(image credit) CDT, among many others, is urging all of us to take action on the PATRIOT Act, a terrible piece of legislation that I've written about before. I also featured this Act in the book. From it: ....under the PATRIOT Act, the government now has far broader rights to intercept your private data communica- tions—a reinterpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, pa- pers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The PATRIOT Act certainly puts a new spin on the word “search.” But this is to be expected, right? After all, if the government has probable cause and a search warrant, nothing has really changed, has it? As all good civics students know, the Fourth Amendment con- tinues: “no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Under PATRIOT, prior interpretations of these constitutional presumptions don’t necessarily hold true. To summarize, the PA- TRIOT Act holds that your private information can now be inter- cepted and handed over to government authorities not via a search warrant tendered to you, but rather via a request to your ISP, your community library, or another service provider. That means that should the government decide it wants access to your information, it no longer needs to serve a search warrant on you; it can instead go to the company that you use—be it Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, or any number of others.3 In the past, the government could cer- tainly tap your phone or search your effects if you were a suspect in a crime. But under the PATRIOT Act, not only can the government...
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PATRIOT Act: Act!
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