Coding While Muslim
I don't know about you, but since the very early days of the World Wide Web,
a lot of my time has been spent assisting a wide range of nonprofit organizations
in obtaining domain registrations, designing, setting up, and maintaining Web
sites. That's why I was chilled the first time I dove into news information
about the Patriot Act-based charges against Sami Omar al-Hussayen, a Saudi National
completing a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Idaho.
On the one hand, the Department of Justice was claiming that al-Hussayen had
built and maintained an Internet network for terrorists. But every time I read
the specifics about what he did, it sounded like the sort of stuff I do all
the time for various nonprofit organizations. And it sounds a lot like that
Patriot Act clause could be held against anyone working on a campus IT resource
that is misused.
The good news is that the trial is over and the jury acquitted al-Hussayen
of the Patriot Act-related charges. That good news is for you and me, not for
al-Hussayen, as the best he can still hope for after more than a year already
of imprisonment is that he'll end up shipped back to Saudi Arabia on some visa-related
charges.
There's a clause in the Patriot Act that makes it a crime to provide "expert
guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist. It was one of the parts
of the act that many pundits, from a wide range of political thought, were critical
of when the act was deliberated and passed. According to Georgetown University
law professor David Cole, "Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned
by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable" under the provision
in question.
By all non-governmental accounts that I have read, al-Hussayen is a very nice
person and is in fact a pacifist, devoted to charitable works. But at first
I bought into the government charges of a network of terrorism. But as the news
kept coming out, I kept reading news items and waiting for the other sh'e to
drop. I kept asking myself, "What is it that the Department of Justice
really has on him? What did he really do that his defense attorneys are hiding
from the public?"
Here's what he unequivocally did with regard to the Patriot Act charges, which
are my focus here:
· He registered some domain names for some charitable groups, none of
which are listed as terrorist organizations and the main one of which is still
in operation as a legal charity;
· He set up some Web sites, including threaded bulletin board discussions,
and maybe some e-mail discussion lists; and
· He was among the moderators of a Yahoo! Group on which a handful of
posters posted messages in support of suicide bombing. (Heavily outweighed by
other topics, including lots of postings against suicide bombings.)
It was reported that at his trial the Department of Justice displayed a graphic
illustrating how one of the Web sites that he helped maintain could, through
hyperlinks, eventually lead a viewer into 20 other Web sites with ties to bad
organizations. Wow. Really? I wonder if those links eventually lead to the Department
of Justice Web site? Care to follow the linkages on some of the sites on your
institution's servers?
That's what became more and more chilling as I learned more about this case.
He simply did not do anything with his information technology skills that I
don't routinely do. Or that you don't routinely do as part of your job for thousands
of students, faculty, and staff - any one of whom might decide to use those
resources for bad purposes.
It's not coincidental that the jury kicked out the charges against al-Hussayen.
Even though Idaho is one of the "reddest" of the red states, people
clear across the political spectrum are more and more critical of many parts
of the Patriot Act, including the clause at issue here. And, in fact, even as
the Department of Justice was bringing this case to trial, an appeals court
in California had already declared that part of the Patriot Act to be unconstitutional,
although that ruling has no standing in the State of Idaho.
The best news, though, is that more and more people - of all kinds - think
it's time to re-examine and refine the Patriot Act in light of what we've learned
by seeing it in action. And I think that's a very good thing.