Administered by:
* "When the Patriot Act was passed, libraries got requests for patrons' borrowing history. We were prohibited from disclosing those requests.
* We deleted and shredded those records and stopped tracking reading history for that reason."
* "We figured, what's the fun in just telling them there's nothing? What the feds always forget is that librarians LOVE weaponizing bureaucracy for a good cause.
* We developed a compliance policy just for the Patriot Act."
2/6
"We added a Patriot Act compliance officer to our org chart. This person was a real employee."
3/6
"Well, WAS. The office of Patriot Act compliance would be assigned to whichever employee had just left our library. And gosh, it's just such a mess around here, you know."
4/6
Unfortunately nobody can remember the password to the system that has those records. So we have to get IT involved, which means running through more detailed security resets to make sure other systems aren't compromised. It should take a couple weeks.
5/6
"The library where I worked at the time did not successfully fulfill a single Patriot Act request.
Not that this is relevant to the current situation. I assure you this is a random memory that popped into my head with zero prompting. "
6/6
A lot of people forget how Republicans used the hysteria of 9/11 to gain powers that they later used against domestic political opponents, dissidents, advocates, & journalists
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/
https://gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238
https://fortune.com/2024/09/17/oracle-larry-ellison-surveillance-state-police-ai/
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/oracle-s-coziness-with-government-goes-back-to-2820370.php
Ubiquitous surveillance being its most enduring legacy
https://www.newsweek.com/death-western-valuessurveillance-conformity-post-9-11-state-opinion-1906892
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/
https://www.nyclu.org/report/repression-surveillance-and-resistance-20-years-after-911
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_the_War_Home
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiding_in_Plain_Sight_(Kendzior_book)
@Npars01 Absolutely. And it's terrifying to think about how (relatively) easily they did it. And how impotent all efforts to remove those powers proved to be. Powers that hook-line-and sinkered us right into the current climate. Wheeeee.