Anonymous Patron writes “Wired Reporting On American Airlines’ announcement that it shared more than a million passenger itineraries with four government contractors reveals that Transportation Security Administration officials have repeatedly issued false statements about the development of the passenger-profiling system known as CAPPS II.
We Already Know the Justice Department has not used Section 215 of the Patriot Act, can we assume it has not been used in the same way the TSA officials have repeatedly said they were not collecting passenger information?”
Patriot act HAS been used
I attended a conference a year ago wherein a session was held on the PA. At that time, lib’s said they knew of, or had firsthand experience with, PA use in libraries.
So it’s either an outright lie by Ashcroft (likely) or a technical lie (“we didn’t use the PA”, sort of like “There was no magic bullet…” or “did not have sexual relations”)
Would like to see the evidence
I would be grateful if you could provide more detail, and in particular the evidence that it was used. Absent evidence, the above is hearsay.
One important thing to remember is that the PA has provisions that have nothing to do with getting our library or other records, but with remedying flaws in intelligence gathering and sharing, some of which may well have been the fault of 9/11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick (see here and here). When criticizing the act, it would be more precise to refer to particular sections of the PA (e.g. section 215, 213, etc.), unless you oppose all of it.
Note also that Justice must report twice yearly on their uses of section 215 to both House and Senate intelligence committees. There are both Democrats and Republicans on these committees. It seems to me implausible to think that the subpoena’ing of library records would go unnoticed by the congress-members and their staffs.
Beyond that, there are many career folks in Justice who remain regardless of which administration is in power. I don’t for a minute think that there aren’t at least half a dozen well-placed potential “unnamed sources” there who would be all too happy to leak reports of Ashcroft not following the law. Don’t get me wrong–I’m glad of the sunset provisions in the PA, and its use should be subject to close scrutiny. There are several parts of it I would be happy to see go away.
Re:Would like to see the evidence
Unfortunately, evidence is hard to come by when talking about actual use of the Patriot Act. Making it illegal (or at least a punishable offense) to disclose that your library has been approached in a Patriot Act-supported investigation will limit any hard evidence from being shown. For now, heresay is all we have when talking about the uses of section 215 of the Patriot Act.
Re:Would like to see the evidence
Yeah, I’m surprised ChuckD didn’t know this.