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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: The ever-expanding Patriot Act

Critics warned the expanded police powers authorized by the so-called Patriot Act -- ratified just weeks after the terror attacks of Sept. 11 -- would soon be used by opportunistic cops and prosecutors in areas far afield from any threat of al-Qaida-style terrorism.

Nonsense, supporters replied. New government powers to read every e-mail passing through an Internet Service Provider; to conduct roving wiretaps without informing their victims; to snoop on our book buying and library borrowing habits; to secretly rake through our private financial data; to "enhance" criminal sentences till they stretch for decades ... would be used only when necessary to prevent for "another Sept. 11."

Guess what.

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," reports Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism; then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens."

Well ... so what? If some moron in California finds himself charged with "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" when he wounds himself because his pipe bomb exploded in his lap, if a North Carolina prosecutor charges the proprietor of a methamphetamine lab with breaking a new state law against "manufacture of chemical weapons," hoping to send him up for 12 years to life instead of the standard six months ... they're all criminals, right? Who should shed a tear if the authorities now have new tools to use against them?

Except that:

• In the June 27 edition of "The Nation," Jonah Engle reports, "Speaking at a conference this winter on Internet crime, eBay.com's director of law enforcement and compliance, Joseph Sullivan, offered law-enforcement officials extensive access to personal customer information," all, Mr. Sullivan helpfully offered, "without having to produce a court order."

Why this sudden spirit of cooperation?

"September 11th changed things dramatically," Nimrod Kozlovski of Yale's Information Society Project told The Nation. "EBay has itself felt the sting of tough new laws: On March 28 its PayPal unit was charged by the Justice Department with violating the Patriot Act for providing money transfer services to gambling companies. ... In this political climate, being pliant to law enforcement may be sound business. ..."...