Patriot Act

Viet D. Dinh (Vietnamese: Đinh Đồng Phụng Việt; born February 22, 1968) is a lawyer and a conservative legal scholar who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Born in Saigon, in former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act and is a former member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.

Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to strengthen individual rights and freedoms by defining, promoting, and influencing technology policy and the architecture of the Internet.

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is an independent nonprofit research center in Washington, D.C. EPIC's mission is to focus public attention on emerging privacy and related human rights issues. EPIC works to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values, and to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

Lamar Seeligson Smith (born November 19, 1947) is a retired American politician of the Republican Party who served in the United States House of Representatives for Texas's 21st congressional district for 16 terms. The district included most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as well as some of the Texas Hill Country. He sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act (PCIP). He also co-sponsored the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first." With over 50 staff members, the CPI is one of the largest nonprofit investigative centers in America. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) is an Act of the United States Congress that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. USA PATRIOT is an acronym that stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed in July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Officially nonpartisan, the organization has been supported and criticized by liberal and conservative organizations alike. The ACLU works through litigation and lobbying and it has over 1,200,000 members and an annual budget of over $100 million. Local affiliates of the ACLU are active in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases when it considers civil liberties to be at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation.

The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary committee in the U.S. House of Representatives charged with the oversight of the United States Intelligence Community, though it does share some jurisdiction with other committees in the House, including the Armed Services Committee for some matters dealing with the Department of Defense and the various branches of the U.S. military.

The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 57,000 members.