Senate Seeks Privacy Answers

Red Herring is now reporting the Senator Patrick Leahy, (D-VT) has sent a letter to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking about subpoenas requesting information from large tech companys (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL).

In his letter, Sen. Leahy criticizes the stated position of the DOJ that the government was data mining for information to help build support for the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a 1998 law that was passed without debate in an omnibus appropriations bill. The law is now being litigated.

“I opposed this effort to regulate Internet speech, noting that there are better ways to protect children that have less impact on constitutionally protected speech, including the use of blocking and filtering tools,” Sen. Leahy wrote in the letter. “I predicted that the COPA would fail in the courts because these less restrictive means exist, and because Congress had not shown otherwise.”

In his letter Sen. Leahy asks the AG if any or all of the DOJ’s subpoenas were issued in connection with the resuscitation of COPA.

The Senator also asks for the type of data requested in the subpoenas and whether the DOJ requested or obtained personally identifying information in connection with the subpoenas, and how that information was and will be used.