I've written before concerning the PATRIOT Act and its nastiness. A tiny piece of good news comes in a Boston Globe article by David Mehegan. In that article, Mehegan reports that Rep. Bernard Sanders (I, Vt.), has introduced a bill to the House entitled, the "Freedom to Read Act" which seeks modification of section 215. Some 32 organizations composed of librarians, booksellers and authors have endorsed the bill. According to Mehegan, section 215 permits "a secret court can authorize the FBI to inspect or seize bookstore or library records without showing probable cause. Further, the law provides that the bookstore or library is forbidden to disclose that the inspection happened." Sanders' bill is an effort to closely monitor the use of the information contained in such records. While repeal of the entire, PATRIOT Act, or at least, section 215 would be much more significant, any limitation of the government to intrude in our own information gathering efforts is laudable. Support the Sanders bill, and support Bernard Sanders for taking a risk in a time when such acts as he proposed are viewed with suspicion.

This post complements yesterday's in which I focused on the impact of growing media control. Paul Krugman's article adds a nice explanation for the paradox that the major US private media outlets have been acting like state-run media, while in Britain, the BBC which is government owned has worked very hard to be objective and balanced.

Krugman states, " A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to relax regulations on media ownership. The proposal, formally presented yesterday, may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish. Big media companies will be allowed to have a larger share of the national market and own more TV stations in any given local market, and many restrictions on "cross-ownership" --owning radio stations, TV stations and newspapers in the same local market --will be lifted."

No need to book a trip to Oz because it is coming to us.

In order to see where WE are going as a nation, it is helpful to look to similar cases for comparison. Take a look at a recent posting on Lawrence Lessig's blog (see May 8, 2003) from some folks in Australia, the home of Rupert Murdoch. The evidence is pretty clear that concentration of media will at some point reach a critical mass that is essentially monopoly of all critical public communication channels. Once the grasp of one or a few individuals is solidified, then intrusive control obtains. In fact, the hubris of such people is pictured nicely in the story of Kerry Packer (Murdoch's counterpart in the land of Oz) who interrupted a program mid-way because he didn't like it. The time was filled with commercials. Now, that's a nice way to spend an evening in front of the telly!