Many have said that we are currently living in the "Information Age." This is undoubtedly true. The Internet, television, and print media are a few examples of the available resources that provide us with virtually unlimited information. Whether it is the latest scoop on celebrity gossip, or the most recent updates on a political campaign, news sources provide us with the critical information we need in order to keep up with today's fast-paced society. Without them, how are we to make appropriate and important decisions if we don't have the facts first? How are we to participate actively in our government and community if we don't know what's happening in said government and community? How are we to maintain our cross-cultural relationships with other nations if we don't know anything about those nations? And perhaps most importantly, how are we to help change the world if we don't know what needs changing? 
Hopes for an anonymous America will wait
By Anita Vukovic
It’s not the first time controversy has erupted over the protection of our civil liberties. During times of war, it has become common to see certain human rights restricted. Under President Lincoln, the writ of habeas corpus was temporarily withheld, and the right to freedom of speech was later questioned under the Supreme Court case of Schenck vs. United States in 1919.
The Protect America Act of 2007 was signed by President George W. Bush on August 6, 2007. Picture courtesy of: http://www.nationalexpositor.com/News/216.html
This past August 6, President George W. Bush took another step into the wary terrain of restricting American liberties by signing the Protect America Act of 2007 (PAA) into law. The then-new PAA served as an amendment to theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a law originally enacted in 1978 requiring the government to obtain a court order prior to any surveillance conducted on American land. Under the PAA, however, the government was now allowed to eavesdrop on and wiretap lines inside of the U.S. without court permission, provided that the other end of the conversation was “reasonably believed” to be located in a different country.
Luckily, the American spirit is not yet dead. The revisions were met with strong opposition; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes urging them to re-amend FISA as soon as possible. As Pelosi said in her letter, “Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable…I do not believe the American people will want to wait…before corrective action is taken.”
The White House in response to such protests argued that the previous, un-amended FISA law obstructed the process of intelligence gathering as an increasing number of foreign communications now pass through United States-based channels. A hearing was held on September 5, however, to review the PAA; witnesses expressed concern that the White House had not made it clear to the American public why such a revision was necessary.
Due to expire on February 6 of 2008, six months after it was signed into law, the PAA is currently coming under a second scrutiny of Congress. The new issue? Many telecommunications companies, from AT&T to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wish to be granted immunity from civil lawsuits for making people’s e-mails and phone calls accessible to the government under the provisions of the PAA.
In response, the Senate Judiciary Committee expects to decide this week whether such immunity will be granted to the telecommunications companies. Some lawmakers are hesitant to pass such a bill as suits appear to be one of the only ways to determine how far the government has delved into people’s private information without a court order.
For now, however, it seems that the ominous words of Donald Kerr, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, will have to serve as America’s lullaby: “Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won.”