Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Springfield) today joined his colleagues at a press conference to announce the introduction of the "Freedom to Read Protection Act," a bill to exempt libraries and booksellers from certain provisions of the USA Patriot Act. The lawmakers were joined by members of the American Library Association and representatives from the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

"Attorney General Ashcroft thinks we need to shred the Constitution and Bill of Rights to safeguard the American public from terrorists,"

Lawmakers Introduce 'Freedom To Read Protection Act' (01068)

] A journalist attends the World Economic Forum and writes
] her friends an email about the experience. Two weeks
] later, that email is on the Web, people she's never met
] are correcting her spelling, and the journalist is vowing
] to go back to longhand.
]
] Welcome to the world of accidental privacy spills.
] Compared with the problem of keeping personal email
] private, copyright and spam are easy. Full essay inside .
] . . .

LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age - Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet

Transcript of Bill Moyers interview/expose on Patriot II from PBS's show "NOW"..

quoted:
===

MOYERS: The Patriot Act was passed six weeks after 9/11. We know now that it greatly changed the balance between liberty and security in this nation's framework. What do you think — what's the significance of this new document, called the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003?

LEWIS: I think the significance is it just deepens and broadens, further extends the first Patriot Act. That act in 2001, they had six weeks, which was not a lot of time to throw something together. Now there's been 18 months of all kinds of things that have happened and court decisions that have tried to roll back some of the Patriot Act.

NOW: Bill Moyers interviews Chuck Lewis (ed- re: patriot act II)| PBS

] Clear Channel Communications, the radio and concert
] conglomerate so many people love to hate, has a new
] batch of disgruntled critics to deal with. But this
] time it's not the musicians who claim that the
] entertainment giant plays hardball and locks acts off
] the airwaves, or the broadcast rivals who allege the
] company leverages its unmatched size to drive competitors
] out of business, or even the former employees who insist
] the company's rampant cost-cutting style has gutted
] American radio.

] Nope -- now the heat is coming from other media company
] executives and Beltway lobbyists. They are dismayed
] that Clear Channel is doing what many might have thought
] impossible. In an era when Republicans control the
] government and big business generally gets what it
] wants, Clear Channel is making deregulation look bad.

Salon.com Technology | Clear Channel's big, stinking deregulation mess

] This section would terminate all state law enforcement
] consent decrees before Sept. 11, 2001, not related to
] racial profiling or other civil rights violations, that
] limit such agencies from gathering information about
] individuals and organizations. The authors of this
] statute claim that these consent orders, which were
] passed as a result of police spying abuses, could impede
] current terrorism investigations. It would also place
] substantial restrictions on future court injunctions.

Patriot Act ][ - The Empire Strikes Again.

Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act