QUICK TAKE: There is reason to believe that financial services and other firms are using The Patriot Act as a club — It’s an excuse to gather information that they are not really entitled to gather under the law, and that customers and clients would otherwise be allowed to withhold.
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Mark Steyn describes the problem in his Sunday column:

I had to sign a tedious business contract the other day. They wanted my corporation number — fair enough — plus my Social Security number — well, if you insist — and also my driver’s license number — hang on, what’s the deal with that?

Well, we e-mailed over a query and they e-mailed back that it was a requirement of the Patriot Act. So we asked where exactly in the Patriot Act could this particular requirement be found and, after a bit of a delay, we got an answer.

And on discovering that there was no mention of driver’s licenses in that particular subsection, I wrote back that we have a policy of reporting all erroneous invocations of the Patriot Act to the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds that such invocations weaken the rationale for the act, and thereby undermine public support for genuine anti-terrorism measures and thus constitute a threat to America’s national security.

And about 10 minutes after that the guy sent back an e-mail saying he didn’t need the driver’s license number after all.

I’d be interested to know how much of this bureaucratic opportunism is going on. A couple of weeks earlier, I went to the bank to deposit a U.S. dollar check drawn on a Canadian financial institution, and the clerk announced that for security reasons checks drawn on Canadian banks now had to be sent away for collection and I’d have access to the funds in a couple of weeks. This was, she explained, a requirement of — ta-da — the Patriot Act. And, amazingly, that turned out not to be anywhere in the act either.

Any day now, my little girl will wake up, look under the pillow and find a note from the Tooth Fairy explaining that before processing of financial remuneration for said tooth can commence, the Patriot Act requires the petitioning child to supply a federal taxpayer identification number and computer-readable photo card with retinal scan.

I don’t have a problem with the Patriot Act per se, so much as the awesome powers claimed on its behalf by everybody from car salesmen to the agriculture official who demanded proof from my maple-sugaring neighbor that his sap lines were secure against terrorism.

….. My worry is that on the home front the war is falling prey to lack-of-mission creep — that, in the absence of any real urgency and direction, the “long war” (to use the administration’s new and unsatisfactory term) is degenerating into nothing but bureaucratic tedium, media doom-mongering and erratic ad hoc oppositionism.

Some corroboration from an e-mailer who will remain anonymous:

….. The institutions are using the ‘Patriot Act’ as an excuse for their policy. The banks are really just making it a policy to get drivers licenses and ss #’s and even though it isn’t in the Patriot Act, they will not set up an account with out these form of ID. In fact the computer will not allow processing of the application without it.

The employees are powerless representatives who are simply following the company policy, and the bank has made it policy.

My suggestion, and something the ACLU could start advocating right away that I would actually support: Criminalize using The Patriot Act as a pretext for gathering information that could otherwise be lawfully withheld. Any corporate policy maker who is convicted of instructing employees or having computer programmers force employees to gather information supposedly required by The Patriot Act that really isn’t required could be jailed.

Any objections?
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UPDATE: It seems at least possible that existing laws against pretext calling and contacts could be used as they currently are (or used as a starting point) for news laws to apply against those who are using The Patriot Act to obtain information they don’t have a lawful right to.

Quick hit: The University of Cincinnati’s official athletics web site disgracefully ignored the visit of the school’s previous men’s basketball coach in its story about the Senior Day game.
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Here are the first six paragraphs of The Associated Press Story on yesterday’s upset victory over West Virginia achieved by the University of Cincinnati (UC) men’s basketball team (bolds are mine):

Cincinnati gets win over W. Va. as Huggins looks on

CINCINNATI (AP) — Muscular forward Eric Hicks wrapped his arms around his former coach, Bob Huggins. Cheek-to-cheek, they squeezed, talked and cried.

The tears were just starting to flow.

There were more embraces all around Saturday after Hicks scored 18 points and led Cincinnati to a nostalgic 78-75 victory over West Virginia (No. 18 ESPN/USA Today, No. 16 AP), one that could extend the Bearcats’ streak of 14 NCAA tournament appearances.

“That was our Super Bowl,” interim coach Andy Kennedy said.

It felt like a title game.

Ousted coach Huggins attended a game at the arena for the first time since he was forced out last August. He got a standing ovation and hugged the Bearcats’ five seniors during pre-game festivities — a surreal start to an important game.

Now, here are the first five paragraphs from the school’s official UCbearcats.com site:

Bearcats Increase Chance Of Tournament Bid With Win Over No. 16 West Virginia 78-75

CINCINNATI, Ohio - On an emotional Senior Day at Fifth Third Arena, Cincinnati all but assured itself of an NCAA bid with a 78-75 win over No. 16 West Virginia in front of a sold out crowd on Saturday afternoon.

Senior Eric Hicks led the Bearcats (19-11, 8-8 BIG EAST) to the win, making 7-of-11 shots from the field to score 18 points with eight rebounds. Fellow seniors James White (15 points) and Jihad Muhammad (17 points) also scored in double-figures and Devan Downey had 16 points and 10 assists.

The Mountaineers (20-9, 11-5) were led by Kevin Pittsnogle’s 23 points and nine rebounds, while Mike Gansey added 20, making four three-pointers in the second half.

Downey’s two free throws with 1.3 seconds left clinched a win in which UC never trailed in the second half, but was never able to shake WVU completely. The teams combined to shoot .582 from the floor in the second half and make 11-of-21 three-pointers to score 85 total points.

“It was a grind,” said Bearcat head coach Andy Kennedy. “It was an appropriate ending. We played about as well as we could, hit them as hard as we could. They just kept coming. That is a quality basketball team. It was not given. Nothing this year has been given to us.”

Question for UC President Nancy Zimpher (who fired Bob Huggins, even though his admittedly non-stellar graduation rate for his players was HIGHER than the graduation rate at the school Ms. Zimpher previously ran for five years before coming to UC), Athletic Director Mike Thomas, and all the other apparatchiks in Clifton: How small, spiteful, and insecure can you be not to mention, not even once, the name of your former coach (the one with the most wins in UC basketball history), and the fact he was there to honor the kids he coached for three years at their final home game?

Maybe the problem is that the raw display of genuine human emotion Saturday was just too embarrassing for you to handle. Well, that’s just too bad (from later paragraphs in the AP story; bolds are mine):

The Bearcats’ final home game showed they still haven’t gotten beyond Huggins’ ouster. He repeatedly got standing ovations from the capacity crowd of 13,176, which also chanted for school president Nancy Zimpher to give Kennedy a contract.

The program is still at a crossroads.

After Downey made his two clinching free throws, Hicks jumped into the student section and Kennedy got a hug from Huggins. Kennedy then thanked the fans for supporting the team through its tribulations, adding, “One last thing: Huggs, we love you, brother.”

“I thought it took a lot of courage for coach to come,” Kennedy said afterward. “It shows you what kind of man he is. It’s a tribute to these seniors. They wanted him to come. I thought it was fitting going against his alma mater in a game that decided our season.”

Huggins was invited by Hicks, one of the five seniors who received framed photographs of themselves at midcourt during a pre-game tribute. Huggins stood at an opposite end of the court while the seniors were introduced.

Hicks then led the seniors over to Huggins, who embraced each of them while the crowd exulted. Hicks wiped away tears with his white warmup shirt after the embrace. Huggins dabbed a tear from the corner of his right eye.

“I wanted to be here, but I didn’t want to do anything they (the school) didn’t want me to do,” Huggins said.

While the two of them embraced, Hicks thought back to his three years under Huggins.

“Everything just came back and it was a very emotional moment,” he said.

Memo to Ms. Zimpher: I hear that there’s a famous university desperately seeking someone with your politically correct and hyper-hypocritical talents. Their president just resigned. Please, PLEASE, apply here.

Royal Hakakian has a Sunday OpinionJournal.com column worth noting, not only its perspective on what’s going on inside Iran, but for hard news that the worldwide media that is supposed to be delivering to us, but has instead ignored:

The (bus drivers’ union) executive committee’s first meeting came under fire. Baton-wielding thugs shouting “The bus syndicate, the monarchs’ hideout!” charged in, set their office on fire, beat everyone in attendance, and promised to cut off the tongue of Mr. Ossanloo if he continued his activities. As a sign of their seriousness, they ran a blade over his tongue, shaving a layer off. He has spoken with a lisp ever since.

In every flier and in every interview, the workers emphasized that they were apolitical and did not wish to topple the government, asking only to have some very basic demands met. And their initial demands, as posted on their Spartan Web site, moves even the most casual browser: the delivery of two sets of winter and summer uniforms, plus two pairs of shoes, basic stationary for record keeping, a raise of less than a dollar a day to subsidize lunches, and an assistant for every driver. “In the name of He who created justice,” write the organizers, “we hope for the people of the world to hear our plea: Death or Syndicate!”

Days before the strike, several members of the executive committee were summoned to appear before the Revolutionary Court, where they were ordered to call off the strike. When they refused, they were arrested and taken to prison. The officials had declared the strike illegal and threatened to fire all participants. In the days that followed, security forces launched mass arrests of the union members. Those who showed up on the day of the strike were beaten while watching members of the security forces cross their picket line to take their places behind the wheels. In the last week of January, an estimated 1,000 workers were arrested and taken into prison. Though hundreds were released upon signing guarantees that they would not participate in any strikes again, and received permission from the Revolutionary Court to return to work, the company itself refuses to let them back. On the eve of the Iranian New Year, hundreds of these workers have become unemployed. The six union leaders remain in prison incommunicado.

The war against terror is, above all, a war of ideas. But if the terrorists’ ideas, be they in the form of the 1979 hostage crisis, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the nuclear issue, or the fury over the depiction of Muhammad, so intensely occupy us–our headlines and our airwaves–doesn’t geographical territory become irrelevant? Can we still say that the terrorists have not conquered us? Historians agree that the most significant blow to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was delivered by the 1978 strike of the oil workers, which sparked other unions to join, and ultimately brought Iran’s economy to a halt. But when the current regime systematically suppresses information, and the free press of the free world cannot be cured of its chronic fetish for uranium, will Iran’s movement for democracy have any hope of gathering momentum?

I don’t agree with Mr. Hakakian that Iranian use of uranium is a “fetish.” After all, the possibility of getting blown into oblivion is reason enough to explain the world’s concentrated attention.

But that doesn’t mean that important events inside the Iran, such as the bus strike and its brutal results, or other labor disruptions, or the collapse of what’s left of that country’s mostly state-controlled economy, or the wholesale assault on academic freedom, should be ignored, and it’s obvious that they are. And how about the big picture? Iran’s current president “has repeatedly said that his policy is going back to the time of Khomeini” (the link has good background about Khomeini’s rise in 1979, and the West’s gullibility in encouraging it).

A search on “Iran” at the AFL-CIO’s web site yields three results not relating to the bus drivers’ plight, or any other reference to Iranian workers’ attempt to organize. Where is John Sweeney when he’s needed? This is his opportunity to be his generation’s Lane Kirkland, the AFL-CIO leader who famously helped Poland’s Solidarity movement establish and defend itself — a milestone in the chain of events that led to the overthrow of communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Carol Strande is amazingly none the worse for wear (HT Good News Blog):

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