Better be careful that you don't pay with a credit card the next time you buy curry at the grocery store, or Ashcroft is gonna get ya -
idg.net
(NB - The bolding of some of the good parts is my handiwork)
Post Sept. 11 gov't focus chills civil libertarians
Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service\Boston Bureau
August 29, 2002, 13:20
Repeated calls from U.S. President George W. Bush to "rout out" terrorists following the terrorist attacks last Sept. 11 did not fall on deaf ears. Congress and various government agencies quickly began working to expand routing powers by loosening rules on Internet tracking, increasing electronic surveillance and putting biometric screening tools in place.
Meanwhile, certain legal provisions, such as obtaining court orders to perform electronic surveillance, were thrown asunder in an effort to clear the path for law enforcement officials on the terrorist hunt.
"We need to learn to set priorities in our government. And the number-one priority is to protect America from attack, because we're at war," Bush told an audience at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois while discussing new domestic security measures in July.
But while these efforts are meant to shore up the nation's security amid heightened threats, many privacy advocates fear that perhaps the president was taken too literally, that routing out terrorists could result in haphazard searching and surveillance of the public at large, resulting in a serious erosion of civil liberties.
"I don't think the public is really aware of what's happening. We are asleep at the wheel," said Anita Ramasastry, associate director of the Center for Law, Commerce and Technology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The principal cause for concern among civil libertarians is the USA Patriot Act, which Bush signed into law on Oct. 26, 2001, less than two months after the attacks.
To start, this weighty piece of legislation allows government agents to collect new information on Web browsing and e-mail without a judicial review, and allows Internet service providers (ISPs) and network administrators to authorize surveillance of "computer trespassers" without a judicial order.
Furthermore, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was given added capabilities to conduct wiretaps and secret searches using lower standards previously employed only for collecting foreign intelligence. Agents can now perform "sneak and peek" searches of homes or offices without notifying the owner for days or weeks afterward.
In the months following the attacks, law enforcement officials awoke to a veritable Christmas cache of expanded spying powers and tools, with little or no oversight provisions put into place.
"One of the biggest concerns (about the new powers) is that there is a lot of discretion and court stripping," Ramasastry said. "(Attorney General John) Ashcroft and the administration are slicing the rules pretty thin."
Privacy advocates have also expressed discomfort at the increased, and unspecified, amount of public information made available under the legislation.
Because the Patriot Act overrides existing state and federal privacy laws, it allows the FBI to compel disclosure of all types of records upon the mere claim that they are connected with intelligence information.
The problem with these rules is that they give law enforcement officials new surreptitious powers to which it is difficult to hold them accountable, said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF is already hearing anecdotal evidence of a spike in information requests to ISPs since the Patriot Act was passed, Tien said. Additionally, the civil liberties group has received reports that the government is collecting grocery store convenience card information and library reading records, he added.
But civil libertarians and government officials outside the law enforcement agencies are already beginning to complain that these anecdotal reports do not provide them enough information on when and how these new surveillance powers are being used.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been hit with two requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding the Patriot Act's extended surveillance provisions.
In July, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking committee member John Conyers, a Democrat from Missouri, sent a request for information to Ashcroft. While Ashcroft's office replied to some of the queries, some questions went unanswered, prompting Sensenbrenner to threaten to subpoena Ashcroft if his information request was not met by the end of August.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also submitted an FOIA request for more information on the government's new snooping powers.
"The government has made a habit of keeping this information secret," said ACLU Staff Attorney Jameel Jaffer.
"The Patriot Act was passed very quickly, when people were understandably panicked, but now people have stepped back and considered if we need these powers," he added.
Many provisions of the Patriot Act are under a sunset clause, meaning that they expire in 2005.
Jaffer points out that it will be difficult for Congress to assess whether the provisions should be renewed if lawmakers do not have relevant information on how the surveillance powers are being used. And while the Patriot Act is still being evaluated under a critical eye, companion legislation has already begun whipping through Congress that would provide law enforcement officials with potentially greater, undefined surveillance powers.
Other related legislation has moved closer to approval. In July the House passed the Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2002, a bill that aims to give government agencies added authority to eavesdrop on electronic communications without first obtaining a court order.
Meant as a supplement to the Patriot Act, the bill would allow stored communications like voicemail and e-mail to be available to any "government entity" that convinces service providers that releasing personal information is necessary to prevent "death or serious physical injury." The legislation also seeks to levy stiffer penalties for computer crime.
While legislation like the Cyber Security Enhancement Act has gotten a lot of play in Congress in the wake of last Sept. 11, it is difficult to say if many of the proposed amendments will stick given increased scrutiny of the new snooping authorities.
However, the organization of the government has undergone substantial and permanent changes likely to affect how law enforcement officials watch the public for years to come.
After receiving considerable flak for failing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI announced in May that it was giving agents new authorities to search the Web and monitor public areas to better detect and prevent possible terrorist activities.
What's more, the agency created a new Cyber Division and pledged to research and develop a variety of new technological tools to add to its crime-fighting arsenal. The changes reflect the government's growing reliance on information technology to help it track new terrorist threats.
"Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists," Bush said in a speech last October, discussing the FBI's new powers.
But with any new surveillance measures, concerns arise about protecting the information that is collected. And some find little comfort in the FBI's new focus on technological surveillance tools, given the agency's track record.
Security expert and founder of Counterpane Internet Security Inc. Bruce Schneier said that the government has proved that it cannot be trusted with protecting the information it gains through technological surveillance methods.
Schneier pointed to the government's controversial "Carnivore" electronic-surveillance system as a case in point.
Carnivore was billed as giving agents the "surgical" ability to intercept and collect a suspect's e-mail. However, FBI documents were uncovered last May revealing a glitch in the system that saves messages not only from the suspect but from other individuals as well. [See, "FBI documents expose Carnivore glitch," May 29.]
Incidents like these have shaken privacy advocates' faith in the government's ability to handle sensitive public information.
Beyond protecting the information collected, some experts also claim that mass information gathering is not an effective means to locate potential terrorist threats.
"The problem is not data collection, it's data analysis," Schneier said.
"The FBI proved after Sept. 11 that they have no problem with data," he added, noting that the government had precise information on the Sept. 11 hijackers' whereabouts and moves leading up to the attacks.
"The problem is knowing what the data means," Schneier said.
Ramasastry agreed. "It's not about how much information you collect, it's how you connect the dots," she said.
Despite these concerns, the government's domestic antiterrorism efforts continue to be focused on surveillance and data collection.
"One of the key tools that we need to use effectively against the cold-blooded killers who we're trying to chase down is the capacity of our nation to collect and analyze information," Bush told the audience at Argonne.
But one recently introduced initiative aimed at further information-gathering indicates how far the pendulum has swung away from privacy and toward domestic snooping, civil libertarians say.
The DOJ introduced a program last June called Operation Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS). Initially, the plan was to set up a hotline where Postal Service employees, utility and trucking companies, among others, could call in suspicious terrorist activities that they witnessed during their working days. This plan has been scaled back, however, after provoking the ire of civil libertarians, and may end up including just those who work on highways and ports of entry, DOJ officials say.
Still, the mere introduction of TIPS proves worrisome to some privacy advocates.
"We've gained dragnet justice -- a real focus on umbrella information gathering," Ramasastry said. "When you add all these things together it makes me jumpy."
Tien points out that the kind of sweeping information-gathering authorized by TIPS would also add inaccurate information to government records, not to mention opening the door to "McCarthyism," where citizens with a grudge could proffer false and incriminating information about someone.
"TIPS could easily lead to abuse if they are accepting tips and not carefully checking and screening them," Tien said. "The whole process is very scary."
While it is irrefutable that the events of last Sept. 11 thrust the country into an era of heightened security measures, how those measures are carried out remains under debate.
The FOIA requests made by both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the ACLU serve as strong indications that the pieces of legislation hastily produced after the attacks are coming under more thorough scrutiny.
Furthermore, despite the emergence of security threats, other recent events signal that constitutional rights of freedom and privacy protection have not been forgotten. In a strong decision, the normally secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) recently publicly rebuffed proposals by Ashcroft to lessen the standards for obtaining wiretap permission, saying that a loosening of the rules could impinge on civil rights.
While civil libertarians applauded the FISC's oversight, concern still lingers over who will oversee new powers that have yet to be ascertained.
"It's not just the new surveillance that worries us, it's the fact that what is now permitted is hard to track," Tien said. "Who is going to hold (the government) accountable for its actions?" |
