News Reprot # 5

"Federal Bills Revisit NSLs, Digital Privacy"
American Library Association
4/3/09(Date accessed: 4/7/09) http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2009/april2009/surveillancebillsintro.cfm

The article “Federal Bills Revisit NSLs, Digital Privacy" talks about the Patriot Act, which is the Federal Bureau of Investigation being able to obtain a patron’s records for investigation, if they believe it points towards the person as a suspect. The article also mentions how Congress is now “considering several bills that would collectively impact the ability of law enforcement” to obtain this information about patrons. Thirdly, the article talks about how there are other legislation’s in place, such as the Internet Safety Act, where a “federal agenc[y]” can obtain someone’s records as well. Lamar Smith, who cosponsored the H.R. 1076 dealing with child pornography, said that people should not be concerned with this legislation because it just ‘ “simply allow[s] [the government] to match [an] IP address of a suspect to an individual’ ” “just as phone companies do with telephone numbers.” Furthermore, most of these practices are in place for the safety of society, not solely for the purpose of invading people’s privacy.

Honestly, I don’t see what the big problem is, if the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the one who is obtaining this information for safety reasons in most cases. Even though, it invades someone’s privacy, if you are not doing anything that you shouldn’t be doing, then you should have nothing to worry about. Thinking further into this topic, one has to think, again if you’re doing the right thing, then hypothetically speaking, why would you be a person of interest to the police? Usually, someone of interest is a person with a negative history or a pattern of negative behavior or actions over a period of time, whether this is five weeks, five months, or five years. I just think it is safer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be able to have access to this information, then to not be and something happens. That could have been possibly prevented or caught early on, if they had access to this person’s records.