"Essentially, it's a standard that you can't ever refute," said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "Basically, it immunizes the ISPs."

Or, as Jennifer Granick, Clinical Director at Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School puts it, "Who knows what arrangements will be made between law enforcement and ISPs?"

Additionally, while the Patriot Act granted exemptions specifically to law enforcement operatives, the new rules would allow communications providers to turn over records to any government agency. While it's at least conceivable that the Centers for Disease Control might have a valid need for your records, the way the bill is worded, your local city council would have the same standing.

Other provisions change computer wiretap laws to allow more emergency tapping and create mandatory sentencing guidelines in cases when someone uses a computer in the commissions of a crime, as if this was somehow comparable to using a gun to facilitate a criminal transgression.

How did these provisions get added to the Senate's contentious homeland security bill by unanimous consent? Hoofnagle explains that the bill makes most of these changes by reference-substituting one word here and another there in an existing law. This means that unless someone gets out the existing language and actually analyzes it against the standing statute, they can't really tell how the bill has been modified. The bill's first placement was on the House suspension calendar-which normally contains uncontroversial legislation-for quick consideration before the August recess, so it's likely that not every representative actually did his or her homework before voting. That passage--the House vote was 385 to 3--allowed Hatch present it to the Senate as "non-controversial" and "passed with overwhelming bipartisan support."

The bill's original name--the Cyber Security Enhancement Act--didn't hurt either, given the government's abysmal record on cyber-security. Unfortunately this bill's focus on increasing email surveillance and lengthening prison sentences does nothing to improve the actual security of the government's computer systems.

With the uncertain timetable for Senate action on the Homeland Security bill, activists say fast action is needed to educate Senators about the problems with this amendment.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation launched an action alert on its web site, which has so far generated more than 6,000 emails to members of Congress. Granick spoke at Def Con, an annual conference of more than 4,000 hackers and security professionals, August 2, calling on the audience to contact their representatives in Washington.

EPIC, which has followed this bill since it was introduced, sent a lengthy letter to the bill's House sponsors earlier this year. Anita Ramasastry, associate director at the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce, and Technology at the University of Washington School of Law wrote an article on FindLaw.com when CSEA was introduced in the House, arguing for amendments to some of the bill's most egregious sections.

It's important that Senators know what the new changes will actually do and what you think about changes. So go write and call. Ask that the amendment be dropped, or at the least, that time is taken to fully analyze all of the Homeland Security bill's provisions before it is passed.

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