rational geekery

Two stories on the erosion of our privacy have been in the news today.

It seems an unlikely alliance between traditional conservatives and the ACLU is making waves about their opposition to the hideous Patriot Act:

WASHINGTON - An unusual coalition of lawmakers and activists opposed to parts of the USA Patriot Act is mounting a last push to persuade Congress to take more time before voting to extend some of the law’s most controversial provisions.

At issue is whether Congress has been rigorous enough in assessing how the Patriot Act - which the White House calls vital to its war on terror - has been implemented. Many lawmakers were stunned by recent press reports, denied but not corrected by the Justice Department, that the FBI has issued as many as 30,000 “national security letters” since the law was passed nearly unanimously in 2001. The letters order private and public entities to turn over records and other private data about Americans - and remain silent about it.

In the run-up to a vote later this week on extending controversial provisions of the act, civil liberties and privacy groups released their own research, based largely on documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that they say signals numerous reporting violations and lax oversight.

“Congress should not reauthorize the Patriot Act until these questions are resolved,” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, which released FBI documents it had obtained, at a press briefing Tuesday.

On this side of the pond the EU has requested that communication companies retain our data for up to 2 years; from the BBC:

EU approves data retention rules

The European Parliament has approved rules forcing telephone companies to retain call and internet records for use in anti-terror investigations.

Records will be kept for up to two years under the new measures.

Police will have access to information about calls, text messages and internet data, but not exact call content.

The UK, which pressed European member states to back the rules, said that data was the “golden thread” in terrorist investigations.

The parliament voted by 378 to 197 to approve the bill, which had already been agreed by the assembly’s two largest groups, the European People’s Party and the Socialists.

Originally the Internet was a liberating medium empowering individual free speech, and giving a medium for dissent. Even in supposedly ‘liberal western democracies’ governments constantly seek to impose the yoke of authoritarianism on our access to information and our right to protest.

Libertarians should resist vehemently government control of the web.