Jiri’s Notepad

Effects of USA PATRIOT Act on the Internet

Well researched article on consequencies of the controversial law. Some good points:

“We endow government with tremendous power — power to arrest you, take away your property, take away your life, destroy your reputation, take your children away from you,” Dempsey said. “I think those powers in the hands of human beings, acting under pressure, with the best of intentions, facing time deadlines in a world of limited resources, those kinds of powers need to be surrounded with a thicket of rules.”

The problem that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face is not insufficient information — “they are choking on information,” Dempsey said. The deficiency is in targeting and analysis. The Patriot Act was based on “the assumption if you pour more data into the system, then the picture would become clearer, and I think that’s a false presumption,” Dempsey said.
The danger, said John Baker, a law professor at Louisiana State University, is applying the government’s war powers to domestic activities. “We’ve never had such a mix-up between the president’s wartime powers and law enforcement,” Baker said. “The president has wide powers under war and national defense, but the national government does not have wide powers for law enforcement.” [newhouse]