The Secrets of Surveillance
By ELAINE CASSEL
Everyone knows by now (or should) that the Patriot Act allows the FBI to conduct surveillance on Internet and email usage. Using so-called National Security Letters (NSLs), the FBI directs Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide passwords and identifying information that will allow the government to target people who are plotting terrorism or who are otherwise potentially dangerous to national security. I am sure that many of you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in our computers.
The same mechanism of NSLs is used to obtain information from librarians, health care providers, and business records of individuals and entities. The party from whom the government demands information is forbidden from telling the client that the FBI is being provided information. And the target of the investigation won’t know about it until or if he or she is arrested for crime or detained without a charge (say, as a material witness).
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