Life in the 21st C. The Patriot Act gave the federal government new freedoms, but at the expense of the citizens. One thing the government can do is legally monitor the reading habits of every single American. National Security Letters (NSL) are subpoenas, and they use these NSLs to “protect against international terrorism.” The Controllers (Deep State) have used these and according to the author, the reasons are “far from positive.” The government can demand access to your bank accounts, email history and address books, telephone numbers both called and received and books bought, borrowed and read. All this falls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It’s hazy, though, and allows for a widespread interpretation, like “documents, records, papers and other items.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demonstrated that the Patriot Act has made it easier for agencies of the government, the military and the intelligence community to seize and study our most private files, paperwork and data. The long list even includes “third-party” files–medical records, college records, online purchases of books. Surveillance orders, notes the ACLU, “can be based in part on a person’s First Amendment activities, such as the books they read, the Websites they visit or a letter to the editor they have written. Slate.com says “Post-Patriot Act third party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent, providing the government says its trying to protect against terrorism. A group of librarians based in Connecticut went to court after an NSL was issued by the government searching for “patron data.” According to Redfern, they quite rightly saw the request as outrageous. “Such was the outrage that the American Library Association went to the Supreme Court in 2005 in an effort to get rid of this outrageous piece of spying of the deeply personal variety”(Redfern). Next, there was a cybersecurity bill before Congress.It meant that computers used in libraries would be monitored to find out what each patron had stored as data.