Our 4th amendment rights--do you want to protect them?

People all across the political spectrum are joining forces to stop the erosion of our 4th amendment rights.
To all friends, whether you are right or left politically:
If you believe in every citizen's right to privacy and to freedom from government search and seizure, as guaranteed by the Constitution's 4th amendment, please sign a plea petition to Congress at: https://optin.stopwatching.us/  and tell your friends to sign it, too.  Read John Cusack's important article below, relating what is happening to those God-given, Constitution-granted rights, and how the mainstream press, which once served as guardians against oppression, have now become puppet mouthpieces for the government.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/snowden-principle_b_3441237.html?utm_hp_ref=yahoo&ir=Yahoo
THE SNOWDEN PRINCIPLE  by John Cusack

EXCERPT: 

Within hours of the NSA's leaks, a massive coalition of groups came together to plan an international campaign to oppose and fix the NSA spying regime. You can join them here - I already did. The groups span across the political spectrum, from Dick Armey's FreedomWorks to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and longtime civil rights groups like ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press.

As more people find out about these abuses, the outrage mounts and the debate expands. Many in the mainstream media have shown that the public can't count on them to stand up to internal pressure when The Snowden Principle is evoked to serve the national interest, and protect our core fundamental rights.

The questions The Snowden Principle raises when evoked will not go away....How long do they expect rational people to accept using the word "terror" to justify and excuse ever expanding executive and state power ? Why are so many in our government and press and intellectual class so afraid of an informed public? Why are they so afraid of a Free Press and the people's right to know?...

this cuts to the heart of one of the most important questions in a democracy: will we have an independent free press that reports on government crimes and serves the public's right to know?

It cannot be criminal to report a crime or an abuse of power. Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder Daniel Ellsberg argues that Snowden's leaks could be a tipping point in America. This week he wrote “there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material,” including his own leak of the Pentagon Papers.

The Snowden Principle, and that fire that inspired him to take unimaginable risks, is fundamentally about fostering an informed and engaged public. The Constitution embraces that idea. Mr. Snowden says his motivation was to expose crimes -spark a debate, and let the public know of secret policies he could not in good conscience ignore - whether you agree with his tactics or not, that debate has begun. Now, we are faced with a choice, we can embrace the debate or we can try to shut the debate down and maintain the status quo.

If these policies are just, then debate them in sunlight. If we believe the debate for transparency is worth having we need to demand it. Snowden said it well, “You can’t wait around for someone else to act.”