From Wired, via Slashdot, comes a story about the Bush Administration, the USA-PATRIOT Act, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs):

The Bush administration asked a federal appeals court Friday to restore its ability to compel Internet service providers to turn over information about their customers or subscribers as part of its fight against terrorism.

The legal filing with the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New York comes amid a debate in Congress over renewal of the Patriot Act and whether to expand the FBI's power to seek records without the approval of a judge or grand jury.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero of New York last year blocked the government from conducting secret searches of communications records, saying the law that authorized them wrongly barred legal challenges and imposed a gag order on affected businesses.

Supporters of the PATRIOT Act like to say that there is oversight over warrants that require information to be turned over, but the oversight is minimal. Organizations which receive National Security Letters (NSLs) requiring them to turn over information to the authorities in the name of counter-terrorism are forbidden from telling anyone that any information has been turned over or that they received NSLs at all.

Congress is attempting to ascertain whether or not it should renew elements of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire later this year, and in doing so, they're trying to get information from the FBI and other national crime-prevention organizations about the success of the PATRIOT Act provisions. Unfortunately, the FBI has been less than forthcoming about disclosing how it used its new information-obtaining powers. Congress would like to know how much of these new powers has been used against non-terrorist criminals and how much has been used against terrorist criminals. We're still not sure.

Sure, there is a compelling government interest in keeping its citizens safe, but is security worth the possibility that our government could use these tools to silence its enemies? NSLs leave citizens without recourse to prevent their information from being turned over to the authorities. Where is the due process? The standard of evidence is even lower than usual. Instead of "probable cause," which is required to get a warrant, the PATRIOT Act specifies that terrorism-related warrants can be issued with the lesser "part of an ongoing investigation" standard of evidence. This means that the feds don't have to prove that you probably did something wrong; as long as you can be sort of associated with terrorism, a warrant can be issued. Isn't that a happy thought?