Who is reading your emails?

Here's the text of an email I received from True Majority Action:

If you sent an email in 2003, there's a good chance your government grabbed a copy of it. That's because in 2003, the National Security Agency set up a secret, 24-by-48 foot room in a downtown San Francisco telecommunications building to tap into one of the nation's largest Internet data hubs and illegally retrieve millions of emails and other communications. This is not a conspiracy theory; according to the sworn affidavit of an AT&T technician, this actually happened.

Tomorrow a federal court will hear two lawsuits against the NSA's unconstitutional "special project." The arguments will be long and drawn out, but in a sense our own Congress has already made it moot -- just before leaving on vacation they voted to make the administration's spying programs legal.

Congress will re-consider that legal protection in just six months, so we need to show them NOW that this is not the behavior we will accept. No more secret rooms siphoning off our e-mails and telephone calls.

Pissed off yet? If you've been reading this blog, and following the posts in the Carnival of the Decline of Democracy, you know that this is not a lone, accidental violation of our civil rights, but is simply the way this administration has operated since day one.

It's not enough to simply wait for the next election and hope that things will be better. We've got to fight this today, now. That's why I reprinted True Majority's email and am asking you to click here and join me in signing their petition:

'We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal recourse, allow our phones and emails to be tapped without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from assault by any President. I insist that my elected representatives in Congress do the same.'

Thank you.