Personal Records and the USA PATRIOT Act, or Spy on This!

I was highly amused earlier this summer when I got together face-to-face with a friendster friend of mine and she commented on numerous profile items of mine (e.g., hobbies & interests, favorite books, favorite movies, favorite music, favorite TV shows, etc.). Really, what she was doing was making fun of what I had listed--apparently my choices just didn't put me into the "cool" category. (She'd probably say the same of my blogger profile if she knew about it.)

*Shrug*

I told her she should *do* something about it, and to her credit, she did--she sent me home with a bunch of new music to listen to (Modest Mouse, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, Radiohead, and Raconteurs).

Since then I've been trying to further expand my horizons through my public library system, and I must say, it's been going quite well.

Library Borrowing Record

August 2006
Fiona Apple When the Pawn
Coldplay X & Y
Ani DiFranco So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter
Eurythmics Peace
Hanson Underneath
Jewel 0304
Jack Johnson On and On
K.D. Lang Invincible Summer
Monsoon Wedding Soundtrack
Stevie Nicks Rock a Little
Joan Osborne How Sweet It Is
Pearl Jam Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam Yield
Queen Latifah The Dana Owens Album
R.E.M. Automatic for the People
Damien Rice O
Simple Plan No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls
Smashing Pumpkins Rotten Apples: Smashing Pumpkins Greatest Hits
Tegan and Sara So Jealous
Train For Me, It’s You
Train My Private Nation
U2 The Best of 1980-1990
U2 All That You Can’t Leave Behind
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood Ann Brashares
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Ann Brashares
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood Ann Brashares
Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories Dr. Seuss
Bewitched
Ella Enchanted
Herbie Fully Loaded
Holes
Prime
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Wimbledon

July 2006
Tori Amos Under the Pink
Barenaked Ladies Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991-2001)
Dixie Chicks Top of the World Tour Live
Hilary Duff Most Wanted
Everclear Sparkle and Fade
Alicia Keys Songs in A Minor
School of Rock Soundtrack
Switchfoot The Beautiful Letdown
The Misfits James Howe
The Watcher James Howe
The Corpse Bride

May 2006
3 Doors Down Seventeen Days
Beck Guero
Shawn Colvin A Few Small Repairs
Shawn Colvin Whole New You
Counting Crows This Desert Life
Dave Matthews Band Listener Supported
Ani DiFranco Swing Set
Dixie Chicks Fly
Everything But the Girl Tempermental
Nelly Furtado Folklore
Macy Gray The Trouble With Being Myself
Hoobastank The Reason
Annie Lennox Bare
Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music (volume 3)
Madonna Confessions on a Dance Floor
Pet Shop Boys Nightlife
Music from the motion picture The Prince and Me
Radiohead Hail to the Thief
SmashMouth SmashMouth
Gwen Stefani Love. Angel. Music. Baby
The Very Best of Sting & the Police
Three Days Grace Three Days Grace
Kissing Kate Lauren Myracle
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
The Grace Lee Project
The West Wing (4th Season, discs 3 & 4)

I wonder what she, and others (like you, yeah, YOU, reading this posting) would say now?

But on a more serious note, this makes me think of Congress' failure to reform the USA PATRIOT Act. In particular, I'm thinking here of Section 215 "Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," under which library borrowing records can come under the scrutiny of the FBI. (This is an explicit attack on our privacy rights, but hardly the only one. Check out my earlier posting about the deterioration of trans rights related to the REAL ID Act.)

I doubt that my borrowing records (well, not my public library records, anyhow) would be cause for suspicion with the FBI (although they might raise a few eyebrows elsewhere), but that's beside the point. How much surveillance are we willing to put up with? How much privacy are we willing to forfeit? Do we even know the extent to which we're being surveilled, and our privacies curtailed?

Sadly, I'd have to say that most of us don't realize how much privacy (and security) we've already lost in the very name of security.

And frankly, Section 215 isn't the only part of the USA PATRIOT Act that Congress failed to reform.

To read more about the USA PATRIOT Act and Protecting Privacy some links you can check out are:
Full text of the USA PATRIOT Act
ACLU's call to reform the Patriot Act
PEN American Center's Campaign for Core Freedoms
Wikipedia's entry on the USA PATRIOT Act