Patriot Act vs. Constitutionally Guaranteed

Patriot Act vs. Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights

Patriot Act was passed in haste following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. In 2001. It was reauthorized and amended in 2006. But in its urgency - fueled by extremely fearful times and the mushrooming nationalism spawned by those fears - to provide the legal clout needed to avoid another attack it appears the United States Congress launched its own attack on the Constitution. Specifically, to use a graphic analogy, the U.S. Patriot Act (PA) has slammed into the 4th and 6th Amendments like an airliner into a tall building.

This paper will review the literature surrounding the Patriot Act's intrusion into the Constitution. A review of the issues, the amendments, and how the Patriot Act conflicts with those amendments.

BILL of RIGHTS, AMENDMENT IV: This Amendment states very simply that citizens are protected from unreasonable searches without warrants. To quote from the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

BACKGROUND on FOURTH AMENDMENT: A recent research piece in the Brigham Young University Law Review (Minert 2007) asserts that, to begin with, there are problems for 21st Century individuals involved in justice and law enforcement. Quite apart from Patriot Act considerations, the Fourth Amendment is tricky. That is because, Minert writes, the language in the Fourth Amendment "is inherently ambiguous." Indeed the Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures" and it certainly does not outline parameters for how a proper search warrant should be given to law enforcement by courts.

Part of the problem, Minert explains, is that the "warrant" clause is not directly tied to the "reasonable" clause. It never states directly that a warrant is a requirement for a "reasonable governmental search and seizure"; and because the Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures and does not technically preclude 'reasonable' searches made without a warrant," there are scholars and judges who have suggested that the constitutionality of searches and seizures should be determined according to a general 'reasonableness' standard," writes Minert. That said, Minert points to the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has in the past recognized "a number of exceptions to the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment."

Examples of those exceptions include "searches made on United States borders; stop-and-frisk searches by police officers; searches made incident to arrest; searches based on probable cause." Other exceptions include when officers are in "hot pursuit" of suspects and at sobriety checkpoint stops."

And so the point of this preliminary information on the Fourth Amendment is that there have been a number of cases and instances in which the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted in ways that basically get around what the Founding Fathers apparently originally intended as far as the Bill of Rights and Constitutional guarantees.

GENERALIZATIONS: PATRIOT ACT vs. CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES

According to research conducted by Concerned Citizens Against the Patriot Act (CCAPA), freedom of association has been compromised; the government may now "monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity" or any evidence of probable cause to monitor. Freedom of information has changed under the Patriot Act: the federal government has closed immigration hearings (which in the past were open to the public), has "secretly detained hundreds of people without charges" and has encouraged government bureaucrats to "resist public records requests."

Freedom of speech has been compromised, CCAPA contends; librarians and others who keep public records may be prosecuted if they "tell anyone the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation." The right to legal representation has now been watered down as the Patriot Act allows government to monitor conversations between attorneys and clients in federal prisons "and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes." The constitutionally guaranteed freedom from unreasonable searches (Fourth Amendment) is no longer enforced, according to CCAPA's research, as under the Patriot Act the warrant-less search and seizure of any person records (including phone calls and bank records) may be conducted at the whim of the executive branch. Right to a speed trial: Americans may now be jailed "indefinitely without a trial," according to CCAPA. And further, the presumed right to liberty is also compromised as Americans can be (and have been) jailed "without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them; indeed, "enemy combatants" have been held without specific charges against them, some have been tortured and moved from one remote CIA prison environment to another, according to numerous sources (and not denied by the executive branch).

GENERALIZATIONS #1: PATRIOT ACT TOOLS MISUSED by BUSH ADMINISTRATION / CONFLICTS WITH the FOURTH AMENDMENT

When the Bush Administration promoted the original passage of the Patriot Act, it sited the need to use this as a "tool" for its "war on terrorism"; but according to an article in the New York Times (Lichtblau 2005) reprinted in the CCAPA Web pages (www.scn.org),the administration is using Patriot Act tools to pursue drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and corrupt foreign leaders..." As well. Critics say the administration's use of the law in areas outside the bounds of terrorism investigations is evidence that Bush and his administration has "sold the American public a false bill of goods."

Within six months of the original passage of the act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars "...on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," according to Dan Dodson, speaking in behalf of the national Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys and quoted by the Associated Press within the Times article. What the Justice Department has really done, said Elliot Mincberg, an attorney with People for the American Way, is "to get things put into the law that have been on prosecutors' wish lists for years. They have used terrorism as a guise to expand law-enforcement powers in areas that are totally unrelated to terrorism," Mincberg concluded.

The Times' article also pointed out that the General Accounting Office (a non-partisan agency which investigates for Congress, since Congress has legal oversight or is at least mandated to provide legal oversight) concluded that while indeed the number of investigations into terrorism at Justice "soared after the Sept. 11 attacks, 75% of convictions [under the Patriot Act] that the department classified as 'international terrorism' were wrongly labeled. Many dealt with more common crimes," the article asserted. These intrusions listed constitute violations of the Fourth Amendment.

GENERALIZATIONS #2: PATRIOT ACT TOOLS MISUSED by BUSH ADMINISTRATION / CONFLICTS WITH the FOURTH AMENDMENT

An article in the Dallas Morning News (Mittelstadt 2003) pointed out that the Patriot Act has indeed been used in the past few years for issues entirely apart from terrorism. "The scope of the powers that flow from the language is kind of chilling," said Marge Baker of the People for the American Way organization. "It could touch on anyone they decided they wanted to go after." John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said since the law "undermines bedrock principles such as Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures" the Founding Fathers would be "horror-struck at something like the Patriot Act."

The Justice Department - notwithstanding its original support of the act as being designed specifically to detect and deter terrorists - readily admits after the fact that the act "affects the war on crime as well" as the war on terror, according to a May 2002 bulletin to the nation's 94 U.S. attorneys in the Justice Department's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section. "Indeed, investigations of all manner of criminal conduct with a nexus to the internet have benefited from these amendments," Justice Department bulletin stated. In fact, Justice admits that the Patriot Act has been used to "seize a con man's assets," Mittelstadt writes in the Dallas Morning News; the act has also been used to find computer hackers, "identify a hoaxer who made a school bomb threat, and monitor kidnappers' communications."

The Mittelstadt article mentioned that the continuing and unorthodox expanded use of a law designed to protect Americans from another terror attack means the law potentially could be used "against anti-abortion protesters, environmentalists, AIDs activists or other movements with a history of robust, sometimes unlawful activism." The expanded definition means that the law could grant FBI access to records maintained by businesses (financial, library-related, medical and purchasing businesses) if FBI agents "certify that the request is connected to a foreign intelligence investigation or is intended to protect against clandestine intelligence activities or international terrorism." These are all cases of intrusions into the rights of the individual under the Fourth Amendment.

Presently the FBI can conduct "sneak and peak" searches that it deems necessary, and only later provide information about that targeted source, the Dallas Morning News piece explains.

GENERALIZATIONS #3: PATRIOT ACT TOOLS MISUSED by BUSH ADMINISTRATION / CONFLICTS WITH the FOURTH AMENDMENT

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on March 9, 2007, on the "Misuse of National Security Letters." According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). A "national security letter" (NSL) is basically a written demand by the FBI or other federal law enforcement agencies for a group or organization to turn over records or data or documents, with no warrant attached to the demand. They are given out without probably cause or any justice-related back-up, and have been used extensively since the Patriot Act; they are seen by civil rights activists, legal scholars and others as an example of the over-reaching authority granted to federal agencies by the Patriot Act (and clearly in conflict with the Fourth Amendment).

Indeed, an article in the New York Times Magazine (Rosen 2007) NSLs are "especially susceptible to abuse because they're not subject to independent review by a judge or a magistrate." And that fact is as it is because "recipients are forbidden to discuss them." The article quotes from the president of a small Internet access business - originally printed in the Washington Post and used in the Times piece - who said the experience of receiving a national security letter (NSL) was "stressful and surreal." Under the threat of "criminal prosecution" he was "forbidden to discuss any aspect of the case with his colleagues, his family, his girlfriend or the client whose data he had been ordered to reveal" (Rosen 2007).

To briefly revisit the Fourth Amendment, the right of people to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" and warrants shall not be forthcoming from law enforcement without "probable cause."

In fairness to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Rosen points out that the FBI is struggling to "reinvent itself as an agency devoted not merely to prosecuting past crimes but also to preventing future ones." And with their limited experience in prevention, it appears, Rosen continues, that their strategy is "based on the idea that the best way to avoid future 9/11's is to collect information on lots of people"; and though the great majority of those people are obviously not involved in terrorism, the dragnet searches "of millions of people who turn out to be innocent" just might catch a terrorist or two in the meantime. Rosen asserts that despite initial concerns expressed during the debate over the Patriot Act - and during its reauthorization in 2006 - "...few predicted the magnitude of the FBI's incompetence." In the spirit of the Keystone Kops, Rosen goes on, the FBI "didn't realize when it received data on the wrong person," and when an FBI official complained about this gap in credibility and precision to his superiors, "he was ignored."

Section 505 of the Patriot Act expanded approval authority to "Special Agents in Charge" of field offices to authorize NSLs, the ACLU reports; previously, the Patriot Act allowed only "senior FBI officials" to sign off on NSLs. The ACLU believes that the switch from insisting on "senior" FBI professionals down to "lower level agents" has led to abuse of NSLs.

The ACLU (www.aclu.org) report on the Justice Department OIG investigations indicates that only a "tiny sample of the hundreds of thousands" of NSLs that had been issued were examined by the OIG analysis; and yet, the Inspector General (IG) "found so many violations and abuses with such a small sample means there are major systemic problems with the FBI's use of NSLs."

In conducting its investigation, the OIG interviewed over 100 FBI agents at headquarters in Washington D.C., and over 50 employees in field offices. While repeatedly violating the Patriot Act's requirements the FBI had "no policy or directive requiring the retention of signed copies of national security letters or any requirement to upload" NSLs into FBI case management databases, the ACLU explains in its March 9, 2007 report. Some of the databases that the FBI uses to store NSL-derived information are "accessed by nearly 12,000 users, including members of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF)," the ACLU continues.

In fact the FBI is using NSLs to "establish evidence to support wiretap, electronic surveillance and physical search warrants"; since NSLs themselves are created with little legal backup, if any, using an NSL is a strange and even legally shaky way to justify additional stealth searches into private bank accounts and phone records of Americans with no connection whatsoever to terrorism, the ACLU's report continues. Moreover, the FBI is disseminating information it derives from NSLs to "...a variety of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA, and the JTTF.

There is no system or requirement in the FBI policies to purge the information derived from the NSLs in FBI databases, "regardless of the outcome of the investigation." Those databases must be purged "immediately," the ACLU asserts; "The abuses of NSL power led to the widespread dissemination of personal information about innocent Americans." If the public is to believe that NSLs are "a critical tool in keeping us safe, but the FBI cannot even be bothered to keep accurate records," the ACLU goes on, the FBI must "clean up its act."

Also in the Inspector General's report was the fact that the number of NSL requests reported to Congress was "significantly understated" (p. xvii). Supposedly, the number of NSL requests the FBI filed in 2005 was 47,000; however, the IG discovered that there were "approximately 17% more NSLs in the case files than were recorded in the database," another example of either sloppy record-keeping or deliberate falsification of information provided to Congress. Overall, the IG found that the FBI had used 143,074 NSL requests between the years 2003 and 2005. And the "overwhelming majority" of these NSL requests sought the "most sensitive information" - telephone till billing records, electronic communication transactional records, and email subscriber information, according to the ACLU report on the investigation conducted by the OIG.

The FBI's use of the information gleaned from the NSL requests "is used to assist in the identification of the subject's family members, associates, living arrangements and contacts" (p. xxiv). Why gather all that information about people who have a relationship with the subject being scrutinized and spied on? It is used in turn to generate new leads, but that is again a violation of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment because the FBI maintains "no information on whether the target of the NSL is the subject of an underlying investigation or another individual," the ACLU continues. In one example of the abuse of the NSL tool, the FBI issues an NSL to a university in North Carolina that sought "several categories of records, including applications for admission, housing information, emergency contacts and campus health records" (p. xxxii).

Meanwhile, the ACLU "applauded Congressman Jane Harmon" - she is chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence - for the legislation she introduced that would "rein in the national Security letter authority" that was expanded by the reauthorization of the Patriot Act (ACLU 2007). Her legislation in fact was launched after the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing and "grilled government witnesses on the recent revelations that the FBI abused the NSL authority" (ACLU 2007). "Today's hearing shows that we have a broken system - and Congress needs to provide the fix. The FBI cannot be trusted with the unchecked power of NSLs," according to Caroline Fredrickson, who is Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

The Constitution and the laws of the American people "are not merely advisory," said Timothy D. Sparapani, legislative counsel for the ACLU, "but this administration has treated them as such." In another press release, March 9, 2007, the ACLU insisted that the FBI's excuses for abusing the authority given it by the Patriot Act - saying they were due to "outmoded computer systems," and "unintentional" human error - "were not credible." The ACLU cited evidence that the FBI signed contracts with phone companies to gather customer records, but "later sought to cover up the illegal requests."

It seems, said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, "that every time the American people entrust the Bush administration with some new power, it not only abuses that power but also seizes additional powers without our knowledge." The ACLU quoted Federal District Court Judge Victor Marrero, who struck down a "draconian gag provision of the NSL power" (meaning all NSL activities would have been off limits for evaluation even by IG inspectors), as saying: "As our sunshine laws and judicial doctrine attest, democracy abhors undue secrecy. An unlimited government warrant to conceal, effectively a form of secrecy per se, has no place in our open society. Such a claim is especially inimical to democratic values for reasons borne out by painful experience."

GENERALIZATIONS #4: PATRIOT ACT TOOLS MISUSED by BUSH ADMINISTRATION / CONFLICTS WITH the FOURTH AMENDMENT / the OFFICE of the INSPECTOR GENERAL'S REPORT

The IG report mentions that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was passed by Congress and signed by the president in 1970, to protect "personal information collected by credit reporting agencies" (xiii). The Patriot Act amended the FCRA authorizes the FBI to "obtain a consumer reporting agency's credit reports and 'all other' consumer information in its files," the IG explains. However, the certifying official "must certify that the information is 'necessary for' the FBI's 'investigations of, or intelligence or counter-intelligence activities or analysis relate to, international terrorism..." (xiii). Clearly, the FBI has not been following those guidelines, which is a breach of trust for an agency charged with protecting citizens against threats of terrorism, and protecting citizens' rights at the same time.

As examples of some of the slip-shod work by the FBI, the IG report shows that of 77 files of NSLs reviewed by IG, there were 22 violations that the FBI's own staff had discovered and yet "none of these possible violations was reported..." Among the violations that went unreported there were ten NSLs that involved "...the FBI's receipt of unauthorized information." Indeed in four of those ten instances, the FBI received telephone toll billing records or subscriber information for phone numbers "that were not listed in the national security letters (NSLs)." One reason such errors - or deliberate intrusions into private citizen files - are overlooked in many cases is that the FBI "did not issue comprehensive guidance describing the types of NSL-related infractions that needed to be reported..."

In other words, with no checks and balances within the department, and little oversight vis-a-vis the guidelines, such as they are, that accompany the awesome power and authority given by the Patriot Act.

THE PATRIOT ACT SPECIFICS and GENERALIZATIONS:

In section 213 of the Patriot Act, it basically gives the FBI and other federal law enforcement officials carte blanche to delay explaining why a specific warrant is being issues (and in some cases no warrants have been issues in violation of federal law); section 213 states: "With respect to the issuance of any warrant or court order under this section, or any other rule of law, to search for and seize any property or material that constitutes evidence of a criminal offense in violation of the laws of the United States, any notice required, or that may be required, to be given may be delayed if the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse effect..."

If that leeway in federal law - as part of the Patriot Act - were given to local law enforcement officers, that would mean a policeman with or without probable cause could smash into a person's house and conduct a search and seizure action, and only later (if at all) would that policeman be asked to justify the intrusion into one's private space, as is supposedly protected under the Fourth Amendment.

In Section 501 of the Patriot Act, the section that authorized search of business records, the act reads: "The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director...may make an application for an order requiring the production [i.e., the taking of private property] of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." And that may be done, the act explains under Section 501, "provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution."

What does this section actually allude to in the bigger picture? The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

SENATOR RUSSELL FEINGOLD: THE ONLY U.S. SENATOR to VOTE AGAINST the PATRIOT ACT in 2001:

This is very appropriate background into constitutional reasons why the Patriot Act is dangerous in terms of its intrusion into the Bill of Rights and the Fourth Amendment in particular. Feingold has never been shy about standing up for the U.S. Constitution even in the face of dozens of his colleagues' votes to the contrary.]

When U.S. Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin voted against the Patriot Act, he was either brave and courageous, or reckless, depending on how you view the Patriot Act and the Bush Administration's execution of the provisions of that act. Why did he vote against the Patriot Act, a vote in the Senate that was 96-1, during a period of time when the American people were all too willing to give up some of their rights to track down potential terrorists? Feingold explained his reasons in a speech on October 12, 2001, the Associated Press Managing Editors Conference in Milwaukee; his speech is available online at www.archipelago.org.

Feingold stated that when giving consideration to his vote, he remembered a case he had studied in law school; he recalled the words from a judge in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, "While the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact." It was Justice Arthur Goldberg who made that remark in deciding a case with a draft evader in the 1960s, in which he ruled "in favor of civil liberties," Feingold explained. Goldberg also said that the fundamental powers of Congress to "conduct war and regulate the Nation's foreign relations" are always to be seen in the light of the constitutional process of "due process," Feingold remembered. The important issue to bear in mind in terms of safeguarding civil liberties - even in times of "the gravest of emergencies," when there is the "greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees," Goldberg asserted - is to keep the Constitution in the forefront of the dialogue.

The Constitution is a law "for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances," the quote of Goldberg continued. There is no other way, Justice Goldberg concluded, to "transmit to posterity unimpaired the blessings of liberty, consecrated by the sacrifices of the Revolution." That having been said, Feingold pointed to the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation "ordering the arrest and military trial of any persons 'discouraging volunteer enlistments, [or] resisting militia drafts,'" Feingold explained in his speech, the State of Wisconsin provided one of the first challenges to this presidential order. When an anti-draft riot broke out near Milwaukee, one of the leaders of the riot was arrested and his attorney sought a writ of habeas corpus. The military that captured the individual said the president "had abolished the writ," but the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the president (Lincoln) had "exceeded his authority."

Feingold explained that "it is entirely appropriate that with a warrant the FBI be able to seize voice mail messages as well as tap a phone." But as we know now, nearly six years after the Patriot Act's original legislation was passed, that the FBI has not followed those procedures and has simply tapped phones it wants to and intercepted email messages at its leisure. Among his many concerns about the Patriot Act - and he lists a number of them, including the Bush administration's rush to get the legislation enacted and signed - Feingold brought up the Fourth Amendment. When Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 (FISA), it granted to the executive branch the "power to conduct surveillance in foreign intelligence investigations without meeting the rigorous probably cause standard under the Fourth Amendment that is required for criminal investigations."

The FISA legislation reflects the Congress's intention to help in gathering data on foreign intelligence activities, and authorizes that intelligence gathering "be the primary purpose of the investigation in order for this lower standard to apply." However, the original Patriot Act "changes that requirement," Feingold went on; the government under the Patriot Act will only have to show that throwing out the Fourth Amendment by showing that the gathering of intelligence is only a "significant purpose" of the investigation - not the "primary purpose" of the investigation.

The difference here is huge, Feingold was saying. And moreover, even if the "primary purpose" of the investigation which doesn't need "probable cause" to pursue is a criminal investigation, the "heightened protections of the Fourth Amendment won't apply," he explained. Alluding to Section 501 of the Patriot Act (referenced earlier in this paper), Feingold stated that "all business records can be compelled" to be turned over, including those containing sensitive personal information like medical records from hospitals or doctors, or educational records, or records of what books someone has taken out of the library."

SIXTH AMENDMENT: Well into his speech in October, 2001, Feingold alluded to the Sixth Amendment by indicating his distaste for the part of the Patriot Act that allows for the detention and deportation of "people engaging in innocent associational activity." The act allows for detention (without a trial, with no "impartial jury" and without being informed "...of the nature and cause of the accusation," as the Sixth Amendment requires) and deportation of individuals "who provide lawful assistance to groups that are not even designated by the Secretary of State as terrorist organizations," Feingold continued.

The problem with this part of the Patriot Act, the senator explained, is that "truly innocent individuals could be deported for innocent associations with humanitarians or political groups" that the Bush Administration may later choose to term "terrorist." And some groups that fit this description, he continued, include "Operation Rescue, Greenpeace, and even the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan."

What this portion of the act is actually doing is hunting for people through "guilt by association," which Feingold believed violates the First Amendment. According to Senator Feingold, who spoke on March 2, 2006, about the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, he is not the only person outspoken against some of the provisions of the Patriot Act. "The negative reaction to the Patriot Act has been overwhelming," he said on the Senate Floor. Over 400 state and local government bodies passed resolutions "pleading with Congress to change the law"; citizens have signed petitions, "library associations and campus groups have organized to petition the Congress to act, numerous editorials have been written urging Congress not to reauthorize the law without adequate protections for civil liberties," he stated.

While American should push ahead with plans to thwart future attacks, and while Americans are prepared to make "...great sacrifices to defeat those who would destroy us," nevertheless "what we will not do, what we cannot do, is destroy our own freedoms in the process." Without freedom, "we are not America," he emphasized. And Feingold offered criticism for those who use platitudes like, "Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead..." They are "wrong about America at the most basic level," he asserted.

GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT the PATRIOT ACT, the LOSS of PRIVACY, the DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IMPLICATIONS and the FOURTH AMENDMENT

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which claims on its Web site (www.eff.org) that it is "Defending Freedom in the Digital World," has weighed in on the Patriot Act. EFF points out that well before the Patriot Act passed, Americans who were paying attention found their privacy "increasingly eroded through the stockpiling, aggregating, selling and spilling of their personal information by third parties." The U.S. government has "long argued, and several courts have accepted, the proposition that if you reveal this information tone private entity for one purpose" - such as an Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that store your email information or even a loan firm that offers you money - you no longer have a "Fourth Amendment right to protect the information from unfocused, unchecked law enforcement fishing expeditions."