More Patriot Act
I need the time to do some of the spade work to make this argument more convincing, both for the blog and for my life. But, for now, I just point you to this post from the Volokh Conspiracy pointing out that even the ACLU thinks the majority of the PATRIOT Act is perfectly acceptable. That's not to say, of course, that they're not very, very unhappy with those small parts of it they don't like, but it does indicate that there's a big gap between public perception of the PATRIOT Act and the reality.

The biggest problem with the debate is that the act is usually discussed without reference to the surrounding criminal investigation context. I'm no expert here (like I said, I need to do the spadework to nail this down) but it's my understanding that the ACLU and others are really fired up about the "library book search authority," as one example. The thing is, first of all, the provision is much more general, aimed not at libraries but at a broader set of documents. That provides greater authority, of course, but it also indicates that Congress and the administration were not specifically after your reading habits. And as for the breadth of the authority - it is quite easy to get the subpoena to look at the documents. As I understand it (again, sorry, no time to do the spade work right now), you go before a judge, say you need to see these documents and he or she is more or less required to grant the subpoena. Yes, that's pretty close to a rubber stamp. BUT NOT MUCH MORE OF A RUBBER STAMP THAN GETTING A GRAND JURY SUPOENA FOR DOCUMENTS.

If a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, how easy do you think it is for a prosecutor (keep in mind, the prosecutor is in there alone - there's no opposing counsel) to convince them that they need to look at a few pieces of paper? My limited experience with grand juries is that they'd give you a subpoena for absolutely anything you asked them for. Library records included.

Of course, one may think that the government has too much authority to subpoena the papers of run of the mill criminals - the scam artists, the drug dealers, and everyone else - but it seems to me that's where the real question should be.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 10:07 AM