when last we saw our hero (Tuesday, Jun 15, 2004), Matthew S. Hallacy was madly tapping out: > http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63800,00.html > > Particularly disturbing: > > "Under the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II provisions passed in the > Intelligence Authorization Act last year, the FBI doesn't need a > court order or probable cause to obtain the transaction records for > patrons of libraries, Internet service providers, telephone > companies, casinos, travel agents, jewelers, car dealers or other > businesses. > > The FBI can simply draft a "national security letter" stating > records are needed for a national security investigation, without > being specific about the data being sought or the people being > investigated. A nondisclosure provision prevents the letter > recipient from telling anyone about it, including patrons whose > records may be investigated. " > > > Once again, our wonderful "representatives" are at work, slipping > tidbits of legislation into bills that have nothing in common. > > Write/Call/Fax/Email the appropriate government officials for your > locale. if you're interested in more information on this topic, i highly recommend checking out the work being done by the EFF[1]. they have an action center where you can quickly and easily contact the appropriate representatives with, what i have found to be, well written form letters and reasonable stances on topics of interest here. these folks do a lot of good work and are right up there w/{m,n}pr as far as charitable donation dollars well spent. { snipped - misc .signatures } references ---------- [1] http://www.eff.org -- steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list