that the government is reading over your shoulder.

Ultimately, though, we should never have gotten to the point where the government’s thirst for data on American citizens exceeds the demands of corporations. We expect corporations to act in self-interest. We expect our government to be a lot more selfless and its intelligence agencies more willing to sacrifice some effectiveness in order to protect the rights of American citizens.

If Litt honestly feels people don’t have privacy expectations in regards to data shared with a third party, he should put some manpower into launching Facebook.gov (or whatever) and see how many people are willing to sign up. Facebook vs. government isn’t a fair comparison and Litt knows it. He’s just using the question to prop up the third party exception that enables the NSA to acquire vast amounts of data. What he’s doing is making a convenient presumption that these users are aware of the protections they lose by sharing information with a third party — and, consequently, the government. Part of the “expectation of privacy” is the “expectation,” something the Supreme Court has noted, and it’s safe to say that many Facebook/Google/Twitter users don’t expect the government to be accessing their data.

Finally, there’s also the utilitarian aspect. As the New Jersey Supreme Court pointed out earlier, no one uses a cell phone simply to provide location data for law enforcement and investigative agencies. And no one utilizes social media in order to provide the government with a treasure trove of personal information.

Filed Under: government, privacy, robert litt, sharing, social networking, third party doctrine

Eli Lilly Raises Stakes: Says Canada Now Owes It $500 Million For Not Granting A Patent It Wanted

from the too-much-is-never-enough dept

A few months ago we wrote about the extraordinary — and worrying — case of Eli Lilly suing Canada after the latter had refused to grant a pharma patent. Eli Lilly’s contention was that by failing to grant its patent (even if it didn’t meet the criteria for a patent in Canada), Canada had “expropriated” Eli Lilly’s property — and that it should be paid $100 million as “compensation”.

But it seems that the company has had second thoughts. Not that its action was outrageous, and that it ought quietly to retract its suit in the hope that people might just forget about this display of presumption; instead, it has decided it was far too generous in asking for only $100 million, as this Globe and Mail story explains:

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. has escalated a challenge it launched last year against Canada’s patent rules under the North American free-trade agreement, and is now demanding $500-million in compensation after the company lost its Canadian patents on two drugs.

Indianapolis-based Lilly has expanded the NAFTA case over the loss of its patent for Strattera, a drug used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to also include Canada’s invalidation of the company’s patent for Zyprexa, which is used to treat schizophrenia.

This shows that the initial action was no one-off, and that if Eli Lilly’s action succeeds, we can expect it and many other companies to avail themselves of this method of extracting money from the public purse, as provided for under NAFTA’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses.

What’s troubling is that similar ISDS schemes are being negotiated for both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP. That will give corporations even more opportunities to sue nations for supposed “expropriation”, and to challenge perfectly legitimate local laws that dare to stand in the way of bigger profits.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: canada, investor state disputes, patents
Companies: eli lilly

Maybe The Answer To The $200 Million Movie Question Is To Not Focus On $200 Million Movies?

from the what-happens-when-you-get-formulaic dept

For almost a decade, we’ve been dealing with variations on the question an executive from NBC Universal once asked me during a panel discussion about copyright: “But how will we keep being able to make $200 million movies?” As we’ve explained over and over in the years since, that’s a ridiculous question. Would anyone in the tech industry ever ask “but how will we continue to make our $5,000 computers?” Of course not, because the focus is on making something profitable that’s good and serves a need. Focusing on the cost is exactly the wrong way to go about things. That doesn’t mean that no movies should cost $200 million. If you can come up with a movie that can make more than that in response, then sure. But Hollywood seems built not around figuring out how to make something profitable, but by following a formula. And part of that formula is “every summer we release some big budget, action-packed ~$200 million films that we call blockbusters” and that’s the focus.

Except, when you follow a formula that says “we do this because this is what we do” rather than “how can we create something that people will like and will bring in more money than we spend?” (Yes, I recognize this is simplifying things, like skipping over Hollywood accounting, where films are designed to “lose money” even as the studios make money on them).

Of course, some filmmakers long ago realized how problematic this is. George Lucas declared the death of the $200 million movie back in 2006 and just recently Steven Spielberg joined Lucas in making similar remarks. Spielberg noted:

“That’s the big danger, and there’s eventually going to be an implosion – or a big meltdown,” Spielberg said. “There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”

And it may already be happening. The NY Times is noting that six big budget “blockbuster” movies in a row are looking like complete flops:

With extremely weak domestic ticket sales over the weekend for “R.I.P.D.” and “Turbo,” Hollywood has now sustained six big-budget duds since May 1, the start of the film industry’s high-stakes summer season. The other failing movies have been “After Earth,” “White House Down,” “Pacific Rim” and “The Lone Ranger.”

Each of those films was well over $100 million to make, with a few breaking that magical $200 million. A big part of the problem? These movies are all just formulaic retreads of the past — playing on the stupid idea that “well, we need a $200 million movie, so how do we make one?”

Studios have also tried to sell most of these as “original,” which in Hollywood-speak means not a sequel or a remake. In reality, movie companies have largely just reassembled familiar parts. “Pacific Rim,” which featured giant robots, seemed to share DNA with “Transformers.” “The Lone Ranger” was “Pirates of the Caribbean” in Old West drag. “R.I.P.D.” was “Men in Black” lite.

Meanwhile, the movies that are doing well are the lower budget films.

Moviegoers are pushing back. The No. 1 movie in North America over the weekend was “The Conjuring,” a period haunted house film that cost Warner Brothers $20 million to make and received stellar reviews. It took in $41.5 million, according to box office estimates compiled by Hollywood.com.

Of course, Hollywood folks will point out that you never really know how a movie is going to do, and it’s something of a crapshoot. Indeed, but in that case aren’t you better off testing your luck with 10 $20 million movies rather than dumping $200 million all into one boring retread?

Again, the idea is not that there should never be $200 million movies — but it’s long past the time that Hollywood focused on “how to make $200 million movies” which leads to an awful lot of formulaic stuff that the public appears to be sick of watching. Instead, it’s time to focus on how to make good profitable movies. That usually doesn’t involve following a formula, but rather finding quality content, and figuring out how to make it efficiently, not how to keep ratcheting up the budget just to fit it into some pigeonhole about what a “summer blockbuster” has to look like.

Filed Under: $200 million, blockbusters, flops, hollywood, movies

NSA's Keith Alexander Calls Emergency Private Briefing To Lobby Against Amash Amendment

from the what-are-you-afraid-of? dept

So we were just writing about the details of the amendment from Rep. Justin Amash, which would limit the NSA’s ability to twist the language of Section 215 of the Patriot Act to pretend it means it’s okay to collect information on every phone call made. If you want to know just how important this is, all you need to know is that NSA boss, General Keith Alexander, wasted no time in scheduling a last-minute emergency briefing for Congress to tell them not to vote for the Amash Amendment.

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. “In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency,” reads the invitation.

The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. “The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only,” reads the invite.

Of course, the people that Congress is supposed to be representing, the public, don’t get the privilege of being able to secure a last minute “briefing” with our elected officials to explain to them why the Amash amendment is important. Instead, we need to rely on things like DefundTheNSA.com or Demand Progress to reach out to our Representatives to let them know that bulk data collection on every American is not acceptable behavior by the NSA.

Filed Under: appropriations, congress, funding, justin amash, keith alexander, lobbying, nsa, nsa surveillance, patriot act, section 215