Civil liberties groups are calling the technology related provisions bundled into the recently passed Homeland Security Bill "an unprecedented threat to personal privacy. " Critics contend that the "cyber-security" provisions, debated briefly in the House and unmentioned in the Senate, have sacrificed privacy rights without due deliberation in the name of "public safety."
Taking off where the Patriot Act left off, the Bill includes provisions which permit the new Homeland Security Department to cull information from intelligence, law enforcement, other government agencies and the private sector to search for patterns that reveal terrorist plots. Other contested provisions extend the circumstances under which ISP's, libraries and other organizations can voluntarily hand over "suspect" Internet users' e-mail and other data to the government, without facing litigation.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a story.