That Patriot Act is in the news again. Remember the law nobody can actually read? Supposedly, a college student was trying for an internship at a government agency, and the government did a background check on him via the Patriot Act. Something about this story seems fishy.

[An unnamed student] had created his Facebook.com profile when he was 18. Now 20, he had accumulated a good amount of material—typical college musings and photos—that his friends might enjoy but others might view differently.

The son was beginning a search for an internship, so [his mother] asked him to consider limiting access to his profile to just his friends. ... He heeded his mother's advice and did so.

Shortly after, he got the call he had been waiting for. A state agency wanted to interview him for an internship. ...

But, during the interview, something he was not prepared for happened. The interviewer began asking specific questions about the content on his Facebook.com listing and the situation became very awkward and uncomfortable. ... The interviewer explained that as a state agency, recruiters accessed his Facebook account under the auspices of the Patriot Act.

So, we're supposed to believe that the people doing background checks for the government, trying to get information that used to be publicly accessible on the Internet, would rather use federal subpoenas than The Wayback Machine or Google cache? But, wait, there's more.

Fortunately the son had previous working relationships with a few members in the office and knew a staff member there. He was offered and accepted the internship.

So, on top of the government agency's strange background checking behavior, we're also supposed to believe that:

• the student took the job anyway because of cronyism (which makes the background check strange);


• the student then blabbed to a news site, which figures that there are so many college students getting crony government internships after strange background checks, that they published the story with those details intact; and,


• that the government agency, that's already shown it likes to look online for dirt on prospective employees, isn't going to connect the dots.

I'm not buying it. Excuse me while I don't believe this story about an unnamed student, and unnamed government agency, and some very irrational behavior.