Fergie's Tech Blog

Patriot Act Faces Difficulties on the Road to Renewal

Caron Carlson writes in eWeek:

For American businesses that face rising costs in complying with an exploding volume of FBI surveillance orders since the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001, last week's secretive bout of law crafting added to the feelings of defenselessness that they say the act inspires. Manufacturers, banks, real estate companies, bookstores and other businesses succeeded earlier in the fall in persuading the Senate to restore some checks and balances to the FBI's powers, but that effort came head to head with the administration's determination to further bolster those powers.

Businesses and privacy-rights advocates want foremost to dissuade the FBI from conducting unlimited, indefinite or unwarranted searches of ordinary Americans. Recent reports suggest that the FBI now issues tens of thousands of NSLs (National Security Letters)—orders for a wide variety of records, issued unilaterally without any judicial review—annually, compared with a few hundred annually prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001.

posted by Fergie @ 11/21/2005 08:30:00 AM