The USA PATRIOT Act, the most impressively clever acronym EVER

This week’s readings about the USA PATRIOT Act bring up a few questions in relation to the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and the definition of a record. I am confused how the same people who wrote that “tangible things” include “books, records, papers, documents, and other items” (Pub. L. No. 107-56 § 501) and these have been interpreted to include electronic records (Doyle & Yeh, 2006) can subsequently say that e-mails are not records. Notwithstanding my confusion about how “tangible” items can be electronic (have we consulted the dictionary ever?), how can records include electronic records when they are the library and Internet records of suspected terrorists but exclude electronic records when they are the President’s and Vice President’s e-mails? Either a record includes both paper-based and electronic materials or not. This is like defining information as a thing when we are concerned with systems-based design but information as a process when we are concerned with user-based design. It’s BOTH definitions ALL of the time, not pick your definition to suit your personal interests.

Meanwhile, I had a good laugh at the way civil liberties are simultaneously taken away and protected by the same legislation. According to the USA PATRIOT Act, these tangible things can be requested regarding a U.S. person (side note: does this mean resident or citizen?) only when the investigation “is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution” (Pub. L. No. 107-56 § 501). Um, what activities are not protected by the First Amendment? Reading library books? Using library computers to search the Internet for information? Pretty sure those are protected under free speech, but apparently not. Apparently, the USA PATRIOT Act is protecting our civil liberties by stipulating that investigations cannot include requests for information protected by the First Amendment while we are interpreting all activities to, in fact, not be protected by the First Amendment.

Even more laughter came with reading the DOJ’s Report from the Field. First of all, I am pretty sure the DOJ is not protecting both American lives and liberty but is in fact protecting lives at the expense of liberty (U.S. Department of Justice, 2004). I also did not know that the DOJ was waging the war on terror “…with a constant awareness of its obligation to preserve freedom and with scrupulous attention to the legal and constitutional protections for civil liberties” (28-29). I think I missed their scrupulous attention, unless they mean the attention to removing protections for civil liberties. For goodness sake, they gloat that § 210 allows them to obtain subpoenas for information about people’s electronic communications “without requiring investigators first to undertake the time-consuming step of applying to the courts.” (18) Yeah, those processes that protect civil liberties are really more a hindrance than anything else.

In contrast to the DOJ who assures us the government is protecting our civil liberties while cracking down on terrorism – and child pornography, and other non-terrorist criminal acts that are suddenly covered under the anti-terrorism laws, EFF reminds us that the government has in fact taken away civil liberties, and this was done without ANY evidence whatsoever that possessing civil liberties was a hindrance to intelligence gathering (EFFector, 2003). It’s pretty hard to read any of this week’s readings with a straight face since it’s all heavily biased, but it is easier to read something written by an organization that shares my biases towards the intrinsic value of civil liberties (in case you thought for one nanosecond that I am a conservative).

References

Doyle, C., & Yeh, B. T. (2006). Libraries and the USA PATRIOT Act. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Retrieved February 5, 2009, from http://www.opencrs.org

EFFector. (2003). EFF analysis of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that relate to online activities (October 31, 2001). San Francisco, CA: Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2009, from http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis.php

USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56.

U.S. Department of Justice. (2004). Report from the field: the USA PATRIOT Act at work. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Justice.