Victims of the darkness: Government surveillance and intimidation

Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software Christian operates said their databases can reveal the websites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow. Christian refused to hand over the records, and his employer, Library Connection, Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public.

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This case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under some of the heinous provisions of the USA Patriot Act. National security letters, such as the one issued to George Christian, were created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations.

They were originally intended as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. However, the Patriot Act and Bush Administration guidelines for its use have transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U. S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

“The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year,” writes Barton Gellman in The Washington Post, “a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters - one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people - are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.” Indeed, according to a previously classified document released recently, the FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U. S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight.

Thus, the government does not limit its attacks to actual terrorists. Ordinary American citizens are the focus as well. Take the case of Selena Jarvis, a social studies teacher at Currituck County High School in North Carolina. She assigned her senior civics and economics class to use photographs to illustrate their freedoms as found in the Bill of Rights. One student photographed a picture of George W. Bush next to his own hand in a thumbs-down position as a way to express his freedom to dissent.

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