The Electronic Freedom Foundation has filed a FOIA Request to Find Out What We All Want to Know: Is the FBI Using section 216 of the USA PATRIOT Act to Monitor Your Web Browsing?

            The Department of Justice has refused to give the public a straight answer to the question: are you using pen register orders, which are issued on a mere showing of relevance, to capture the URLs of web pages?  Section 216 of the USA PATRIOT Act amended the pen register statutes, so that federal courts must issue a pen register order allowing real time interception of non-content information from computers, not just from telephones. The big question for the DOJ has been whether or not it considers web addresses to be content, or if it is treating URLs as if they were non-content, like a telephone number. To recover content, the government still needs a warrant, and must show probable cause. To get non-content, like a telephone number or the address information from an e-mail header, the government need only make a relevance showing, and can get the information with a pen register order. Many commentators have pointed out that knowing the URL of a web page is the same as seeing the content: plug in the URL and the whole page someone viewed pops up. The DOJ has always sidestepped a direct answer to this question, even when asked by Congress.

On January 13, 2005, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) asked the government to answer this question by turning over documentation about the use of Section 216 to recover web addresses. The FOIA request is available at the EFF web site. For further discussion of section 216 as it relates to libraries, see my article Protecting the Lady From Toledo: Post-USA PATRIOT Act Surveillance at the Library, 96 Law Libr. J. 494 (2004).

Comments

[Matt Staben]

Nothing new going on, what with the 'glastnost' of the U.S. government and their now-legal outlet of guilt. The spooks have been concatenating us for years! Who're they trying to fool?

The threat, a "google database" that will someday extinguish whatever form of privacy that remains, is hyperbole. Truly, one day your obituary will be composed of the results of the codebreaker; this was his life, and how he lived it. The Japanese long ago learned to maintain their personal space on their overcrowded isle. The internet's simple consequence only accelerates for Americans (that is who doth protest most?) what many contemporary societies have experienced ages past.

Arthur C. Clarke, author of the Space Odyssey series, pokes at the concept of total deprivation of privacy in _The Light of Other Days_, and how generations learn to coexist with an ever-growing spotlight on their lives.

The moral is: Quit Whining and Get With It.

Matt

[Arancaytar]

Not if I can help it. I prefer my anonymity, thanks.