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WHY THE "PATRIOT ACT" IS UNPATRIOTIC AND MUST BE REPEALED
Congress passed the PATRIOT ACT , within a month after September 11th. It acted out of fear, pressured by the Bush administration, and gave the federal government huge new powers that, while likely to do little to stop terrorism, are a threat to the freedom the War on Terror is supposed to protect.
In conflict with the basic ideas of the U.S. Constitution, it eliminated longstanding checks and balances while giving sweeping new powers to domestic and international law enforcement and intelligence agencies. At 342 pages long, it made changes to 15 different laws. Some sections - providing compensation for the 9-11 victims, increasing funding for translators who understand Arabic -were common sense. Many other parts of the Act were not. And, as the Congressional and FBI reviews of what went wrong on 9-11 showed, there was nothing that allowed the terrorists to attack us on that day that the Patriot Act would have prevented. There is absolutely no evidence our constitutional liberties were the cause of the government's inability to intercept, arrest or block the efforts of the alleged Al Qaeda terrorists.
1. The Act expands all four tools of surveillance: wiretaps, search warrants, pen & trap order and subpoenas. It also expands the ability of the government to spy on Americans through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). As a result, the government can spy on web surfing by innocent Americans, including the terms entered into Internet search engines, just by telling a judge the spying MIGHT lead to information "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation. The person spied on need not be a target of the investigation. The request for permission to do the spying MUST be granted -and the government is not obligated to report to said court what it does, nor does it have to tell the person, as is normally the case, that he has been subject to an investigation. Therefore, the person cannot challenge evidence in court as being obtained unconstitutionally, because he won't know they got the evidence. Illegal, incorrect or politically motivated false evidence can not be challenged if gained under the Act.
2. The FBI and CIA and State/Local Agencies can now operate in this country against Americans; after the Watergate era abuses, the CIA was forbidden, legally, from spying on Americans. That "Chinese Wall" is now gone.
3. Both FBI and CIA and State/Local Agencies can go from phone to phone, computer to computer, without demonstrating that each is being used by a suspect or a target of a court-granted order. Although it makes sense to pursue a potential terrorist with multiple cell phones, the Act allows FBI/CIA and State/Local Agencies to do much more than that - it lets them spread a web of follow-on wiretaps or other surveillance to other phones with little or nothing to do with the alleged possible terrorist. With the "pen & trap" form of wiretap, they no longer have to inform any court system what information they received or where they broadened their investigation into the new target. They can get a "John Doe" wiretap order where they do not even have to tell a court who the American citizen is.
4. The Act allows the FBI and CIA and State/Local Agencies to ask Internet Service Providers (ISP) to hand over all "non-content" information (i.e., who the message is going to), without court order or subpoena. (Section 212) And it expands the records an ISP must give the elected and public officials and with a simple subpoena, without any court review, to include the records of when and for how long an e-mail occurred, and the means of payment for the internet access, including credit card and bank account numbers. (Sections 210,211)
5. The Act allows the FBI and CIA and State/Local Agencies FBI to obtain a person's library records and bookstore purchase records, without notice to the person investigated, as well as school, employment and medical records.
6. The Act allows U.S. citizens to be more easily spied upon by the FBI and CIA and State/Local Agencies and other intelligence agencies by expanding the powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Previously, FISA allowed the government to spy on you when it suspected a person was a foreign agent and that suspicion was "the purpose" of the surveillance. The Patriot Act expanded that so the government could spy on you if it suspects you are a foreign agent and that suspicion is merely one "significant purpose" among several for the surveillance. So if a person is opposed to a government policy, that person might be spied upon if the elected and public officials believes (or pretends to believe) he is a spy but also if the government has other "significant purposes" in spying on him -like suppressing dissent. It used to be that to get a FISA search warrant, the government had to show the special, secret FISA court "probable cause" evidence of a crime (like spying or conspiracy). Under the Patriot Act, the government need not show "probable cause" to get a FISA warrant before wiretapping a American citizen (two or more generations), such as you.
7. After the 1970s discovery that the FBI and CIA had been spying on thousands of non-violent, non-criminal peace activists, Dr. Martin Luther King, and others, Congress blocked foreign intelligence agencies from participating in domestic law enforcement. That is now repealed by the Act.
In 2001 there were 924 special warrants for secret wiretaps granted the federal government; In 2002 there were 1,228. "The FBI has used these warrants to break into homes, offices, hotel rooms and cars, install hidden cameras, search luggage and listen in on phone conversations. Agents have pried into safe deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and intercepted communications." (Ted Birdis, Associated Press (AP) "Special warrants used increasingly," The Oregonian page 2, May 2, 2003.
On May 9th "The Senate passed a new law, making it still easier for the government to get wiretaps on US citizens. Previously, it had to show at least "a reasonable belief' the target is "an agent of a foreign power" or organization. (AP article, "Senate widening surveillance law," page 4, The Oregonian, May 9, 2003)
This November, Attorney General Ashcroft issued new orders to the FBI so it can conduct a "threat assessment" of possible terrorists without any evidence of a crime or national security threat, as required to begin a more formal preliminary or full investigation. The FBI will be allowed to collect information on "individuals, groups and organizations of possible investigative interest" in national security cases with expanded powers to do so. The relaxed guidelines allow the FBI to do a credit check or run a person's name through law enforcement databases without opening a formal investigation. "This is exactly what Americans worry about," says Timothy Edgar of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's the notion that the government can put your life under a microscope without any evidence you are doing anything wrong." Curt Anderson, "FBI gains more leeway in terror cases," page 5, The Oregonian, Nov. 6, 2003)
The Patriot Act is part of a broader attack on your Constitutional Rights in your country by President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Here's what else they are doing to our rights and those of our children (LOregon State Senate Bill 449 of 1999)
Last year, Ashcroft told all FBI offices to give the "minimum" amount of information possible in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
A year after 9-11, the Pentagon created a US Northern Command (Northcom) , which weakens the .1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits use of the military to enforce US laws. "Last Thanksgiving (2001), outside Miami International Airport, there were National Guardsmen in a tank, as if AI Qaeda was going to roll up in a military-type assault," scoffs Gene Healy of the libertarian Cato Institute. "It does weird things to our political culture when we start getting used to armed troops in the streets, when we find that comforting." (Robert Dreyfuss, "Bringing tile War Home," page .18, The Nation magazine, May 26,2003)
In the Senate, Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have authored a bill to repeal the worst parts of the Act. In the House, Denis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has a bill that would repeal more of the Act. Parts of the Act are scheduled to sunset (end) next year. But other parts are not. Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) is pushing to make permanent the Patriot Act. And Ashcroft has a Patriot Act II waiting in the wings. Like the first Act, it's pieces were written years before September 11; it is an FBI and prosecutor's wish list -and a further anti-Constitutional civil liberties nightmare.
This is not how you defend freedom -it is how you end it.
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