According to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero has struck down parts of the revised USA Patriot Act. The specific sections allowed investigators to use a National Security Letter (NSL) to request customer records from Internet service providers (ISPs), telephone companies and public librariues. The USA Patriot Act allowed these requests to placed without a court order.
The ACLU filed a challenge to this law, and Marrero ruled that NSLs must go through a meaningful judicial review process to preserve the checks and balances established in the US Constitution.
Marrero, whose courtroom is a few blocks away from Ground Zero in New York City, had overturned the same provision in the original Patriot Act in 2004, but an appeals court returned the case to him for further review. Ars Technica has a brief discussion here.
The ruling affects the privacy of every Internet, telephone and public library user in the United States. ISPs can keep track of their user’s downloads and web activity. It’s easy, as the ISP also needs this information to maintain their networks and service levels.
Companies routinely monitor any Internet activity in their company. Again, this is necessary to provide a stable and secure corporate network. Any employee who doesn’t want their supervisor or IT staff “looking over their shoulder” as they surf the web should think twice about their Internet habits at work.
Frankly, some of this episode reads like an article from Project Censored, a group that compiles annual lists of “news that didn’t make the news”. It’s always fascinating reading, no matter which side of the political spectrum you occupy.
The Honolulu Weekly published the top 10 items in yesterday’s edition. A very long page with all 25 items is available here.
Last year I wrote an article on the Patriot Act for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics, which is in press. I wrote several other articles for the same encyclopedia, and my honorarium for the project will buy me a brand new copy of the encyclopedia and, if I’m lucky, I’ll have a few coins left over for spam musubi.
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