The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has sterling credentials as a long-time advocate of civil liberty in cyberspace. No (conventional) political axe to grind. I pay attention to what they think.

Tom, in your reply below on a related issue, you said that the sunset provisions in the laws made them more palatable. Big problem: Not all the provisions of the law have expiration dates. Halfway down the EFF analysis, in the details, are several nasty provisions of the law marked "DOES NOT SUNSET" for easy searching. Among these permanent changes:

Permanent authority for extending "pen/trap" intercepts to the Net, meaning that law enforcement can get records about the URLs you visit and the email addresses you communicate with, with no more than a claim that it's "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." Also, where previously the cops had to at least go to a court in the same jurisdiction as the intercept, now they can shop the entire country looking for the most pliable judge to rubberstamp the request. (What are the odds? The EFF reports that in its 20 year existence, the secret court that rules on foreign intelligence surveillance requests has denied only one request.)

A lot more information can now be demanded from your ISP without a court order: "records of session times and durations, temporarily assigned network addresses; means and source of payments, including any credit card or bank account number. "

Another law without a sunset provision: A US intelligence agency can now share information about US citizens with foreign intelligence agencies. In general, the new laws remove the barrier between foreign and domestic intelligence gathering, as long as the government claims "national security" or a "terrorist threat": "lawful for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence or foreign intelligence information (see definition above) to be disclosed to anyone to assist in performance of official duties. "

Another huge problem with the law is how broadly it defines terrorism. For example, consider the implications of this little gem:

"An act calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion or to retaliate against government conduct "

(When you get right down to it, voting is an act of "coercion" to change the conduct of government.)

It's important to understand the context of these laws. None of them are new ideas dreamed up in response to 9-11. Rather, these have been on law enforcement's shopping list for a decade, and it must be like Christmas for them to suddenly have their wishes granted. Things like roving wiretaps were weakly mandated by the Digital Telephony Act of 1995. The FBI's "Carnivore" worm has been in development for a long time as an end-run around encryption, something that law enforcement has hated with a passion but failed to have outlawed.

No reasonable person could argue that some temporary expansion of law enforcement is necessary right now. But the lack of sunset provisions at key points in the new law, and the broad and ambiguous definitions of "terrorism", makes me see much of it as opportunistic and genuinely a threat to our civil liberties. It will be hard to close the barn door after these animals have escaped.

--Robert