A protester displays a computer keyboard during a rally at the Philippine Supreme Court to seek the extension of a restraining order of a new cyber crime law on Jan. 15, 2013 in Manila. (AP/Bullit Marquez)

Long Before Snowden, Librarians Were Anti-Surveillance Heroes

April Glaser – Slate

June began with a sunset. One of the most controversial provisions of the notorious post-9/11 Patriot Act expired….

Specifically, the section of the Patriot Act that expired is Section 215, which is commonly nicknamed the “library records provision,” because it called on librarians to hand over patron reading and computer records when requested by law enforcement under a Section 215 request. The law further paired government requests for information with a gag order, so if librarians were asked to hand over patron data, they legally weren’t allowed to alert anyone.

Librarians didn’t take this lightly….

Section 215’s sunset does not mean that the NSA doesn’t have an arsenal of other options for secretly retrieving peoples’ personal details without a warrant, nor does it mean that the surveillance powers stripped from the Patriot Act can never again be reinstated. But it does mark an occasion to look back at the wave of anti-surveillance activism against this one notorious law.

Before there was Snowden, there were librarians.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The World Says No to Surveillance

Edward J. Snowden – The New York Times

Two years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States…

Two years on, the difference is profound. In a single month, the N.S.A.’s invasive call-tracking program was declared unlawful by the courts and disowned by Congress….

Though we have come a long way, the right to privacy — the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in the United States Bill of Rights — remains under threat….

We have learned that our government intentionally weakens the fundamental security of the Internet with “back doors” that transform private lives into open books. Metadata revealing the personal associations and interests of ordinary Internet users is still being intercepted and monitored on a scale unprecedented in history:

As you read this online, the United States government makes a note.