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And the Germans said...
by ERICH BRAUN
Erich Braun interviews Till Seitel, a law student at the University of Giessen regarding his thoughts on the Patriot Act II
Frankfurt, Germany, April 21, 2003 -- After talking to Karsten Martini a Computer Applications Major from Hamburg I thought it would be a good idea to get a different perspective from another major. I contacted one of my friends, Till Seitel, who is a law student at the University of Giessen, Germany. He is in his 5th semester. He told me that he is not yet familiar with Internet laws and therefore might not be the best representative. Since I was looking for a broader opinion on the subject anyways I thought he would be best for our purposes.
We met downtown Frankfurt (Giessen is about 40 minutes away) for a coffee and I started the interview. I asked him if he had heard about the USA Patriot Act and he responded that he had heard about it, but was not familiar with all its details and what it exactly said. He said that he knows that it was enacted right after the September 11 attack and that it was aimed to locate terrorist actions on the internet and prevent future strikes through better surveillance. "Erich, I do not know how they can effectively control every move on the Internet. I believe with our current technological standard it is not possible."
I was wondering what Mr. Seitel thought about the possibility that his private conversations on the Internet might become public under certain circumstances. He does believe that governments need suspicious circumstances to control your e-mails and your conversations on the internet. Moreover, he thinks that governments should need a search warrant, which ties in the 4th amendment, to go through your e-mail inbox. It would not be just to go ahead and search through somebody's infolder. He says that he does not want anybody to read his e-mails, it would be his private matters what he talks about with his friends and it would not matter weather someone does something illegal or not. In that point, Mr. Seitel had a different opinion that Mr. Martini about this certain topic.
I informed him that the U.S. government had the right to shut down websites if it did not agree with its content. Mr. Seitel was not aware that the U.S. government had this particular right. He thinks it is kind of ridiculous and could under certain circumstances lead to serious conflict with the freedom of speech right. He draws a comparison to the current situation in Iraq. What if someone is completely against the war and voices his opinion on his website? Can they shut it down? What if this guy reaches more than 30 million people and has some major influence? Can they shut it down? Mr. Seitel thinks that this part of the USA Patriot Act needs some redefinition.
About information sharing and data base collection, Mr. Seitel said that he thought it might be a good idea and a step into the right direction to create a data base about criminals. It could help countries throughout the world to catch criminals more effectively. He points out that there has to be a clear what kind of information is shared and distributed. He thinks that there needs to be a protection of one's privacy.
We thank Till Seitel for his corporation and wish him good luck with
his major.