Congratulations to Paul Meyer on his recent award!

Watch for the NYLS games conference: The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds. November 13-15, 2003. Should be a very rich few days. I am hard at work on my paper, which seems to be morphing steadily into something unexpected.

How does the proposed Patriot II Act change the standards for surveillance of online communications? I'm trying to figure that out. Here's an editorial from the Times for yesterday on the act generally.

"The most troubling part of the new plan is the call for expanding government access to private data, allowing federal agents to issue subpoenas for private medical, financial and other records, without a court order. The lack of judicial oversight removes an important check on government misconduct. Record holders would be required to comply, or face prison, and would be barred from telling anyone about the subpoena."

I'm trying to understand how this would affect electronic records.