ARTS & FARCES internet

Walt Mossberg has come around to recognize that the greatest threats to our privacy come from corporations, not government. Welcome Walt, seriously.

That said, developments in Congress last week don’t bode well.

In a 96 - 1 vote, the Senate passed the Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act without Senator Russ Fiengold’s (D-WI) amendments that would ensure privacy safeguards by limiting roving wiretaps to the phone use of the target named in the investigation; preserve the privacy of “sensitive” documents such as medical records by making investigators convince a judge that access is necessary; prohibiting the use of “secret searches”; and limit the monitoring activities of administrators of computers owned by universities, libraries, and corporations.

In a Wired News piece, Declan McCullah writes that Feingold reminded his fellow senators of their obligation to uphold the Constitution and Bill of Rights and stressed, “we will lose that war [on terrorism] without a shot being fired if we sacrifice the liberty of the American People.” Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) called Feingold’s amendments “outdated and nonsensical… current law perversely gives the terrorist privacy rights….” Last time I checked, the alleged terrorists were not American citizens so the Constitution and Bill of Rights do not apply to them.

The USA Act permits law enforcement to conduct Internet wiretaps without a court order in some situations, allows the federal government to imprison non-citizens for extended periods of time, allows law enforcement to secretly enter a surveillance target’s home or office for surveillance purposes, and expands the power of a secret foreign intelligence court.

I won’t argue that the USA Act is unwarranted, because I don’t have access to the information that the elected politicians have. And I’m not necessarily arguing that I should have complete access to that information.

But based on the information I do have, I find three factors of the legislation exceptionally troubling:

1. Many of the more controversial provisions have already been voted down by our elected political representatives.
2. There is no sunset provision offered.
3. The legislation was passed on a shortened schedule and without the usual debate.

Less than a day later the House of Representatives voted 339-79 to pass a bill that is virtually identical to the Senate version with one large, redeeming difference: The House bill includes a sunset provision for the wiretap sections calling for expiration in December 2004 (with the president allowed a two-year extension in the case of “national interest”).

Historically, the House has been the body of the wild-eyed while the Senate has traditionally been more sedate. Yet the House, not the Senate, has the foresight to include a sunset provision for some of the most dangerous legislation that’s ever come down the pike.

In the House, as in the Senate, the legislation was voted upon with little time for reflection (barely time to read the bill, according to some reports) and without benefit of committee review. Most disturbing were allegations of the legislation being put together by the Republican leadership and brought to the floor with a prohibition against amendments. Declan McCullah, in another Wired News piece, quotes Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) as saying, “What we have today is an outrageous procedure: A bill, drafted by a handful of people in secret, comes to us without a committee review and immune to amendment.”

There are four major universities that are not the University of Minnesota in my neighborhood. At least one of them has received mail that contains a substance determined to be “potentially toxic.” Senate majority leader Tom Daschell’s (D-SD) office reportedly received a letter containing anthrax this morning. Steven Levy says that incidents like this are the end of snail mail, and I tend to agree. Email and the web will continue to become much more important much more quickly than any of us thought. That, in itself, makes how we handle legislation like this all the more important.

These are disturbing times. While I’ll suspend my judgment about just how many of our civil liberties we need to suspend—and for how long—until I’m able to spend more time reflecting on this, I am certain of two things. First, the way our two elected bodies of the legislative branch are acting is almost as disturbing as the times. Second, and more important, if we’re going to allow our civil liberties to be legislated away, what are we fighting for?