It still amazes me that the USA Patriot Act passed, but as I run into more and more people that don't know what it is, or don't care how it affects them, I move from astonishment toward fear.
There was no public debate over the Act, it was rammed through Congress at lightning speed, and legislators were not even provided copies before being required to vote. That there was a vote at all under those conditions doesn't say anything good about our Congressional Representatives, and it says a lot of bad things about the status of American Democracy.
Even in the hysteria after Sept. 11th, how do you vote for (or against) a bill that you've not read, and hasn't been subject to debate, especially when the bill is designed to drastically expand the ability of the government to spy on the citizenry. One excuse could easily be, "we thought it only dealt with terrorists". Of course, this isn't true given both the vagueness of the Act's definition of "terrorism", and a clause that specifically states that the Act doesn't only deal with terrorism. That's right, the law that is supposed to help fight terrorist will also let the FBI and the CIA read your email to Aunt Minnie.
The problem of course is not the emails to Aunt Minnie, but the ability to read all emails. What effect will this have on protest groups that are trying to organize street protests or boycotts? The government isn't above tracking all of this. We all like to think that this sort of thing left the halls of government with J. Edgar Hoover and Eugene McCarthy, but the Denver Police Department kept files of people known to be affiliated with civil rights groups and other dissidents. The practice has supposedly stopped in the past few months, but the ACLU is still trying to gain access to the records so people will be able to find out how long they were followed for. The people in files aren't criminals, mind you, just people who exercised their 1st Amendment rights -- like me. I wonder if there any files out there about web sites?
The point is that the FBI can now search all of your Internet traffic, your home, listen to your phone calls, all without judicial approval. And the people that have to grant access to those things aren't allowed to tell you what happened, either.
Here's a detailed analysis of how the Act effects libraries: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0429-02.htm
Posted by Chris at April 29, 2002 11:27 AM