I don’t post most EFF news here, since the EFF has a news page and 2 blogs for that, but today I’m doing it twice because congress is voting tomorrow on renewal of the PATRIOT act. There was a lot of effort to reduce the bad stuff in the bill, efforts that seemed to be getting somewhere but were ignored.

Ok, do I have to tell you why this erosion of so many fundamental rights is a bad idea? At first, I thought the PATRIOT only came about because in the weeks after Sept 11, the country was acting in anger and shock. It did things it wouldn’t do with time to be calm and reasoned about it. And the PATRIOT act has resulted in huge waves of new surveillance as we’ve been seing in the past few weeks.

So do what you can to stop it. Our Action Center will help you contact your representatives to give them the message. Plus you can read the bill and commentary on it on the EFF web site.

We’ve been saying these things for so long you may be getting tired of it. But every time we strip away rights, make society a little bit more scared — each time we live in fear — I think that’s exactly what terrorists want. Like the name says, their goal is to sew fear and terror in hope of getting their way. Sure, people were angry when this law was first passed, but there is no excuse today. Take action yourself. Donation to organizations like the EFF and others if you don’t have time to take all the action you think you should, but do have the money. It’s as simple as that.

At the EFF, we’re announcing today a membership drive around our various efforts for blogger’s rights.

In the EFF blogs in my blogroll, you will have read this year about our legal guide for bloggers, and the various free speech cases we’ve done protecting publishing rights online, anonymity and assuring reporter’s privilege for online journalists.

If you have a blog, we encourage you to promote our campaign and add one of our buttons on your blog. The bloggers who bring in the most members get some goodies, but the real reward is in defending freedom of the modern press. Those bloggers who put up the button can get a membership of their own at a discounted rate too. They can see this page for more details on that.

Support Bloggers’ Rights!