UPDATE, 8:30 p.m.: Please join us online Thursday during the hearing! http://bit.ly/oct1hearing has all the info.

This Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing marking up the Leahy PATRIOT Act extension bill is the best chance yet for significant reform. As well as limiting the use of sneak-and-peak warrants and National Security Letters, it bars “bulk collection” under FISA and holds telecom companies accountable for past abuses. A broad coalition including EFF, the ACLU, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the American Library association and many other organizations support Senator Feingold’s JUSTICE Act, a comprehensive package of reforms. The key question for Thursday is how many will be added to Leahy’s more limited bill. Over the next two days, we need to pressure Democrats on the SJC to add provisions from the JUSTICE Act during markup — and Senators to sign on as co-sponsors to the JUSTICE Act. Here’s how you can help:

• On Twitter: tweet the link to this post. Then follow the action on the #patriotact hashtag and retweet early and often! Here’s three tweets to start you out:
  

  Our best chance yet to fix the #PatriotAct and FISA. Support the Justice Act! http://bit.ly/justiceact Pls RT
  @SenArlenSpecter Support the JUSTICE Act! Fix the #patriotact and FISA http://act.ly/ln (please RT)
  Call @SenArlenSpecter at (202) 224-4254 and ask him to Support the JUSTICE Act!

• On Facebook: share this link in your feed, and join the PASS the JUSTICE Act group.
• On the phone: call your Senators and ask them to support the JUSTICE Act. You can find our talking points here.
• On the web: CREDO Action, ACLU, EFF and DownSizeDC all have sites which make it easy to email your Senators.
• If you blog: see our Calling all bloggers post