:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 1.30.2004 ::
:: "Ashcroft says surveillance powers should stand" ::
A CNET News.com report
By Declan McCullagh
The Bush administration is warning Congress not to tinker with the Internet surveillance powers that the USA Patriot Act awarded to federal police.
In a four-page letter to the Senate on Thursday, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that defanging the controversial law, which has been criticized by every major Democratic presidential contender, would "undermine our ongoing campaign to detect and prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks." Were Congress to vote to amend the USA Patriot Act, Ashcroft indicated, President Bush would veto the bill.
Ashcroft was responding to a proposal in the Senate called the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (Safe), which would amend the USA Patriot Act by slapping limits on current police practices relating to surveillance and search warrants. It is sponsored by Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho and has 12 co-sponsors, including two other Republicans.
Many portions of the Safe Act affect the ability of federal police to conduct Internet surveillance against not only terrorists but also suspected perpetrators of a broad range of drug-related, computer hacking and white collar crimes. The measure would amend the USA Patriot Act to require, for instance, that electronic-surveillance orders specify either the identity or location of the suspect and that the person be there at the time--a departure from current practice.
"This is an overheated attack on a very modest bill," said Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It shows that the attorney general is afraid of the bipartisan momentum that is going forward to fix parts of the Patriot Act."
Ashcroft identifies no terrorist plots that were thwarted by the existence of the USA Patriot Act, Edgar said. "It doesn't contain a single real example of why passage of the Safe Act would impede antiterrorism efforts. It's based entirely on speculation and misleading, slanted legal analysis."
Another section of the Safe Act that Ashcroft criticized would increase privacy protections for library patrons who use public computers for e-mail and Web browsing.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 10:03:00 AM [+] ::
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