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The Patriot Act
Patriot II's attack on citizenship
(March 6, 2003) - A basic principle of American democracy is that members of government serve at the behest of the citizenry, and not vice-versa. The people, being sovereign, can use their votes to "throw the bastards out," even though the government has no reciprocal power to jettison disfavored citizens. Yet with the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, informally known as "Patriot II," this basic rule is under attack. The draft legislation, the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the 2001 USA Patriot Act, was recently made public after being leaked to the Center for Public Integrity. The bill would go well beyond its predecessor in threatening essential civil liberties.

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US Patriot Act laws are curbing disease research say scientists
(February 23, 2003) New federal laws meant to control bioterrorism are making it considerably tougher for researchers to continue work with such agents as anthrax and the plague, just as the United States reaches the brink of war with the country that supposedly possesses the greatest bioterrorism threat in the world. Starting to take effect this month, the rules require all researchers to register bioterrorism agents with the federal government -- and make sure they are in secure facilities, which are rare and expensive to build.

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Ashcroft proposes vast new surveillance powers
(February 12, 2003) Proposed legislation leaked to the Internet on Friday would criminalize some uses of encryption, and dramatically increase federal law enforcement's domestic spying powers.A sweeping new anti-terrorism bill drafted by the Justice Department would dramatically increase government electronic surveillance and data collection abilities, and impose the first-ever federal criminal penalties for using encryption in the U.S.

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European Security Organizations Criticizes U.S. Surveillance Law
(January 23, 2003) - The media watchdog in Europe's leading security organization criticized the United States on Thursday for snooping on the private lives of Americans with a law passed in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In a reproach to the Big Brother-like tactics creeping up on post-Sept. 11 America, Freimut Duve of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe condemned the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for monitoring library records and bookstore receipts under the USA Patriot Act.

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Patriot Act chills First Amendment freedoms
(January 22, 2003) - The US Department of Justice will not supply even the most general information concerning the use of its new surveillance powers. This attitude denies the American people basic information they need to provide meaningful guidance to the department. The Act has been amended a number of times to give greater access to public documents. The Act contains a provision that allows a federal agency to refuse an FOIA request if national security interests are at stake. However, the Ashcroft memo limiting what can be released sweeps much further than the original national security provision.

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SF Supervisors Oppose Patriot Act
( January 22, 2003) - The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution opposing the Patriot Act on the grounds it violates civil rights. "The USA Patriot Act encourages the use of racial profiling and creates an atmosphere of hate against immigrants who have done nothing wrong," said Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who introduced the resolution. "This is something we in San Francisco will not tolerate."

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Total Information Awareness
Bay State entities building record-tracking technology
(March 7, 2003) - A handful of Massachusetts businesses are helping to develop a controversial Defense Department antiterrorism program that has been attacked by critics as an assault on individual privacy. Lexington-based defense giant Raytheon Co., Woburn's Aptima Inc. and Burlington's AlphaTech Inc. have won Total Information Awareness project contracts. A handful of other local firms and universities bid unsuccessfully for work on the project.

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DOD spy database funding revealed
(February 27, 2003) - The U.S. Defense Department has awarded millions of dollars to more than two-dozen research projects that involve a controversial data-mining project aimed at compiling electronic dossiers on Americans. Nearly 200 Corporations and universities submitted proposals to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, according to government documents brought to light by a privacy group Thursday. John Poindexter, who oversees the agency’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, approved 26 of them last fall, including grants to the University of Southern California, the Palo Alto Research Center, and defense contractor Science Applications International.

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Udall Joins House Members to Block Total Information Awareness Program
(February 12, 2003) - U.S. Representative Tom Udall (D-NM) today joined a bipartisan effort to block the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project until Congress can review privacy issues related to the plan. The TIA program - a wide-ranging Pentagon monitoring scheme that critics say could threaten the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans - aims to develop technology to collect information on all financial transactions, travel, medical records and other activities of all citizens of the United States.

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Snooping in All the Wrong Places
(December 18, 2002) - Not only would the Administration's plan to centralize every American's records destroy privacy, the security payoff would be minimal. The 2002 elections proved one thing: The promise of security wins votes. The GOP campaigned on a pledge to make the country safer, and it brought home one of the biggest midterm victories in decades. That huge win may have emboldened the Bush Administration to ignore widespread criticism of the Defense Dept.'s $240 million effort to develop a Total Information Awareness system (TIA).

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Related Literature
1984
by George Orwell

Winstone Smith (front) and the Big Brother system in a scene from the 1984 motion picture.


In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion.

Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime -- in his novel "1984", George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance.