Saying that any expansion of the so-called Patriot Act should be kept to "no more than a gleam in his eye," the American Civil Liberties Union has blasted Attorney General John Ashcroft for pressing the case for even more sweeping Internet surveillance powers that Congress seems reluctant to give.
"There is no evidence that Congress has any appetite for granting the Attorney General any expansion of the already extraordinary powers given him under the (Patriot) Act, particularly since he has not properly explained how the Department of Justice is using the powers it was given after the attacks of 9/11," said Laura W. Murphy, who runs the ACLU's Washington office.
The ACLU reacted a week after Ashcroft testified to Capitol Hill for new and broader surveillance and anti-terrorism powers, from wider cyberspace surveillance to expanding the definition of "material support" for terrorism. Murphy cited a reported from the U.S. Inspector General on 9/11 detainee abuses and even Ashcroft's own admission to Congress that he hadn't consulted them "adequately" as proof that such expanded powers should be blocked.
"We will continue to work with Members from both sides of the aisle and with groups across the political spectrum to ensure that Patriot II remains nothing more than a gleam in Mr. Ashcroft's eyes," Murphy said.
When an early draft of legislation to include those expanded powers leaked out to the media, it drew fire from all sides of the political street. House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) was only one of those who suggested there was "no real enthusiasm" for expanding the federal government's already expansive powers even more.
Investigators use what's called "trap and trace" technology to monitor e-mail, Internet surfing, and other cyberspace activity, but ACLU legislative counsel Timothy Edgar said those techniques can violate your privacy if they're used to watch Web activity, since they're normally used for telephone number capturing but URLs provide far more detailed information about you than your phone number does.
