Note: USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 = Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism.
PATRIOT Act Apologist Site Didn't Get
the Memo. Last week, the Department of Justice Inspector General's office released a damning
report documenting the FBI abusing its powers under the PATRIOT Act and violating the law to collect
Americans' telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about Americans without
judicial approval. It appears that not everyone at the DOJ got the memo. The DOJ's Life and
Liberty website, a site dedicated to defending the honor of the PATRIOT Act during the re-authorization
process last spring, still reads as if nothing has changed. Particularly in the light of the newly
revealed truth, many of the quotes now seem (at best) naive.
Who are the Patriots? I
accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power. The true patriot is
motivated by a sense of responsibility, and out of self interest — for himself, his family, and the
future of his country — to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that
patriotism means obedience to the state.
The President Is
Wrong: The USA Patriot Act Should Be Terminated. A mere 45 days after
the September 11th terrorist attacks, President Bush signed into law the USA Patriot
Act. A politician's dream — and a civil libertarian's nightmare — the Patriot Act
broadened the already immense powers of the federal government, not only in regard to
investigations relating to terrorism but also to criminal investigations. At some
342 pages, this massive, complex, highly technical 30,000-word statute is divided into
ten titles, with more than 270 sections and endless subsections that cross-reference and
amend a dozen or more different laws. Most of our congressional representatives admitted
that they did not even read this monstrosity before they voted to pass it. Hidden within
this tome are provisions that turn the FBI, CIA and INS into secret police.
Police
in Thought Pursuit. Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize
persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example,
opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. The Act will
inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due
process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further "violent radicalization;"
and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list. Political discourse will be chilled
and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister
congressional folly.
DOJ: FBI Forced Business To Disclose
Consumer Info. The FBI underreported its use of the USA Patriot Act to force businesses to turn
over customer information in suspected terrorism cases, according to a Justice Department audit. One
government official familiar with the report said shoddy bookkeeping and records management led to the problems.
Terror
Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years. Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information
from around the world — field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes
idle gossip — arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the
nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects. Called TIDE, for Terrorist
Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that
the intelligence community believes might harm the United States.
The "Enemy Combatant" Attack on Freedom:
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the principles involved in the [Jose] Padilla case for the
American people. Ordinary Americans might ask, "Why get all upset about some guy named Jose Padilla?
He's just a terrorist." What such Americans fail to realize, however, is that Padilla was just the test
case whose legal principles would then apply to all Americans. That's why groups dedicated to civil
liberties and especially the Bill of Rights have focused such an inordinate amount of attention on the Padilla
case. They understood that if the enemy-combatant doctrine would be upheld with respect to Padilla, the
government would then be able to apply it against all Americans, including dissidents, protesters, and critics
of the government.
It's Not Exactly a National Emergency.
The United States operated under a continuous state of emergency from 1933 until 1976, according to By
Order Of The President by Phillip J. Cooper. To correct this ridiculous situation Congress
passed The National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601-1651) in 1976 to stop open-ended states of national
emergency and formalize Congressional checks and balances on Presidential emergency powers. … [Even
so,] There are currently fourteen (14) national emergencies in effect in the United States.
Two Patriot Act Provisions Ruled
Unlawful. A federal judge issued a stern rebuke of a key White House antiterror law, striking
down as unconstitutional two pillars of the USA Patriot Act. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled
Wednesday [9/26/2007] that using the act to authorize secret searches and wiretapping to gather criminal
evidence — instead of intelligence gathering — violates the constitutional protection
against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Strike Two! Successive Blows To Patriot Act
Slam 'Big Brother' Government. "The Patriot Act should never have been enacted in the first
place. It passed with both 'Big Box' parties rushing headlong to allow frightening expansions of
government power. What happened to [Oregon attorney Brandon] Mayfield could have happened to
any other innocent American; and he is an attorney!" said Constitution Party national Committee Chairman
Jim Clymer.
Patriot Act Loses Appeal.
A federal appeals court ruled that some portions of the U.S. Patriot Act that govern dealings with foreign terrorist
organizations are unconstitutional because the language is too vague to be understood by an ordinary person. The
ruling released Monday [12/10/2007] by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco affirms a 2005 decision
by a lower court judge.
Angry
U.S. Democrats threaten to limit FBI anti-terror powers. Furious U.S. Democrats threatened
Friday to limit the FBI's anti-terror powers after an audit uncovered major problems with how agents used
the Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information like credit reports. The audit found the FBI
misused, sometimes illegally, so-called security letters that require companies to provide highly personal
records about their customers without a judge's approval.
Lawmakers Vow
Hearings on FBI Errors. Members of Congress vowed today to conduct investigative
hearings — and consider reining in parts of the Patriot Act — following revelations
of pervasive problems in the FBI's use of national security letters to secretly obtain
telephone, e-mail and financial records in terrorism cases.
Judge rules against parts of Patriot Act. A
federal judge struck down parts of America's top anti-terror law as unconstitutional Thursday [9/6/2007],
saying courts must be allowed to supervise cases where the government orders Internet providers to turn over
records without telling customers.
What the Government Knows: Over
the last four years, U.S. law enforcement agencies have gained access to over 28,000 financial records inside
the United States under a little known provision of the USA Patriot Act that parallels the secret international
bank data program disclosed by news organizations last week, Treasury Department records show.
The article above alludes to the currently hot topic
of domestic spying.
This item is from England, but it is on topic.
Let's treat the plotters as common
criminals, not soldiers in a global war. We should reserve special scepticism for those who
claim that the rules of the game need to change, on the supposed grounds that fanaticism and zealotry have
created a new kind of danger. Such people seem to insinuate that our criminal law is designed only to
deal with criminality of the self-interested sort.
Bush Signs
Renewal of Patriot Act. A day before parts of the USA Patriot Act were to expire, President
Bush signed into law a renewal that will allow the government to keep using terror-fighting tools passed
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Editor says...
On one hand, the President claims that the Patriot Act is vital to combatting terrorism
in this country, because terrorists are constantly plotting to kill us all. And he makes this
argument without mentioning that all the terrorists so far have
been Muslims. But then he
approves and promotes a deal to let a company from
an exclusively Muslim country operate some of this country's largest ports. What is he thinking?
Civil Disobedience and Dissent: Good citizen
or domestic terrorist? One of the fall-outs from a law that is passed in the U.S. Congress is the possibility
of copycat or similar laws being proposed in state and municipal legislatures. In the case of the USA Patriot Act, it
became apparent that zealous legislators in various states could hardly wait to set about writing their own local versions
of this federal law that seriously compromises protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. In Nevada, for example,
concerned citizens had to face down lawmakers who saw a chance to create their own anti-terrorist legislation, or
mini-Patriot Act, that could have impeded public dissent and political protest.
Making a Meth of the PATRIOT Act. If you
thought al Qaeda or Iraqi insurgents were the major threats facing America, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) says
you're wrong. According to Dent, "The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism
unto itself." Many of Dent's colleagues apparently agree, so they've attached surveillance,
"smuggling", and "money laundering" provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. These
vast new police powers, contained in a new "Combat Methamphetamine Act" (CMA) and other provisions, serve
no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism.
How the Patriot Act came in from the
cold. It may be one of the most controversial congressional bills in years, but the USA
Patriot Act is on the verge of becoming more entrenched than ever in US law.
Pentagon wants new spying powers
in the US. The Pentagon says it won't spy on "innocent" Americans, but critics say
past record shows this is false.
ACLU Urges Judge to Lift Patriot
Act Library Gag Order. The American Civil Liberties Union urged a federal judge Wednesday
[8/31/2005] to lift a gag order on a client who is being asked by the FBI to provide records about library
patrons under the Patriot Act. Federal prosecutors say allowing that could tip off suspects and
jeopardize a federal investigation into terrorism or spying.
Patriot
Act Appeal Fails at Supreme Court. Connecticut libraries lost an emergency Supreme Court
appeal on Friday [10/07/2005] in their effort to be freed from a gag order and participate in a
congressional debate over the Patriot Act.
Update:
Prosecutors drop appeal in Patriot Act librarian
case. Federal prosecutors said Wednesday [4/12/2006] they will no longer seek to enforce a gag
order on Connecticut librarians who received an FBI demand for records about library patrons
under the Patriot Act.
and...
FBI Abandons Connecticut
Library Security Case. The FBI has abandoned its effort to obtain user records from a group of
Connecticut libraries employing a controversial investigative tool known as a national security
letter — a broad and secret demand for communications and financial information.
Librarians
are Constitutional Experts Too? The American Library Association campaigns against the
USA's PATRIOT Act, even as it provides justification for Castro's persecution of Cuban librarians.
If You Thought Patriot Act I Was Bad, Wait
Until You See Patriot Act II. A recent report published by Gun Owners of America gave an in-depth
summary of a new expanded version of the USA Patriot Act. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of
2003 (DSEA) gives even more broad new powers to the federal government.
Excerpt:The report lists several problematic portions of the new bill including:
• The government could bug, wiretap, or search anyone in America for up to 15 days without
going to any court.
• The government could seize personal information about Americans (including credit
information, educational transcripts, etc.) in a wide range of circumstances without the approval of any court.
• Individuals and groups which advocate Second Amendment rights could be classified
as "foreign powers" and subjected to electronic surveillance for up to one year without the
approval of any court.
Can Patriots Survive The Patriot Act?
Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D., is as liberal as I am conservative. He teaches journalism at Bloomsburg University
in Pennsylvania. His latest book, "America's Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Government's Violation
of Constitutional and Civil Rights" was recently published and it documents how the Patriot Act and its
enforcement should scare the daylights out of everyone.
Alleged
terrorist held years in US without charges. To the government, he is an al Qaeda "sleeper"
agent sent to the United States by Osama bin Laden to help sow more terror after the September 11
attacks. As his lawyers and human rights groups see it, however, Ali Saleh Mohamed Kahlah al-Marri is
just one more victim of the many indefinite and seemingly arbitrary detentions carried out in the name of
the U.S. war on terrorism.
Does
government stupidity know any bounds? The Patriot Act was supposed to provide federal funding to states
to equip the fire, police, and EMS officers who serve at the front lines of a terrorist attack. But the congressmen
who wrote the law apparently believed that patriotism starts at home. Money was allocated under a complicated
formula where each state, regardless of its size or location, got an equal slice of the pie before risk was
even considered.
Patriot
Act Supporters See Success; Detractors Disagree. Critics of the USA Patriot Act warn that
Americans' civil liberties are under assault, but national security experts see a strong correlation
between new counter-terrorism laws and the absence of additional attacks since 9/11.
Congress gives a boost to the
Patriot Act. The House voted Thursday evening [7/21/2005] to make permanent all
but two of the law's expanded search and surveillance powers. The only exceptions involved the
government's authority to conduct roving wiretaps and to obtain personal records from
businesses, libraries and medical offices in terrorism investigations. Those hotly
debated provisions were given a 10-year extension.
USA
PATRIOT Act: Update on Provisions Affecting the Tech Industry. Congress is in the process
of tweaking sixteen separate sections of the USA PATRIOT Act that were scheduled to sunset at the end of this
year. There is a House bill and the Senate bill, and the two versions are being reconciled in conference
committee. The USA PATRIOT Act was a wide-ranging expansion of state power — and in the information
age, that means wide-ranging effects on the technology and telecommunications industries and their
customers. Four years later, regulatory agencies have issued the rules to flesh out the
provisions of the law.
Liberty
Coalition urges blockage of PATRIOT Act Legislation. The Liberty Coalition … [has] called
on the Senate to block a vote on reauthorization of the Patriot Act as it now stands. The group's
leadership strongly feels that a handful of modest but critical reforms to the legislation are still needed.
U.S. House
votes to renew Patriot Act. Considered a key part of U.S. President George W.
Bush's war on terror, the Patriot Act was introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It
gives the government unprecedented powers to investigate terror suspects, including greater access to
educational, financial and medical records, without a judge's prior approval. Sixteen provisions
were due to expire at the end of this year unless renewed by Congress. By 257-171 vote,
lawmakers on Thursday [7/21/2005] agreed to drop the expiration dates on 14 of of those
provisions.
Senators
Threaten to Hold Up Patriot Act. Legislation reauthorizing the Patriot Act stalled
Thursday [11/17/2005] as lawmakers worked to satisfy senators upset by the elimination of some
civil liberties protections.
Gonzales Continues to Defend the
Patriot Act. Attorney General Antonio [sic] Gonzales has stated that he is "open to
suggestions" when discussing the renewal of the USA Patriot Act. Gonzales also stated that
he would oppose "any proposal that would undermine our ability to combat terrorism effectively."
Included in this article is a list of key provisions that are due to expire by the end of 2005 if
not renewed by Congress.
Editor's note:
The man's name is Alberto Gonzales.
Excellent!
Oversee the PATRIOT
Act. H.R. 3179 is the latest attempt to expand the scope of the
PATRIOT Act even before it is clear that all the current PATRIOT Act powers
are necessary and being used appropriately. Despite the unanswered concern, key
Congressional leaders resorted to stealth tactics late last year to attach a measure to
the 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill that drastically increased the power of the
FBI by allowing the agency to demand records from car dealers, pawnbrokers, travel
agents, and other businesses without the approval of a judge or grand jury. Neither
the House nor the Senate debated this measure; the real action happened behind
closed doors.
USA Patriot Act — The Good, the Bad,
and the Sunset. The events of September 11 convinced … overwhelming majorities in
Congress that law enforcement and national security officials need new legal tools to fight terrorism. But
we should not forget what gave rise to the original opposition — many aspects of the bill increase
the opportunity for law enforcement and the intelligence community to return to an era where they monitored and
sometimes harassed individuals who were merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Nothing that
occurred on September 11 mandates that we return to such an era.
Read this page!
EPIC's web page about the USA PATRIOT
Act. Section 215 grants the FBI the authority to request an order "requiring the production of any
tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)" relevant to an investigation of
international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. Although the amendment is entitled "Access
to Certain Business Records for Foreign Intelligence and International Terrorism Investigations," the scope of
the authority is far broader and applies to any records relevant to the individual. This amendment, which
overrides state library confidentiality laws, permits the FBI to compel production of business records, medical
records, educational records and library records without a showing of "probable cause" (the existence of
specific facts to support the belief that a crime has been committed or that the items sought are evidence
of a crime). Instead, the government only needs to claim that the records may be related to an ongoing
investigation related to terrorism or intelligence activities.
The USA PATRIOT Act Was Planned Before
9/11. Many people do not know that the USA PATRIOT Act was already written and ready to go long
before September 11th. Recent criticism of Bush's admission that he had received warnings only weeks
before September 11th has made it more important to understand the origins of the USAPA.
The Patriot Act: Bad
Medicine. It's one thing to add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. But
it's quite another to go to enormous lengths to convince a patient that the medicine itself is the
sugar. Yet this is substantially what the Bush administration and its allies in the building
of an imperial presidency did when they labeled their grasp for power "The Patriot Act."
Patriots Act Games: It is the
worst kind of foolishness to think that the federal government is going to nobly enforce the USA
Patriot Act without yielding to the temptations of its authoritarian powers. This piece of
legislation needs to be significantly reformed to insure judicial oversight remains an essential
element of investigative actions and law enforcement.
House,
Senate Chiefs Spar on Patriot Act. The Republican chairmen of the House and
Senate judiciary committees may end up in a showdown on how best to reauthorize the USA
Patriot Act. … [Congressman] Sensenbrenner plans to go along with Bush's
call on the House side, with his committee … working on legislation that would strike all
the "sunset" provisions — the predetermined dates when a law or provision
expires — from the Patriot Act.
Patriot
Act for Pranksters? The federal government stands ready to exploit random
acts of personal stupidity as precedents for turning its bloated "anti-terrorism" powers
against the American public.
How the PATRIOT Act Enables Law Enforcement to
Circumvent Privacy Protection. Section 218 of the USA PATRIOT Act would amend the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) so that the FBI could secretly conduct a physical search or wiretap
primarily to obtain evidence of crime without proving probable cause of crime. … Though notice to the
target is the general rule for physical searches in criminal cases, FISA physical searches are "black bag
jobs." Law enforcement agents secretly break into a home or business and conduct a search without
notice. Indeed, the party whose privacy was compromised is never informed unless there is a later
criminal prosecution.
Crisis Policy-Making: Immediate Action, Prolonged
Regret. President Bush and his subordinates proclaim that the United States has entered into "a
new kind of war." Unfortunately, this undertaking has the potential for the same kind of domestic abuses
and excesses associated with previous U.S. wars. Already some officials have proposed such steps as
requiring everyone to carry a national identification card, allowing the indefinite detention of legal
immigrants without charges or hearings and vastly increasing government surveillance powers.
Libraries Say Yes, Officials Do Quiz Them About
Users. Law enforcement officials have made at least 200 formal and informal inquiries to
libraries for information on reading material and other internal matters since October 2001, according to a new
study that adds grist to the growing debate in Congress over the government's counterterrorism powers.
The
Un-American Patriot Act: The new USA Patriot Act, enacted in response to the
September 11th terrorist attacks, could pose more of a threat to personal liberty
than to terrorists.
The Patriot Act
reduces privacy and undercuts judicial review. The assumption has been
that there was simply too much liberty and privacy in America — and that federal
law-enforcement agencies did not have enough power. To remedy that perceived problem,
policymakers rushed the USA Patriot Act into law. The Patriot Act was designed to reduce privacy
and increase security. It has succeeded in at least reducing privacy. Financial privacy
is essentially gone. The feds have turned banks, brokerage houses, insurers and other
financial institutions into state informers.
Colleges
Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems. The federal government, vastly extending the
reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies
and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement
authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.
Patriot
Act Push Angers Some on the Right. A Senate panel vote riles
conservatives concerned about the reach of federal power. … The conservatives
complained that the Senate panel had moved in secret to expand the act. They
are particularly upset about proposed "administrative subpoenas" that would
let the FBI obtain a person's medical, financial and other records in terrorism cases
without seeking a judge's approval.
Patriot Fixes — Commentary by Bob
Barr. The most common charge levied against critics of the Patriot Act — one that
Alberto Gonzales, the new face of Justice, is likely to repeat in his days ahead — is that they're
"misinformed." Well, as a former U.S. attorney appointed by President Reagan, a former CIA lawyer and
analyst, and a former Congressman who sat on the Judiciary Committee, I can go mano a mano with any
law-enforcement or intelligence official on the facts. And the facts say that the Patriot Act needs to be
reviewed and refined by Congress.
Son of the Patriot Act. As it
has shown the world in its pre-emptive military action in Iraq, the Bush administration at home is following
the philosophy "the best defense is a good offense" to obtain more power. Despite serious concerns in
Congress and in state and local governments across the country — well more than 200 of which are on
record as opposing some or all of the USA Patriot Act — and by private organizations from across the
political spectrum, the administration is actively seeking to expand this law.
Patriot Act II Creates a National ID
card. After a one-year study period, the Department of Homeland Security will mandate standards
for all state driver's licenses, including "biometric ID provisions," which can include your fingerprints,
retinal scans, and other biometric identifiers, such as your DNA. The new high-tech national ID cards
will be required for boarding planes, cruise ships, and for driving a car. That means they can be used as
Soviet-style internal passports, making anyone deemed "suspect" unable to travel in their own country.
More about The Proposed National ID Card.
Patriot
Act Oversight Hearing Highlights Flaws. The Patriot Act was passed
with undue haste and has been flawed in its implementation, according to the ACLU.
House Votes to
Limit Patriot Act Rules. The House voted Wednesday [6/15/2005] to block
the FBI and the Justice Department from using the anti-terror Patriot Act to search
library and book store records, responding to complaints about potential invasion of
privacy of innocent readers.
House
Votes To Curb Patriot Act. The House handed President Bush the first defeat in his
effort to preserve the broad powers of the USA Patriot Act, voting yesterday to curtail the FBI's
ability to seize library and bookstore records for terrorism investigations. Bush has
threatened to veto any measure that weakens those powers.
Rhetorical questions: What
is in the public library that is so valuable to terrorists? What kind of books might I
purchase at a book store that could be used as evidence against me? Why does President Bush think
these provisions of the Patriot Act are so vital to our national security? What kind of damage could
someone like Janet Reno or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton do with a law like this?
Patriot
Act Critics Laud Vote to Limit Use. Advocates of rewriting the USA Patriot
Act are claiming momentum after the House, despite a White House veto threat, voted to
restrict investigators from using the anti-terrorism law to peek at library records
and bookstore sales slips.
Patriot Act Games. The USA
Patriot Act of 2001 and the proposed Son of Patriot Act, now being debated in the Congress at the request of the
Bush administration ... are frightening laws. Left unchecked, they threaten the constitutional basis on
which our society is premised: that citizens possess rights over their persons and property and that they
retain those rights unless there is a sound, articulated, and specific reason for the government to take them
away (i.e., probable cause of criminal activity). The Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable
search and seizure will have been gutted.
Hearing Announced for H.R. 3179:
This legislation contains provisions that will be detrimental to important concepts of our American system of
justice such as due process and checks and balances. For instance, under H.R. 3179, the business
owners who are recipients of National Security Letters requiring records to be handed over to law enforcement
would be forever silenced from speaking about what had happened… until the Attorney General ruled
otherwise. Not even a complaint to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice is allowed.
It's the kind of measure that just is un-American.
PATRIOT Act Sneak Attack II: As a
result of many protests from US citizens, the Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on the bill, HR 3179,
the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003, and instead a subcommittee held a public hearing
on May 18. But you would never know that the hearing occurred if you read the American press
or watch or listen to US electronic news media. A major expansion of one of the most controversial
laws ever adopted in the US was ignored by most of the media.
Was "1984" a how-to book? Polls show
Americans regaining their skepticism of government and demanding that respect for civil liberties figure in
anti-terrorist policies. But government officials don't appear to be paying attention. Instead,
they seem to be pawing through a copy of "1984" with the idea of using George Orwell's cautionary tale as a
blueprint for an America of the future.
Is the Government Exaggerating the Terrorist Threat?
In an article entitled "U.S. has overstated terrorist arrests for years" the Miami Herald [in 2001] accused the
FBI (and particularly FBI Director Mueller) of deliberately exaggerating the amount of terrorist activity in the
US in order to try to justify budget increases. The FBI claimed that there were 236 convictions for
terrorist acts in the year 2000, but refused to provide a list or any details. Yet when the Miami Herald
managed to get its hand on documents under the Freedom of Information Act, it concluded that "The Department of
Justice has overstated its record of arresting and convicting terrorists for years, inflating the numbers it
gives Congress with garden-variety crimes that have no connection to terrorism."
Clearing the
air on the Patriot Act. As a former Member of Congress who voted in favor
of the legislation in 2001, I believe many provisions in the Act are appropriate for the
government to uncover and prosecute acts of terrorism. I believe just as strongly,
however, that other provisions go far beyond this vital mission and undermine our
constitutional freedoms and Fourth Amendment rights.
The Patriot
Act: Probable Cause and Due Process. Both liberal and conservative
groups alike have criticized the U.S. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, because they say it violates probable cause
and due process rights protected by the Constitution of the United States.
Report Card on the Patriot
Act: Privacy advocates remain wary of the antiterrorism measure, saying that the
government's claims are hard to verify because the operations conducted under the new law
have so far been kept secret.
Revisiting the Patriot Act. The
Patriot Act requires a wide array of businesses and agencies to collect detailed information about groups and
individuals and to relay the information to federal agencies, including data about users of the Internet.
USA Act Stampedes Through.
"The report has just come to us," said Rep. Robert Scott (D-Virginia) during the debate…. "It would
be helpful if we would wait for some period of time so that we can at least review what we are voting on, but
I guess that is not going to stop us, so here we are."
Strange!
Patriot Act
Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act: The American Civil Liberties Union
disclosed yesterday [4/28/2004] that it filed a lawsuit three weeks ago challenging the FBI's
methods of obtaining many business records, but the group was barred [by a provision in the
Patriot Act] from revealing even the existence of the case until now.
Editor's Note: This
is a particularly dangerous law if we can't even debate its faults.
Deconstructing the Bill of
Rights: The Patriot Act, more than 300 pages in length, was either
written at lightning speed or, perhaps, some version of the bill was, by some prescient
anticipation of 9-11, sitting on the shelf in the Department of Justice, waiting
for implementation.
Cell Phone Jamming and
Terrorist Attacks. Here's an idea that's so amazingly stupid that I can't
even believe it's being seriously discussed: the LA police are considering jamming all
cell phones in the event of a terrorist attack.
Total
Informational Awareness. A project of the United States Department of
Defense, Total Informational Awareness (TIA) is designed to gather personal data on
a grand scale, including emails, phone calls, financial records, transportation habits,
and medical information. Its proponents believe that by scanning and analyzing this
massive pile of data, government agents will be able to predict and prevent crime.
Update:
Signals And Noise. The name
"Total Information Awareness" was changed, in an effort to erase any connection to its past. Today it's called the
Research Development and Experimental Collaboration (RDEC). The NSA is the biggest player, with at least
15 nodes as of December 2004, according to official documents. "I think it's considerably more
today," said a former government official knowledgeable about RDEC. A spokesman for the NSA said he had
no information to provide about the network.
Monitor Thy
Neighbor. Americans are beginning to understand that many precious liberties
have been put in jeopardy by the government's rush to enact new laws in the wake
of September 11th. Federal law enforcement agencies now have broad authority
to conduct secret, warrantless searches of homes; monitor phone and internet activity;
access financial records; and undertake large-scale tracking of American citizens through
huge databases. We're told this is necessary to fight the unending war on terror, but
in truth the federal government has been seeking these powers for years.
From the Constitution
Party National Platform: The USA PATRIOT Act permits arrests without warrants
and secret detention without counsel, wiretaps without court supervision, searches and
seizures without notification to the individual whose property is invaded, and a host of
other violations of the legal safeguards our nation has historically developed according
to principles descending from the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
Hundreds of Cities Outlaw the Patriot Act. Not
only was the Constitution tossed out the window when the USA Patriot Act was passed, mistakes can now
be — and have been — made without our knowledge. You may have inherited a cell
phone number that was previously being tapped. This has actually happened. Guess what? Chances
are, it's still being tapped, but you'll never know. Incorrect addresses on secret warrants can result in
a nasty — and dangerous — surprise at 3:00 am. This has happened too.
Guess what? There isn't a thing you can do about it. No one is ever going to show you the
warrant so you can discover the mistake.
Be sure to check out The
USA Patriot Page at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Patriot
Act Privacy Invasion Invoked. In recently disclosed memos, the FBI asked the
Justice Department in the fall of 2003 for permission to invoke portions of the Patriot Act
that allow investigators access to citizen's business and library transactions.
Let the Patriot Act die. The quick,
emotional passage of the Patriot Act only weeks after the September 11th attacks allowed little time for
scrutiny of its measures. In fact, most members of Congress did not read it before voting.
Congressman Ron Paul said he couldn't even get a copy before the vote. As a result, provisions of the Act
offer major opportunities for government abuses of law-abiding private citizens.
Patriot Act II
Versus United States Constitution: The Patriot Act trashes precious constitutional protections
but a follow-up law now being drafted goes even further.
D.C. Government Should Ignore Greenpeace on Homeland
Security. The "Terrorism Prevention and Safety in Hazardous Materials Act of 2004" will actually
make more difficult the already arduous task of protecting Washington from the depredations of terrorists.
DOJ
quietly drafts USA Patriot II with crypto-in-a-crime penalty.
DOJ's "confidential"
Patriot Act II [PDF]
America Post-9/11: Freedoms
Preserved or Freedoms Lost?: Testimony before Congress by former Congressman Bob Barr.
Excellent! Losing
the War for Civil Liberties: Rep. Ron Paul says, "I think we're on the
verge of a very, very tough police state in this country — and it will only end
when Americans are fed up. So far people are terrified to say
anything. Hopefully, we'll wake up before it's too late."
Starting a Brush Fire for
Freedom: An interview with US Rep. Ron Paul. Since the 9/11 tragedy, Dr. Paul has been
an outspoken critic of the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which he
believes are a threat to liberty and a sign that our country is becoming more like a police state. "The
idea that search warrants could be granted so easily under the Patriot Act," says Dr. Paul. "…with
sneak and peak searches and going into libraries and other places to find out what people are doing is
wrong. It's total surveillance."
Editor's Note: The article above
is very timely, and the person conducting the interview, Mr. John W. Whitehead, also had
some interesting things to say, for example...
On Saturday, December 13, 2003, President Bush signed the Intelligence
Authorization Act into law. This was the same day Saddam Hussein was
captured and Americans, thus, were obviously distracted. It included a
redefinition of financial institutions. The phrase, which previously
referred to banks, now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, credit card
companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office
and the catch-all phrase of any other business "whose cash transactions
have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
Trading
Freedom for Security: When it comes to many of the "anti-terror" policies
and laws being fastened upon us, the "cure" may be more deadly than the disease.
The Patriot Act and Mission
Creep: One of the problems with laws is that the crimes that justify their
passage are not always the crimes they are used against. In the United States,
the RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations) law was passed to help
fight organized crime, but was used against anti-abortion protesters and relatively minor
drug offenders. And the Patriot Act, passed to help fight terrorism, is being
used against a variety of other crimes.
Obsessed with Homeland
Security? Visit this web site.
Fear factor and Fortress
America: This raises the questions of whether we can hope to make ourselves
"safe" — if by that we mean no more terror attacks — and if it is
worth the price of transforming ourselves into an armed fortress. Changing America
is a primary objective of the terrorists. If we change ourselves,
have they won?
Civil Liberties
and the War on Terrorism: Less than six weeks after the September 11th
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, Congress passed anti-terrorism
legislation that received minimal media coverage and triggered almost no public
protest. Yet the new legislation granted the federal government sweeping new powers
to investigate and detain anyone deemed a threat to national security.
Georgia student indicted
on terrorism charge. A 21-year-old college student has been indicted on suspicion of giving
material support of terrorism, a federal prosecutor said Thursday [4/20/2006]. … It is unclear what
Syed Haris Ahmed is accused of doing because the indictment is sealed and authorities provided few
details.
Taking
Liberties in the War on Terror: The Justice Department's "Patriot
Act II". In the days following September 11th, the Bush Administration made
a calculated decision to view the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as acts
of war by foreign aggressors, rather than criminal acts that required redress by the justice
system.
Forfeiting "Enduring
Freedom" for "Homeland Security": A Constitutional Analysis of the USA Patriot
Act of 2001 and the Justice Department's anti-terrorism initiatives. [PDF]
Stealth
Legislation Undermines the Constitution. It appears that we are witnessing
a stealth enactment of the enormously unpopular "Patriot II" legislation that was
first leaked several months ago. Perhaps the national outcry when a draft of the
Patriot II act was leaked has led its supporters to enact it one piece at a time
in secret. Whatever the case, this is outrageous and unacceptable.
The
President Is Wrong: The USA Patriot Act Should Be Terminated. At
some 342 pages, this massive, complex, highly technical 30,000-word statute
is divided into ten titles, with more than 270 sections and endless subsections
that cross-reference and amend a dozen or more different laws. Most of our congressional
representatives admitted that they did not even read this monstrosity before they voted
to pass it. Hidden within this tome are provisions that turn the FBI, CIA and INS into
secret police.
Report says Homeland Security Got Census Data
on Arab Americans. EPIC has obtained heavily redacted documents through the Freedom of Information
Act revealing that the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security statistical data on people who
identified themselves on the 2000 census as being of Arab ancestry. There is no indication that the agency
requested similar information about any other ethnic group.
Editor's Note:
Well… yeah! That's exactly what the Homeland Security people should be
doing. The writer of the above article makes it sound like a bad thing.
Truth About
the "War on Terrorism": Never content to follow the mass media and focus solely
on the minutiae of an important question, James Bovard explores and analyzes the bigger
picture in order to get to the truth of the matter – namely how Americans let themselves
get dragged into what appears to be a never-ending war on terror, how politicians have used
fear of terrorism to dangerously expand the power of the federal government, and the extremely
serious threat to life, liberty, and property that the exercise of this power poses to citizens
of the United States and to those of other countries.
Editor's Note:
The articles in this subsection appear on the ACLU web site, or they pertain to the ACLU's battle
against the Patriot Act. In general, I am very reluctant to
agree with the ACLU on anything; but in this case I'll make an exception.
Patriot
Act II: H.R. 3179 would enhance the government's secret power to obtain
personal records without judicial review. It would also limit judicial discretion over
the use of secret evidence in criminal cases and allow the use of secret intelligence wiretaps
in immigration and possibly other civil cases without notice or an opportunity to suppress
illegally acquired evidence. If passed, this bill would be a major and unwarranted
expansion of the government's secret surveillance powers under the USA PATRIOT Act.
USA PATRIOT Act: Just
45 days after the September 11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act.
There are significant flaws in the Patriot Act, flaws that threaten your fundamental freedoms by giving the
government the power to access to your medical records, tax records, information about the books you buy or
borrow without probable cause, and the power to break into your home and conduct secret searches without
telling you for weeks, months, or indefinitely.
Patriot Act News Items
at the ACLU web site.
Detroit Judge says
Patriot Act suit can proceed. A federal judge in Detroit has rejected the government's request
to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionally of the controversial USA Patriot Act, an
anti-terrorism measure Congress enacted after the 9/11 attacks. … [U.S. District Judge Denise] Hood
said in a 15-page decision that the ACLU's clients — Muslim charities, social services
organizations and advocacy groups — established that they have been harmed
Section 215 of the law.
[Good!]
Another Note:
All this brings up another interesting topic — the
ACLU itself.
We
Can Be Secure and Free. The situation hasn't improved much yet, but
Secretary Tom Ridge, Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson and those who work for them seem
intent upon securing our borders, enforcing our immigration laws and even changing the
way we try to encourage or require prospective citizens to buy into our values before
they can claim U.S. citizenship… and doing so in a manner consistent with maintaining
our traditional freedoms.
A Tale of Two Attorneys
General: The public wants security, and will put up with mistakes in its
cause. But when it senses that important values have been ignored, there is
retribution. By the time the Supreme Court adjourns in June, it almost certainly will
have embarrassed the administration by rejecting some of the extravagant claims for power
made by it in the several terrorism cases the Court has significantly agreed to hear.
The
Un-American Patriot Act: The new USA Patriot Act, enacted in response to
the September 11th terrorist attacks, could pose more of a threat to
personal liberty than to terrorists.
Foundations
of the Garrison State: Far from being a reaction to 9-11, the proposed
Department of Homeland Security is based on an elitist blueprint finished and on
the President's desk before Black Tuesday.
Comments on the Department
of Homeland Security: The promise of the newly formed Department of Homeland
Security is to improve our nation's security from terrorism. Unfortunately, the results
are far more likely to be the opposite. Centralizing security responsibilities has the
downside of making our security more brittle, by instituting a commonality of approach and a
uniformity of thinking. Unless the new department distributes security responsibility
even as it centralizes coordination, it won't improve our nation's security.
Homeland
Security department ill-equipped, critics say. As the Department of
Homeland Security marks its first anniversary, the mammoth agency responsible for
protecting the United States is saddled with funding woes, bureaucratic power struggles
and unfulfilled expectations, according to lawmakers and security analysts.
Homeland
Security Funding Part I: Money is Not Flowing to the Places in Danger. Most
of the homeland security money Congress has appropriated since Sept. 11, 2001, has failed
to reach the local governments that need it most, while much of the funding has
gone to places that face only a minimal threat from terrorism.
The
Action is in the Reaction. The terrorist leaders and their sponsors are
providing the pretext for the U.S. government to institute police-state measures.
What
Can Be Done: The answer to terrorism lies not in granting Gestapo-like
police powers to the federal government but in restoring legitimate internal
security measures.
Suspending
Habeas Corpus: The Bush administration claims the power to detain "enemy
combatants" indefinitely without trial, a suspension of the Habeas Corpus guarantee on
which our justice system is founded.
Civil
Liberties and the War on Terrorism: Less than six weeks after the
September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, Congress
passed anti-terrorism legislation that received minimal media coverage and triggered
almost no public protest. Yet the new legislation granted the federal government
sweeping new powers to investigate and detain anyone deemed a threat to
national security. [Huge collection of additional articles.]
The
Demand for Data by the Feds is on the Rise. Private businesses such as
phone companies, banks and retail stores are facing more requests from law enforcement
agencies for information about their customers, forcing many to deploy staff and
upgrade equipment to meet the demand. The subpoenas and court orders, many
stemming from new government powers to search for terrorists, have alarmed civil
rights groups and privacy advocates, who say that the government is secretly
snooping on innocent citizens.
The Bill
of Rights and the Homeland Security prison in Tacoma: The Department
of Homeland Security will soon open a "Northwest Detention Center" on the Tacoma
Tideflats at 1623 E. "J" St. Please visit this site in person
in the next few days and see it for yourself. Don't bother looking for any
signs identifying what it is, however, because there aren't any.
Is There a Detention
Center Near You? The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
spends more than $600 million per year to operate eight Service Processing Centers
and seven contract detention facilities. According to ICE, the average detention is
about one month, although some detainees are kept for several years.
What Are
We Protecting? Americans were taken by surprise by the terrorist attacks
on September 11, 2001 and in some way, everyone saw that day as a wake up
call. We wanted to feel secure again. We felt more vulnerable than perhaps we
have ever felt. In response to these feelings, our leaders declared a "War
on Terrorism" and they enacted legislation with names like the USA PATRIOT Act
so that we would feel like something was being done.
EFF
Analysis Of The Provisions Of The USA PATRIOT Act That Relate To Online
Activities: As far as the investigation has revealed so far,
computer crime played no role in the September 11, 2001 attacks or in
any previous terrorist attacks suffered by the United States. Computer
crime, especially when it results in danger to lives, is a serious offense,
but PATRIOT adds it to the list of "terrorist offenses." …Without explanation,
early versions of PATRIOT included even low-level computer intrusion and web
defacement as "terrorist offenses."
Editor's Note:
Defacing a web site is an act of criminal mischief, certainly something
to be prosecuted and punished, but it is not an act of terrorism. Stiffening
the punishment for this type of crime was mentioned in
the Republican
Party platform in the 2000 election cycle, at least a year before the
September 11 attacks.
"A Republican administration will work to improve international cooperation against
all forms of cross-border criminality, especially the burgeoning threat of cyber-crime
that threatens the vitality of American industries as diverse as aerospace and
entertainment. Nowhere has the [Clinton] administration been more timid in
protecting America's national interests than in cyberspace. Americans have
recently glimpsed the full vulnerability of their information systems to penetration and
massive disruption by amateurs. A sophisticated terrorist or adversary government
could potentially cripple a critical U.S. infrastructure, such as the electrical grid
or a military logistics system, in time of crisis. A new Republican government will
work closely with our international partners and the private sector to conceive and
implement a viable strategy for reducing America's vulnerability to the spectrum of
cyber threats, from the adolescent hacker launching a contagious computer virus to
the most advanced threat of strategic information warfare."
The Illusion of
National Security: No one, after 911, can doubt that our national
and our personal safety has been attacked by Islamic fanatics bent on imposing
their religion via "jihad" or holy war. Our government has been
energized. Not since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" have the forces
of Big Brother been so excited. They have a mission. They have a
plan. They have programs. They have regulations. All desperately
needed, says the government, to fight terrorism.
Total
Police State Takeover: The Second Patriot Act is a mirror image of
powers that Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler gave themselves. Whereas the First Patriot
Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and seriously
damaged the Seventh and the Tenth, the Second Patriot Act reorganizes the entire
Federal government as well as many areas of state government under the dictatorial
control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security and the FEMA NORTHCOM
military command.
Does
Bush's "Project Safe Neighborhoods" Violate the Constitution? A
Bush administration program that calls for federal agents to prosecute
gun crimes runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution, some legal scholars believe. "In
actuality and despite what the federal courts have felt constrained to do,
the federal government has no more legitimate constitutional authority over gun
crime that happens in one state than it does over jaywalking or drunk driving," said
Gene Healy, Cato Institute legal scholar.
Why
the Fourth Amendment is Right and Bush and Ashcroft are Wrong: Various
news stories in recent years document the fact that police have on
numerous occasions battered down doors, entered the wrong houses and
even killed innocent people. These no-knock raids illustrate very clearly
just how little protection Americans have against being subjected to
unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons and property.
Fight
Terrorism. There is no substitute for citizen control of government. Without
more meaningful checks on raw and often secret political power, that power may not only
fail to protect us from terrorists, that power can become terrorism.
Four
Myths About Muslims: Day after day the "war on terror" brings more
misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Most security measures are either
window dressings for public consumption or usurpations of civil liberties by power-hungry
elements within the bowels of bureaucracy.
Secret
Patriot Act II Destroys Remaining U.S. Liberty: Congressman
Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed
to read the first Patriot Act that was passed by the House on October 27, 2001. The
first Patriot Act was universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional
scholars from across the political spectrum.
The
Patriot Act: What it Says vs What it Means
USA
Patriot Act remains shrouded in secrecy: The USA Patriot Act remains
largely a mystery, its impact still shrouded in complexity and secrecy. The
legislation, overwhelmingly approved by Congress after the White House demanded new
tools to prevent another terrorist assault, resulted in the largest expansion of police
powers in decades.
Momentum growing against the Patriot
Act: "When the Patriot Act was passed, smoke was still coming out of the rubble of the Pentagon
and the twin towers" of New York's World Trade Center, [Congressman Butch Otter of Idaho] said. "We
rushed in order to provide some comfort to the people of the United States. It was a big mistake."
The Risks of Panic: We all
want to prevent future attacks, and see terrorists brought to justice for their heinous actions. But
this does not suggest that we should act precipitously without carefully contemplating the potential
implications, especially when there has been little (if any) meaningful analysis of such decisions' real
utility or effects. Calls for quick action abound, suggesting technical and non-technical approaches
intended to impede future terrorism or to calm an otherwise panicky public.
"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it
will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs
it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
Preserving
freedom, beating terror: As we settle in
for the long haul in the war against
terrorism, we are establishing the patterns that will
determine whether that war secures or loses our liberty. Much
depends on the kind of contribution average American citizens
make to this effort. How can we help protect American liberty,
and strengthen it in the process?
DOJ's Already Monitoring
Modems: The Department of Justice already is using its new anti-terrorism powers to monitor
cable modem users without obtaining a judge's permission first.
Emergency
warning systems "unreliable". Discovering that many components of the nation's
disaster warning systems still rely on decades-old equipment, an assessment of the systems by
a private firm has found them to be "incomplete, highly fragmented, unreliable and slow."
The government provides only the
illusion of security.
Anti-gun
Measure Billed as Anti-terror: Two
Republican senators want to close the so-called gun show loophole
in federal firearms laws. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, sent
a note to fellow GOP senators that they would attach a rider addressing gun
shows in the next appropriate bill. Their reasoning for backing the measure: that
it will help stop terrorists.
Save
the Constitution: Before we burn the Constitution in this war on terrorism,
why don't we try living under it? In an emergency executive order, President Bush
has pushed the panic button, thrown the baby out with the bathwater and discarded
200 years of the rule of law in this country. It's just a short step to
dictatorship when one man has the power to jail or even execute aliens in secret
kangaroo courts. And those are just some of the powers assumed by the president
in an order released last week.
Sept. 11 —
Mandate for big government? Several polls taken after last
fall's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington seemed to indicate that
the public was willing, in the interests of safety and security, to put more
trust in government than at any time in recent memory. Political science
professionals, liberals and Democrats were briefly ecstatic, as it appeared that
a new day was dawning. Leading Democratic strategists argued, in fact,
that the road to electoral success lay in embracing government solutions to
just about everything rather than downplaying the party's historic love affair
with the state. Bill Clinton, they argued, was flat wrong when he suggested
that the "era of big government is over." It was just beginning.
New
Federal Patriot Act Turns Retailers into Spies against Customers: Ordinary
businesses, from bicycle shops to bookstores to bowling alleys,
are being pressed into service on the home front in the war on terrorism. Under
the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush late last month,
they soon will be required to monitor their customers and report "suspicious
transactions" to the Treasury Department — though most businesses
may not be aware of this.
Police
State: Critics both left and right are saying the USA PATRIOT Act
not only strips Americans of fundamental rights but does little or
nothing to secure the nation from terrorist attacks.
The Real Terror: The most common phrase one
hears on the television and the radio, from nearly everyone who can be reached with a microphone, is "life will
never be the same again." This is doubtless true, for the psychological effects of the attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon will leave scars on just about every thinking person in this
country. But the phrase means more than that to certain of our government officials, for whom that
seemingly obvious phrase means "we're going to make sure that we concentrate as much power in the hands of the
government as possible, under the pretext of trying to keep the public safe."
House
Judiciary Committee Questions Use of PATRIOT Act: John Whitehead - president
of the Rutherford Institute, a human rights and civil liberties public interest law firm
in Charlottesville, Va. - called the inquiry "definitely a move in the right
direction. "The PATRIOT Act is, in my opinion, the most invasive violation of
constitutional liberties I've seen in my 28 years practicing law," he said.
Analysis
of "Patriot II": Like its predecessor, [it] is a grab bag of provisions
spread throughout the legal landscape. One clear difference exists however. Unlike
USAPA, USAPA II has no provisions that "sunset" after a certain time. All of its
changes are permanent.
Vanishing
Liberties: Where's the Press? On March 18 [2003], the Associated
Press reported that at John Carroll University, in a Cleveland suburb, Justice Antonin Scalia
said that "most of the rights you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires"
because "the Constitution just sets minimums." Accordingly, in wartime, Scalia
emphasized, "the protections will be ratcheted down to the constitutional minimum."
Measuring
Freedom: The war on terrorism has hardly begun, but it has already demolished
the Fourth Amendment, an important basis of our civil liberties. To feel more secure against
Muslim terrorists, we have made ourselves less secure from government.
House
Judiciary Chairman Hesitant on Patriot Act II. The Bush
administration's plans to expand a post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism law
face resistance from a powerful House Republican who says he's not even sure
he wants the government to keep its new powers.
Number
of secret inquiries has gone way up since Sept. 11: Since the Sept. 11
attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have dramatically increased the use of
two little-known powers that allow authorities to tap telephones, seize bank and
telephone records and obtain other information in counterterrorism investigations
with no immediate court oversight, according to officials and newly
disclosed documents.
Why the Pentagon Wants to Spy on
Your Shopping: Did you realize the Pentagon will soon know about every gun, book, magazine,
Twinkie, condom and everything else you buy? The reason for the massive database: to seek "patterns
indicative of terrorist activity," defense officials said [recently].
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and
free speech groups representing librarians, publishers, writers and others filed a brief that strongly supports
a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the provision of the USA Patriot Act that gives the FBI virtually
unlimited access to personal, organization and business records, including bookstore and library records.
CALEA:
These Are Not Your Father's Wiretaps. Privacy advocates fear that
the FBI's need to monitor Internet Age technologies, such as voice over IP, will
give it far too sweeping powers.
Editor's Note:
The Pen Register statute governs real time interception of "numbers
dialed or otherwise transmitted on the telephone line to which such device is
attached." [That means Caller-ID among other things.] Although the use
of such devices requires a court order, it does not require probable cause: there is
no judicial discretion, and the court must authorize the surveillance upon government
certification. A government attorney need only certify to the court that the
"information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing
criminal investigation." Therefore, the Pen Register and Trap and Trace statute
lacks many of the privacy protections found in the wiretap
statute.*
Operation Eroding
Freedom: Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism. Less than
six weeks after the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC,
Congress passed anti-terrorism legislation that received minimal media coverage and
triggered almost no public protest. Yet the new legislation pushes aside the
Bill of Rights in favor of granting the federal government sweeping new powers to
investigate and detain anyone deemed a threat to national security.
Homeland
Security Bill a "Threat to Our Civil Liberties": While the announcement
that Congress will likely reach a compromise on the proposed new homeland security agency
is seen by many as a victory for Republicans in general and President Bush specifically,
some conservatives complain that the deal gives up too much.
The Homeland Security Monstrosity:
Congress spent just a few short hours voting to create the biggest new federal bureaucracy since World War II,
not that the media or even most members of Congress paid much attention to the process. Yet our most basic freedoms
as Americans - privacy in our homes, persons, and possessions; confidentiality in our financial and medical
affairs; openness in our conversations, telephone, and internet use; unfettered travel; indeed the basic freedom
not to be monitored as we go through our daily lives - have been dramatically changed.
Don't Sacrifice Liberty to Terrorism:
How Americans respond to the terrorist attack of September 11th is vital to the survival of our nation's unique
liberties. Which will we choose for our future? Liberty, free of massive government intrusion in our
lives? Or the false promise of a neatly tucked safety blanket?
Forfeiting
"Enduring Freedom" for "Homeland Security": A Constitutional
analysis of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 [PDF]
Ashcroft: Good
intentions on a bad road: [Bush and Ashcroft] argue convincingly, I think,
that roving wiretaps, reading people's e-mail, putting video cameras on every corner, and
perusing their library habits will make it easier to catch terrorists before they act. They
can even make a case that by establishing a Castro-like system of informants or requiring
us all to carry ID cards they will be able to make it more difficult for terrorists to
move around. The problem is that, once all of this is in place, we will no longer be
living in the same country we lived in prior to Sept. 11.
Libraries and the Patriot Legislation: The
USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement's surveillance and investigative powers. In particular,
the law raises complicated questions with respect to what constitutes a business record and the law's broad
definition of computer trespassers. The law also creates a new relationship between domestic criminal
investigations related to foreign intelligence.
The FBI has not been here. Librarians, who
can be required by the FBI to submit library records of private citizens under the PATRIOT Act — and
who are prohibited from making these requests public — have invented some clever, legal strategies
to fight back.
Feds Deny Asking ISPs to Watch E-mails: Last
month, the European Union passed a resolution that would require all ISPs to store for up to seven years e-mail message
headers, Web-surfing histories, chat logs, pager records, phone and fax connections, passwords, and more. Already,
Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain have drafted laws that comply with the directive. Technology experts say the
U.S. federal government may try to do the same thing using the vast law enforcement allowances provided under
the USA Patriot Act.
Don't Ask For More! I
believe the time has come to insist that public officials put every law they propose through a common-sense filter
before they do any more damage to our present and future liberties. Federal and state governments are
rushing through legislation they say is designed to combat terrorism. Others say they are misusing their
powers to hide the fact that they have failed us miserably. New laws will not provide the safety we need
and so richly deserve. But common sense will.
PC shield for
terrorists: President Bush should not be surprised if millions of Americans come to the
conclusion that the "war on terror" is nothing but a propaganda cover for increasing the police powers
of the government over native-born loyal citizens.
Protecting Liberty in a Permanent War: With
the detention of Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah al-Mujahir), the Bush administration has made an extraordinary
assertion of power. It is sweeping and unnerving. The administration contends that, by merely designating a
person as an "enemy combatant," the government can hold him in prison without according him a trial.
Indeed, the government does not have to charge him with any criminal offense, much less present evidence of
an offense. That is true even if the person in question is an American citizen and is apprehended on
American soil.
Security
Bill Raises Constitutional Concerns: Provisions of the legislation proposed
to create a Department of Homeland Security have raised concerns about constitutional
rights and open government among some members of Congress. H.R. 5005 also
exempts DHLS from the Freedom of Information Act under certain circumstances.
Law may impede rights: A little
known provision of the new anti-terrorism law may make it easier for FBI agents to walk into public libraries
and search records and computers for signs of subversive activity. But don't bother asking your local
librarian if anyone has been peeking in the files or checking the computers. The law says they can't talk
about searches - not to you, not to the press, not to their congressmen and not to each other. Local
librarians fear the new law could be abused and no one would know about it.
FISA: It's
Not Everywhere You Want It To Be. Despite the mistakes of our
past, the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in October 2001, has taken us back to the 1950s by
removing the safeguards on information sharing between the CIA and its counterpart
domestic agencies. The CIA, FBI, NSA and INS, among other agencies, maintain extensive
databases full of sensitive information on American citizens. Until the USA PATRIOT Act,
laws such as the FISA regulated the sharing of this information between agencies.
Bipartisan
SAFE Act Aimed at Reining In PATRIOT Act: Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) have introduced a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Senate
that would amend the PATRIOT Act to limit the alleged Fourth Amendment encroachments
of the use of surveillance equipment and search warrants by the federal government.
Ron Paul says the Home Security
Act Was a Race to Judgement: Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex., continues to assail the recently passed
Homeland Security Act, saying that a full text of the 480 plus page bill was not available to his fellows
on the floor of the House until just 2 hours before the history-making vote that literally reconfigures
government.
Democrat Senators Stretched the
Patriot Act to Reach Beyond Terrorism. NewsMax.com has learned that the FBI's use of the Patriot
Act to justify its involvement in a non-terrorism case in Las Vegas can be traced to the handiwork of Senate
Democrats.
The Forever War: How long can an emergency
last? Since 9/11, anyone who has questioned a proposed extension of government power or
contraction of individual liberty has had to deal with an intimidating three-word rejoinder: "We're
at war."
Patriotic Farce: Losing Our Liberty in the Name of
Fighting Terrorism. Is the government protecting us from terrorists or is the government using
9-11 as a pretext to establish a massive system of government control over our lives?
Police State USA: Now
that Republicans are about to assume control of the U.S. Senate, it's time to focus attention on the real
problems with the Homeland Security Act. It is nothing short of a prescription for a full-scale
police state in the USA. It is, as crafted, deeply flawed, dangerous and a cure worse than
the disease.
Congress Targets the Patriot
Act. The use of the Patriot Act to pursue a case unrelated to terrorism has provided
ammunition to those who want to limit the scope of the law.
"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the
provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."
- James Madison
The Ashcroftonian assault on liberty presses
on. Last week the Justice Department scored a major victory with the arrest of Al Qaeda
operative Iyman Faris, a naturalized U.S. citizen whom the Justice Department says plotted to destroy the
Brooklyn Bridge. What many do not know though, is that the Government did this the old fashioned
way — without expanded police power.
The Patriot Act goes too far. The
bill directly threatens the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the
Constitution. In essence, while aimed at protection against terrorism, the Patriot Act goes too far and
encroaches on and seriously erodes rights that this country was set up to protect.
How
the Protection of Law Was Lost: The Patriot Act and follow-up
proposals are destroying habeas corpus and permitting warrantless
searches and spying. Supposedly, these police state measures are directed
toward terrorists, but they are certain to expand, just as asset freezes
and forfeitures expanded.
PATRIOT
Act Opponents Draw Justice Department's Ire. The spokesman for the
U.S. Justice Department Wednesday [10/15/2003] criticized local government officials
and activists across the nation who continue to do battle with the USA PATRIOT Act and
urge local law enforcement agents not to assist in its enforcement.
USA
PATRIOT Act and Domestic Detention Policy: With America under attack, and
lives at risk, civil liberties cannot remain inviolable. But that does not mean
civil liberties can be arbitrarily flouted without establishing, first, that national
security interests are compelling and, second, that those interests can be vindicated
only by encroaching on individual rights. Some parts of the PATRIOT Act do not
pass that test.
You Are a Suspect:
If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical
prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic
grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you
attend — all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense
Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
More Surveillance on the
Way: The USA Patriot Act opened loopholes that let electronic communications service providers
give customer records to law enforcement officials without a warrant. In lay terms, the folks that
provide your email account are an electronic service provider, and your actual emails could fall into the
category of customer records.
Terror laws "eat away at privacy":
"The internet is being turned into a surveillance device and eventually surveillance will be a core design
component of computers," warned Simon Davies, head of Privacy International.
Banks and Suspicion:
Government-required surveillance provisions in the newly passed antiterrorism bills could force banks to rob
their customers of both financial privacy and convenience. But how will the provisions aid in
curtailing terrorism?
President
Signs Anti-Terrorism Bill Amid Privacy Concerns: "This bill does too much damage to the Constitution,"
said Steve Dasbach, the Libertarian Party's national director. "[It] massively increases the government's
surveillance powers, diminishes Americans' privacy and restricts our fundamental civil liberties."
Not So Fast: "Freedom itself was attacked this
morning," President Bush declared on September 11. Many have echoed him in the weeks since then,
arguing that the terrorists behind the attacks despise our way of life, which they seek to disrupt by inciting
fear. Their success hinges not only on how we respond as individuals — whether we go about our
business undeterred — but on how our government responds. If it rushes to adopt authoritarian
measures in the name of fighting terrorism, "freedom itself" could be added to the list of casualties.
Is anti-terrorism
anti-Constitution?: New federal powers concern analysts from both sides of the political
spectrum. Last week, President Bush signed into law new powers sought by Attorney General John Ashcroft
and the Justice Department that will allow federal law-enforcement agencies to "wiretap" the entire
Internet. Under the USA Patriot Act of 2001, law-enforcement agencies can also, in "rare instances,"
search a person's home without informing that homeowner for up to 90 days – the so-called "sneak-and-peak"
provision – as well as implant a hidden "key logger" device on that suspect's computer, allowing
law-enforcement officials to capture passwords and monitor every keystroke of a suspect's computer.
The Hilla-Reno Test:
Oops, they did it again. Congress passed another bill that significantly increases the power of the federal
government. It is for our protection, so they tell us. Just as in the past, the bill was rushed on
through. There was very little time for anyone who was actually voting on the legislation to review its
details and, as usual, this is where the devil is. The bill has already been signed into law by President
Bush and will be implemented immediately.
The Chill from the Pentagon:
The Pentagon assures us we have nothing to fear from its new Total Information Awareness (TIA) counterterrorism
project, a colossal effort to assemble and "mine" massive databases of our credit-card purchases, car rentals,
airline tickets, official records, and the like. The aim is to monitor the public's whereabouts, movements, and
transactions to glean suspicious patterns that indicate terrorist planning and other shenanigans. Well,
we shouldn't always trust the assurance of the Pentagon.
Total Information Awareness: The Total
Information Awareness project is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Awareness
Office. The office is headed by Admiral (retired) John Poindexter who is responsible for conceiving the
project. TIA purports to capture the "information signature" of people so that the government can track
potential terrorists and criminals involved in "low-intensity/low-density" forms of warfare and crime. The
goal is to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible and using computer
algorithms and human analysis to detect potential activity. A key component of the TIA project is to
develop data-mining or knowledge discovery tools that will sort through the massive amounts of information to
find patterns and associations.
Risks of Total Surveillance:
The U.S. Public Policy committee of ACM (USACM) is concerned that the proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA)
Program, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will fail to achieve its stated goal of
"countering terrorism through prevention". Further, we believe that the vast amount of information and
misinformation collected by any system resulting from this program is likely to be misused to the detriment of
many innocent American citizens.
Total
Information Awareness Program Delayed by Senate: Civil libertarians from
both sides of the political aisle were successful Thursday [1/23/2003] in temporarily
halting the Pentagon's "Total Information Awareness" program, which included plans for
a new government "data mining" operation unparalleled by any past U.S.
intelligence-gathering effort.
Bill Clinton Backs Poindexter-like
Snoop Program: Poindexter's Total Information Awareness proposal envisions collection of personal
data on individuals' driver's licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals, medical prescriptions,
banking transactions and other records previously off limits to government investigators without a
court-approved subpoena.
Information Awareness Office Makes Us a Nation of
Suspects. Embedded in the nearly 500 pages of the current House version of the Homeland Security
Act is language that could give the federal government sweeping powers to secretly monitor e-mails, bank
accounts, credit card transactions, telephone calling cards, medical records, and travel documents - all
without a search warrant - and keep that data in a centralized database.
Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying:
Robert Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said, "Because the FISA now applies to ordinary criminal
matters if they are dressed up as national security inquiries, the new rules could open the door to
circumvention of the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements. The result: rubber-stamp judicial
consent to phone and Internet surveillance, even in regular criminal cases…."
Ashcroft
Eager to Expand Police Powers.
The Next Casualty: Your
Freedom. Beware of bureaucrats disguised as patriots. In the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the government has instituted sweeping new security procedures.
However, one of the "unintended consequences" could be the further loss of our civil liberties and our right to
privacy. If that happens, then the terrorists will have won, regardless of how safe we think we are.
Do We Need More Government Surveillance?
Safety and freedom are not mutually exclusive. I have been surprised at my fellow citizens willingness to
trade their personal freedoms for security.
Haste makes privacy waste: Feds
cautioned to slow down break-neck anti-terror agenda.
Conservatives
Urge Caution on Expanding Surveillance Power: While the U.S. Justice Department seeks new
surveillance power to track down terrorists, some conservatives are casting a skeptical eye on what they see as
an erosion of civil liberties. "Before we begin dismantling constitutionally protected safeguards and
diminishing fundamental rights to privacy, we should first examine why last week's attacks occurred," said
Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), a senior Member of the Judiciary Committee.
Yield
no more freedom: Just as the drug war has not reduced the amount of
illegal drugs used in this country, the sacrifice of our civil liberties on the
altar of national security has not brought us security.
A bipartisan call to go slow:
Across the political spectrum, Ashcroft plan raises sharp constitutional concern.
Libertarians
Frown on New FBI Surveillance Powers: "There's no evidence that these
new police powers will actually stop terrorists, but there is a clear and present
danger that they will curtail the fundamental civil liberties of Americans. That's
why this bill should worry Americans more than it should worry terrorists. And that's
why Congress should reject it," said Steve Dasbach, the Libertarian Party's
national director.
Terrorist Attacks Trigger "Grave
Crisis" in Civil Rights: The latest casualty in last month's terrorist attacks is the Bill of
Rights according to a number of liberal civil rights groups that gathered in Washington Monday [10/01/2001] to
criticize the Bush administration's proposals to improve safety and security at the nation's airports.
America
Under Siege: It is vitally important that we keep in mind several key
principles. One of the most important is contained in Alexander Hamilton's
warning that war or the threat of war "will compel nations the most attached to liberty
to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to
destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length
are willing to run the risk of being less free."
Anti-terrorism
bill damages liberty, foes say.
A Surveillance
Superstate Looms.
Safety at Any Price? Should
Americans give up civil liberties for security?
Terrorism Act threatens our
rights: Proposal would unleash secret surveillance networks.
Documentary film: 911: The Road to Tyranny:
The government needed a crisis to convince the people to willingly give up their liberty in exchange for
safety. 911 the Road to Tyranny documents the ruthless history of governments
orchestrating terrorist attacks against their own people to scare them into total submission.
Contrasting
Views on Preserving Civil Liberties in the Aftermath of an Attack
A Bad Year for Privacy: Long
before planes slammed into the World Trade Center and anthraxed mail snarled Capitol Hill, privacy mavens had
worried that a terrorist attack would spur Congress to approve invasive new laws. Then came
Sept. 11's deadly attacks, followed by President Bush signing the USA PATRIOT Act the
following month.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
- Samuel Johnson
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