CRIME [Fwd: FPC-News - A terrorist attack on your privacy]

From: Zot O'Connor (zot@private)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 09:50:37 PDT

  • Next message: Seth Arnold: "Re: CRIME NIPC Daily Report 16 May 02"

    This came on another mailing list.  It might make for some good
    conversation, especially going into the PRS Program.
    
    
    -----Forwarded Message-----
    
    
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    A terrorist attack on your privacy
    By Philipp Harper
    MSN.Business
    
    We are winning all the battles, but we're in danger of losing the war.
    
    Time and again, we have been told that the war on terrorism is being
    waged to safeguard the American way of life and the many personal
    freedoms upon which it's based. But far from protecting this national
    legacy, the war effort places those freedoms in jeopardy.
    
    Consider this scenario: You're on the Internet chatting with a friend.
    Unbeknownst to you, law enforcement agents are "recording" every single
    keystroke that you and your friend make, while keeping separate records
    of your phone conversations. Meanwhile, your bankers and stockbrokers
    are forced to turn off all your financial records. And when you leave
    your office, you return to notice that some items seem out of place;
    almost as if someone moved them. That's because they were moved using a
    law pending in Congress that allows for secret searches of homes and
    offices.
    
    For all the blows our splendid pilots and special forces operatives
    strike against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters on the ground in
    Afghanistan, the assault on civil liberties here at home is even more
    profound.
    
    The perpetrators of this constitutional attack are not religious zealots
    from abroad, but U.S. political leaders. Anti-terrorism legislation
    passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks — ostensibly intended to
    protect us from further harm — makes us vulnerable to our own government
    in unprecedented ways.
    
    
    It could affect how we live our lives
    
    Sold as a simple updating of law enforcement tools — made necessary by a
    new set of international and technological realities, it is argued — the
    USA Patriot Act is every bit as draconian in its own way as the Alien
    and Sedition Act of 1798 or the legislation that led to the internment
    of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
    
    If exercised to its fullest extent, the new police powers could
    dramatically affect how we lead our lives and go about our business in
    the United States of America. That may sound like hyperbole, but it's
    not, not when the full breadth of the act is considered.
    
    The problem is, most Americans consider the legislation only in part.
    They believe, because they've been told, that the law is directed at
    foreign-born terrorists who cross our borders to do us violence. While
    the law does address that threat — and in ways that many people find
    troubling, including the indefinite detention of non-citizens — it does
    much, much more.
    
    The USA Patriot Act makes it easier for government officials to fling
    aside the veil of privacy that protects our personal and financial lives
    from too-easy scrutiny. And far from applying to only to the
    foreign-born among us, every American citizen is at risk.
    
    
    'Preventing terrorism' becomes an excuse
    
    The American Civil Liberties Union, which, like the Cato Institute on
    the political right, is alarmed by the bill's legal ramifications. (The
    fact that these two groups agree on an issue should give you a hint of
    its import.) The ACLU has identified the following provisions as
    particularly troubling.
    
    Lowers the legal threshold for obtaining wiretap authority. By asserting
    that intelligence surveillance is a "significant" purpose of a wiretap,
    law enforcement officials whose real purpose is to gather evidence of a
    crime no longer have to show probable cause to obtain wiretap authority.
    Thus, "preventing terrorism" becomes a catch-all excuse for launching
    what in the past clearly would have been unconstitutional searches.
    
    Makes it easier to access Internet communications. To gain a court order
    permitting monitoring of an individual's Internet activity, law
    enforcement groups simply must certify to a judge that the information
    is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." Once the required
    phrase is invoked, the judge has no choice but to grant the order.
    Again, the bar is being set well below the level of probable cause.
    Armed with such an order, investigators can determine any and all Web
    sites visited by an individual.
    
    Increases FBI access to sensitive business records. If the FBI is
    conducting an "intelligence" investigation, it no longer has to show
    evidence of a crime to obtain records about a person maintained by a
    business. It merely must assert that the records it seeks are relevant.
    By so doing, the agency can compel a business owner to turn over an
    employee's educational, medical, financial, mental health and travel
    records.
    
    Requires closer monitoring of daily transactions by financial
    institutions. Financial institutions are required to share the
    information they cull with federal agencies, including foreign
    intelligence services such as the CIA. The law also allows law
    enforcement and intelligence agencies to get easy access to individual
    credit reports in secret. The law provides for no judicial review and
    does not mandate that law enforcement give the person whose records are
    being reviewed any notice.
    
    Expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches. In the
    past, secret searches were rare if they were permitted at all. A person
    who does not know he is the subject of a search loses his ability to
    take legal action to block it. Occasionally, law enforcement agents were
    able to delay notification of a search, but that was about it. The new
    anti-terrorism law stands this rule on its head. Now, the government is
    able to have its request for a secret search considered in every
    criminal case, not merely those involving allegations of terrorism.
    
    Creates a new crime of "domestic terrorism." Domestic terrorism is
    defined as conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life." Under
    such a broad definition, even members of groups that exist to protest
    abortion, environmental or economic policies could be classified as
    terrorists. Moreover, anyone supporting such groups — say, by making a
    cash donation — would be subject to prosecution; non-citizens who belong
    to or support such groups would be subject to detention or deportation.
    
    Those in law enforcement who have had the will to more closely
    scrutinize American citizens now have the legal way. They have the
    technology, too.
    
    It was revealed recently that the FBI has developed a new technology —
    code-named Magic Lantern — that allows eavesdropping software to be
    installed covertly via the Internet. The software records every
    keystroke on the target computer.
    
    While no one is suggesting that the Bush administration and its allies
    in Congress seek to create a Kandahar on the Potomac, neither should
    anyone minimize the threat to personal liberty when ever-more intrusive
    technology is abetted by an overly accommodative legal posture.
    
    After all, the point of our new war is to protect freedom, not to see it
    diminished.
    
    
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    -- 
    Zot O'Connor
    
    http://www.ZotConsulting.com
    http://www.WhiteKnightHackers.com
    



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