news: Congress to weigh privacy right vs. security need

Hey all,

I can't even keep up with the speed at which this
is happening.

Historically, these sorts of measures are ALWAYS
the precursor to a totalitarian state so if you
believe that we can learn from history and that
Nazism was a bad thing, you may want to write
your Congressman AND the President to let them
know how you see things. Organize marches, write
letters to the editor, etc.

And don't be folled by the psychological warfare
tactics that we will see where 'all your concerns
are being addressed' and 'what sort of an ID card
*would* you be comfortable with?' and 'But 70%
of the public wants this, are you opposed to
democracy and the will of the people?' etc etc
nonsense. Oppose these measures at all costs!
Some of you may want to start stockpiling weapons
while you still can.

- Jeff

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http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/092401/me
t_7365208.html

Monday, September 24, 2001

Story last updated at 12:25 a.m. on Monday, September
24, 2001

Congress to weigh privacy right vs. security need
Legislation may mean intrusiveness

-- By Steve Patterson
Times-Union staff writer

Intent on safeguarding the United States from
terrorism, federal officials have envisioned new
security tactics that may sharply challenge Americans'
traditional expectations of privacy and civil liberty.

Policies ranging from aggressive new airport security
systems to the use of national identity cards and
indefinite jailing of some non-citizens, with no chance
for trial, have been proposed or discussed in
Washington since the terror attacks that killed more
than 6,000 people Sept. 11.

Both supporters and critics acknowledge the potential
for these measures to shrink America's expectations of
personal freedom, disagreeing only on whether the
promise of additional safety outweighs that loss. With
dozens of distinct measures under consideration by
Congress or federal bureaucracies, it is too early to
say which ideas will take root. More ideas are expected
to advance in coming weeks.

"We've heard so many proposals and speculation," said
Nadine Strossen, national president of the American
Civil Liberties Union. "We've only seen the tip of the
iceberg."

A handful of anti-terrorism measures now under
consideration illustrate the breadth of choices about
personal liberty that Americans and their leaders will
have to make.

Legislation that Attorney General John Ashcroft
unveiled last week would let the Justice Department
jail foreigners indefinitely without trial if the
attorney general certifies they might be involved in
terrorism or other national security threats.

The idea alarmed civil rights advocates, who said
people might be locked up for years without the
government producing any evidence of guilt.
Congressional hearings are expected to be held this
week on the legislation, the Anti-Terrorism Act of
2001, which contains dozens of separate provisions.

Justice officials scaled back the detention proposal as
the week progressed. A draft bill circulated Sept. 17
said non-citizens could be detained indefinitely for
deportation, and that there could be no appeal to any
court until the Immigration and Naturalization Service
issued a final deportation order. Late in the week, a
draft said immigrants could file appeals, but only in a
U.S. district court in Washington. Opponents said that
didn't help, because a ruling on the appeal wouldn't be
binding unless an immigrant happened to be locked up in
that judicial district.

Debate about the detention plan mirrors earlier
criticism of the government's use of so-called "secret
evidence," classified information the Clinton
administration used to hold some immigrants without
disclosing their reasons to the defendant. A University
of South Florida professor, Mazen Al-Najjar, was held
for three years before a federal court decided last
year there wasn't evidence to justify incarceration.

"We're going from secret evidence to no evidence," said
Strossen, whose group organized a push last week by a
political rainbow of organizations worried about the
loss of rights.

Legislation to ban secret evidence was scheduled for
debate in Congress before Sept. 11. But Ashcroft said
last week the country needs to carefully measure public
safety and constitutional rights.

"Very frankly, those who attacked the United States
would attack the constitutional rights as well as the
safety of individuals," Ashcroft said at a news
conference. "We're going to do everything we can to
harmonize the constitutional rights of individuals with
every legal capacity we can muster to also protect the
safety and security of individuals."

Internet snooping

Legislation authored in the past two weeks would make
it easier for federal investigators to search people's
e-mail and to get information about computer users'
identities and habits as part of a terrorism
investigation.

Two days after the attacks, the Senate passed a rider
to a disaster relief bill that would help the FBI use
monitoring equipment including Carnivore, a system that
can screen large amounts of e-mail for specific
information. The bill specified terrorism and computer
fraud as instances when certain types of electronic
eavesdropping would be allowed.

Parts of Ashcroft's anti-terrorism bill also would
expand the information investigators can collect from
Internet service providers without getting a judge's
order. For example, the bill would let investigators
get credit card numbers people use to pay for Internet
service, as well as the times they're on-line.

Senators felt investigators needed broader power to
stay in touch with the times, said Sen. Richard Shelby,
R-Ala.

"So much of the future investigations are going to be
dealing with terrorism in the communication field,"
said Shelby, vice chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. "Let's face it. Lots of
terrorists know how to use the Internet. We have to
give the Justice Department the tools it needs. We
can't just be waiting around for them to hit us again."

Traveler pass cards

Airline regulators and the aviation industry are
looking into computers that could record pictures of
airline passengers on computer bar codes and scan for
criminals or people being sought by the government. The
technology has been available for three years but is
getting serious attention now.

"As of Tuesday, Sept. 11, all the rules have changed,"
said Ron Schroeder, sales and marketing vice president
for Laser Data Command, a Minneapolis company selling a
passenger identity system called PassPro.

The system, one of a few available, photographs a
passenger and his luggage and records the information
as a bar code on a boarding pass. That makes a photo
manifest of every passenger on a flight. Later,
passengers would get permanent ID cards in the mail to
use on future flights.

Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration have
talked with Laser Data this month, Schroeder said.

The Air Line Pilots Association wants the FAA to start
a computerized ID system but isn't sure it's
affordable, said Ron Lovas, a spokesman for the pilot
union. He said the ID computer could match passengers
against pictures of suspected terrorists and safety
risks, like a system Tampa police use on some streets.
Critics argue those matches often are inaccurate, so
innocent people could be falsely identified.

Laser Data worried about a privacy backlash and didn't
market PassPro to investigate passengers, Schroeder
said. He said the software can be a basic
identity-checker that deletes records once a flight
lands or it can keep detailed data.

Schroeder said cards for repeat travel wouldn't be
issued to people who had no permanent address or had
immigration problems or other irregularities. He said
airports might use the absence of a card as a signal to
perform tighter security searches on some travelers.

National ID cards

Members of Congress made fleeting references this month
to creation of national identity cards, an idea that
triggered fierce controversy several years ago. And
that instantly rekindled opponents' fears of Big
Brother intrusion.

"We beat the Germans in World War II. We don't want to
be a show-us-your-papers kind of country," said David
Kopel, research director for the conservative
Independence Institute in Colorado and author of a
series of books about gun owners' rights.

Congress debated a national identity card system as
part of immigration reforms in 1996. The plan for a
"tamper-proof Social Security account card," which some
critics contended was motivated by security fears after
the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, failed in the House of
Representatives by a 30-vote margin. Earlier proposals
had recommended cards contain a person's address,
photograph and a fingerprint or retinal scan data.

U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., mentioned the cards as a
possible element of America's new security plan.

"I think people are going to have to recognize that
some of their conveniences are going to be gone," Bono
said in an interview with the Desert Sun in Palm
Springs. "Whether we are talking about national ID
cards I don't know, or fingerprinting of everybody, I
don't know where we are going to go with security. I'm
glad to show my identification where I need to go."

Aides to Bono issued a statement later that the
congresswoman was not endorsing ID cards, only saying
they might become an issue. Opponents expect the idea
to surface again, Kopel said.

Personal information

Congress also will decide if terrorism investigators
can take information that's normally sacrosanct,
including DNA information and school records that
federal laws specifically say are private.

One proposal would authorize DNA collection from people
convicted of any terrorism-related crime, something
investigators hope will produce new evidence in
unsolved cases.

School records, some of which routinely are sent to
federal agencies for statistical purposes, are
protected by federal laws meant to preserve people's
privacy. But the Justice Department wants to waive
those exemptions during terrorism investigations.

It also wants terrorism investigators, including
employees of intelligence and national defense
agencies, to have access to grand jury records that now
are closed or available only with certain limits.
Another part of Ashcroft's bill would let investigators
review business records through subpoenas, a measure
the Justice Department said is modeled after existing
policies for drug investigations.

Shelby said people need to have confidence that
investigators will use their broader powers prudently.

"I believe we will be wise," Shelby said. "We have to
have some trust in our prosecutors and in our judges
and in our oversight committees."