Work In Progress

The stupidly named USA PATRIOT ACT has often been decried as greatly decreasing civil liberties and legal protections for American citizens. Is this really the case? The Patriot act is essentially a collection of changes to existing laws with at least the nominal intent of merely updating them to modern circumstances and technology.

I have not yet read much of the Patriot Act, partially because many sections of it look like this:

Section 2332e of title 18, United States Code, is amended-- (1) by striking `2332c' and inserting `2332a'; and (2) by striking `chemical'.

Which of course is meaningless unless you have the patience to go look up the appropriate sections and read them with those changes. (I do not think that this was done with the intent to confuse people meaning to read it, and people who want to know how the Patriot Act changes the law really should know what the law was before the Patriot Act anyway.)

However, Orin Kerr, a member on hiatus of The Volokh Conspiracy, is a legal scholar and has commented frequently on the Patriot Act. A man with libertarian leanings, I found his take on the act — that it's not sinister — to be quite interesting. He's published a paper on the subject with the following abstract:

This article argues that the common wisdom on the USA Patriot Act is wrong. Far from being a significant expansion of law enforcement powers online, the Patriot Act actually changed Internet surveillance law in only minor ways and added several key privacy protections. The article focuses on three specific provisions of the Patriot Act: the provision applying the pen register law to the Internet, the provisions relating to Carnivore, and the new computer trespasser exception to the Wiretap Act. By explaining the basic framework of surveillance law and applying it to the Patriot Act, the author shows how the Internet surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act updated the law in ways that both law enforcement and civil libertarians should appreciate.

Furthermore, I've searched the conspiracy's blog and collected Orin Kerr's writing on the subject. The paper is probably more important to read (I have not yet read all of it), but below is a list of all of the posts Mr Kerr did on the Patriot Act and related subjects that I can find, in roughly chronological order:

1. on Total Information Awareness
2. on internet surveillance laws
3. on ignorance about Total Information Awareness
4. about a specific case of spying at a library
5. on libraries destroying records
6. initial thoughts on the Patriot Act II
7. on the proposed crime of "unlawful use of encryption"
8. the patriot act and libraries
9. on the EFF's analysis of the Patriot Act II
10. on sneak-and-peek searches
11. on ignorance about FISA
12. the patriot act and a raid on an indian restaurant
13. 2002 FISA numbers
14. on the "lone wolf" amendment
15. on monitoring google search terms
16. on the lack of abuses reported so far
17. on using GPS to track suspects