A heads up via the ALA Washington Office’s District Dispatch blog:

On Tuesday, February 11th, library supporters are asked to mount a major action to urge Congress to pass major reforms to our surveillance laws. As part of The Day We Fight Back, thousands of websites will host banners urging people to call Congress to stop mass surveillance. You can use ALA’s legislative action center and library text alerts to call in to members of your congressional delegation to urge them to vote for reforms such as those in the USA FREEDOM Act (S.1599 and H.R.3361) and other reform proposals.

Tuesday ALA will send out a blast email to ALA members with instructions and a basic message to help you contact your senators and representatives. Please push other friends and colleagues to do the same. We want to flood the Congressional switchboards.

ALA is making this effort because of the library community’s long standing commitment to privacy, starting with the protection of patron library records. Grassroots support from ALA has meant a lot to the reform attempts since passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. Now with public knowledge about the extensive surveillance of telephone records and other revelations, there is an opportunity get some real reforms to the surveillance system. That is why we need our library voices to express the need for ending mass surveillance, bring due process to the FISA court process and rationality to the collection and retention of data about millions of people. This is Day of Action is done in collaboration with EFF, ACLU, Amnesty International, and more.

Please be ready to help protect privacy February 11th.