Are you safer now that the Patriot Act has become permanent?
by researcher Saturday, Jul. 23, 2005 at 6:50 AM


The Patriot act has become permanent thanks to the Republican majority in Congress. Are you safer.Presented are some excerpts and how did this come to be? It clearly violates our Bill of Rights!



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Here are just a few excerpts from The House judiciary, dissenting John Conyers:

rawstory.com/news/2005/democrats_dissent_patriot_act_721

Did you take out a book from the library about Osama Bin Laden? That put you on a government list!

We are concerned that these sections can be used to obtain very private information on purely innocent people. Whether it is library records, medical information or gun purchase records, the government should have access to them only when it can at clearly state why it needs them and why the person they pertain to is a terrorist or closely related to one. For example, the American Library Association has confirmed that the federal government has gone into a library and asked for a list of everyone who checked out a book on Osama bin Laden. In the wake of the horrific attack of September 11, it is obvious that many innocent people may go seeking information on why it happened. This search clearly gathered information on innocent people, who had the right to privacy in their reading habits. As a matter of fact, since 9/11, the American Library Association found that libraries have received over 200 formal and informal requests for materials, including 49 requests from federal officers, although it cannot be confirmed what authority (if any) was cited by the federal officers for obtaining this information.

Sec. 505 - Miscellaneous national security authorities – “National Security Letters”

We are concerned with section 505 of the PATRIOT Act, which grants law enforcement sweeping authority to issue national security letters (NSLs). National security letters are a form of “administrative subpoena” for personal records which compel the holder of the records to turn them over to the government. NSLs grant the Justice Department access to telephone and internet records, financial documents, and consumer records without any sort of judicial oversight. It is important to note that subsequent legislation redefined “financial institutions” subject to NSLs to include travel agencies, pawn brokers, casinos and car dealers, among other things. In fact, it is hard to imagine what type of record wouldn’t be covered under these new definitions.

You think you have a right to peaceably assemble to protest a government action? Well if someone gets hurt, aany protestors might be called "domestic terrorists!

Sec. 802 - Definition of domestic terrorism.

Section 802 of the USA Patriot Act created a category of crime called “domestic terrorism,” which makes criminal any activities that “involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States” when the actor intends to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” Previously, there was no analogous provision in statutory law. The overly broad nature of this provision is reason for concern when examined in light of its potential application to and effect on peaceful protests. The broad language of section 802 could potentially be used to punish participants of such peaceful demonstrations as a Greenpeace rally or the Million Man March, both of which fall squarely within the First Amendment, but which could also be the scene of an accidental injury and subsequent prosecution under this provision.



If someone suspects you have any links to terrorism, you can be held indefinitely, without benifit of a lawyer.

. Material witness statute

An undisclosed number of the individuals detained after September 11, 2001, have been arrested on material witness warrants pursuant to the Department’s authority under 18 U.S.C. § 3144. Although the Department refuses to reveal the exact number of individuals who have been held as such witnesses, a November 2002 Washington Post article identified 44 material witnesses and asserts that almost half of them never testified before a grand jury. In its May 13 letter to the Committee, the Department put the number of material witnesses detained as of January 2003 in conjunction with September 11 to be fewer than 50. The Justice Department has subsequently refused to update that number.

The Department has refused to provide any further information on those being held as material witnesses, claiming that it cannot do so because of the grand jury secrecy rules and sealing orders that have been entered by the courts, and has refused to release the orders themselves. Press reports, however, indicate that many individuals have been held as material witnesses for significant periods of time prior to testifying before grand juries, if they testified at all.

This implies the government is using the material witness statute not to secure testimony, but to secure the detention of individuals it cannot connect with terrorism or other crimes. It appears the department is holding detainees despite the fact it could secure their testimony by deposition, which the statute provides for. It also appears from news articles that at least two individuals, Mohammed El-Yacoubi and Abdulmuhssin El-Yacoubi, were held as material witnesses in connection with a grand jury investigation in which they were the targets of the investigation.

The Inspector General has agree to investigate how the statute was wrongly applied to Brandon Mayfield, arrested for bombing a train in Madrid, and what role his Muslim faith played in the FBI’s decision to hold him as a material witness.

The US government permits torture.

Torture

We now know that the Justice Department led the effort to legally excuse acts of torture. The abuse of Iraqi and other prisoners was not just the work of a few rogue soldiers, but the obvious consequence of the Justice Department declaring that the President and his military are accountable to no one. A number of legal opinions generated by the Justice Department were either leaked or formally released by the President last year. They include:

• January 22, 2002 Department of Justice memorandum regarding “Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees”

• February 1, 2002 Attorney General Letter to President regarding status of Taliban detainees;

• February 7, 2002 Department of Justice memorandum regarding “Status of Taliban forces Under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949"

• February 26, 2002 Department of Justice memorandum regarding “Potential Legal Constraints applicable to Interrogations of Persons Captured by U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan”

• August 1, 2002 Department of Justice letter regarding application of Convention Against Torture and Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court

• August 1, 2002 Department of Justice memorandum regarding “Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A.”

In tandem, these documents argued that 1) the Geneva Conventions and other international laws banning torture did not apply to our detainees, 2) if they did, they could be construed so narrowly that events such as those at Abu Ghraib are not legally “torture,” and 3) even if those acts could be defined as “torture,” the Administration and its military are not liable under the President’s Commander-in-chief authority and other defenses. On December 30, 2004, the Justice Department released a new memo that improved upon its previous rulings: it redefined what “torture” was under the law to no longer require excruciating and agonizing pain equivalent to organ failure or death, and reversed its previous position that those committing torture could be shielded from criminal liability by good intentions. It did not however, explicitly revoke the previous memos’ holding that the President’s Commander-in-chief authority was not bound by any American or international law.

It is within the Justice Department’s discretion whether to prosecute contractors who are implicated in the scandal, and to date, has indicted one person for criminal assault for killing a detainee within his custody. And while “the Justice Department has received a number of criminal referrals involving allegations of prisoner mistreatment by CIA operatives,” it has not brought any charges. Finally, the Justice Department does have the authority to charge members of the military for their criminal acts over seas if either a) they are no long in the military, or b) committed the acts with non-military accomplices. This authority may be appropriate to exercise in the instances where the military is refusing to charge its members even in contradiction with the recommendations of its own investigators. For example, 17 soldiers were recently found to be responsible for the death of three detainees, yet their commanders will not press charges; only one was discharged and one was given a letter of reprimand

The Justice Department is authorized to give legal advice in response to a request from the President, federal agencies, and military departments. Under this authority, the Justice Department laid the legal grounds for the indefinite and illegal detention of enemy combatants by advising that al Qaeda and Taliban forces were not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. The Department also determined that individuals arrested in the United States both citizens and non-citizens, were not entitled to the protection of the sixth amendment and if certified as enemy combatants, could be held by the military incommunicado without access to lawyers or the court for so long as the government deemed it necessary. Instead of meeting the procedures required under the Constitution and our international agreements, the Administration has constructed a farce of process and fairness.

Do you go online, participate in discussion groups? Watch what you say because the FBI are there too!

The most drastic changes undertaken by Attorney General Ashcroft are outlined in Section VI (see, “Counter Terrorism Activities and other Authorizations”) of the new guidelines, which impact First and Fourth Amendment rights. Among other things, that section specifically authorizes activities that will detect information about terrorism and other crimes “even in the absence of checking of leads, preliminary inquiry, and full investigation.” For instance, the guidelines authorize the collection and use of information from databases either public, commercial or non-profit, otherwise known as “data mining.” Second, agents are authorized to “attend any place or event on the same terms and conditions as the public generally.” Third, the FBI can “conduct research including online research, accessing online sites and forums, on the same terms as the public generally.” Finally, the guidelines explicitly declare that files kept as a result of any investigations conducted under the newly enacted guidelines, including those authorized in Section VI, are not subject to the protections of the Privacy Act.



Are your kids now more protected from violence and shootings in schools?

To address this problem, during the course of the Committee’s consideration of HR 3199, Mr. Conyers and Mr. Van Hollen offered an amendment to make the transfer of a firearm to someone the person knows is on the Justice Department’s Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File (a.k.a. the “terrorist watch list”) fall under the prohibition of providing “material support” to terrorists. As the name implies, this is a list of known violent gang and terrorist organization members. It seems apparent that if the U.S. is willing to wage war in order to keep WMDs out of the hands of possible terrorists, the U.S. should keep domestic guns out of the hands of terrorists in the United States.

Unfortunately, this amendment failed by a vote of 15-22. Shockingly, a number of Republicans stated they opposed the amendment because it would harm the Second Amendment rights of known terrorists. While they are perfectly willing to intrude on Americans’ free speech rights, search their houses without warrants and without cause, and to lock people up indefinitely without charging them of any crime, these same Members argued that a terrorist’s right to bear arms was more important than trying to stop terrorists from buying guns and potentially using them for another deadly attack on the United States.

Are you now safer while flying because of all the extra airport security? Not really, because CONGRESS failed to stop the sale of heavy duty guns to TERRORISTS that can shoot down your airliner!

B. Preventing the Sale and Manufacture of .50-caliber Guns

While current law does regulate the transfer of certain firearms including machine guns, it does not regulate the sale of .50-caliber sniper rifles which are advertised by their manufacturers as capable of shooting down aircraft. These weapons are important for military use, but are currently also available for purchase by the general public, including terrorists. We know that in the 1980s Essam Al-Ridi purchased .50-caliber rifles in Texas and then shipped them to Osama bin Laden. Similarly, in 1989, a gunrunner named Florin Krasniqi came to the U.S. to purchase .50-caliber rifles and subsequently shipped them to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Capable of inflicting a devastatingly accurate impact from well over a mile away, the U.S. Army handbook on urban combat states that 50 caliber sniper rifles are intended for use as anti-materiel weapons, designed to attack bulk fuel tanks and other high-value targets from a distance, using "their ability to shoot through all but the heaviest shielding material.” These weapons are a serious threat for use against civil aviation, hazardous cargo transport vehicles and rail cars carrying hazardous materials such as chlorine gas. And needless to say, their ability to emit powerful projectiles accurately over long distances make 50 caliber rifles a favorite weapon of war lords, drug cartels and terrorists due to its unparalleled potential for damage.

During the course of the Committee’s consideration of HR 3199, Ms. Lofgren introduced an amendment which would have made it a crime under the material support provision of the Patriot Act to transfer a .50-caliber sniper rifle to any person the transferor knows to be a member of Al Qaeda. Obviously, such an amendment would provide an important mechanism to help keep dangerous, high-powered weapons out of the hands of known terrorists. However, once again, the Republicans voted down this necessary and commonsense measure to help protect the United States from harm

Did Congress increase funds for the first responders to an incident?

Increasing Grants to First Responders

Another problem in the war on terror is that the United States has no sufficient allocated money to keep our country safe. Local and state law enforcement officers have been laid off, schools are getting more dangerous by the second, and not enough persons have been hired to perform intelligence, terrorism and homeland security duties.

In local communities across the United States, the first line of defense against terrorists and other violent crime is the local police department. More police on the streets could be useful in thwarting potential terrorist attacks and also protecting the community from the more conventional violent criminals and violent crimes.

During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration implemented the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The goal of the program was to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets of America’s communities. A new GAO Report indicates that the COPS program did cause the level of violent crimes in America to decline. During the time that agencies were spending COPS funds, violent crime declined. For example, between 1994 and 2001, the number of violent crimes declined from about 1.9 million to about 1.4 million (or about 23 percent), and the violent crime rate per 100,000 population declined from 714 to 504 (or about 29 percent).

Mr. Weiner and Ms. Sanchez therefore offered an amendment to expand the grants available for such measures. Their amendment would increase funding for first responders in state and local communities, provide for retention funds to keep law enforcement in depressed areas, and increase funding for school security as well as intelligence, terrorism, and homeland security programs. Unfortunately, the Republicans derailed this amendment by raising a point of order on the grounds of germaneness

Did Congress set up a method, to get wrong people listed off these Terror Watch lists?

Improving the Terrorist Watch List

Finally, there is true need for an accurate and up-to-date Terrorist Watch List such that it can be effectively used to identify and catch suspected and known terrorists. To this end, it is important to ensure that the list does not misidentify people and therefore divert needed resources away from catching the true terrorists.

Mr. Van Hollen introduced an amendment which would require the Inspector General to report to Congress on the progress of the Terrorist Screening Center in developing procedures by which to remove misidentified names from the Terrorist Watch List. This amendment is important on two fronts: (1) it will ensure that resources are not spent tracking the wrong people, and (2) it will protect Americans and other persons who are mistakenly identified as terrorists by providing a mechanism for them to clear their name. The much publicized case of Senator Edward Kennedy spending many hours to clear his name from this list highlights the problem confronting ordinary citizens. And, our counterterrorism officers need to be assured that they can focus on stopping those who truly intend to do harm to the United States. This amendment was rejected by the majority.

Considering that the majority often suggests we are in a perpetual war against terrorists, including terrorists who wish to attack the United States, we are disappointed that they flatly rejected amendments which would directly help the United States fight terrorists and prevent terrorism. That all of these reasonable measures to enure our safety were rejected contributed to our collective decision not to support this bill.

Are you now safer from terrorism?

If you decide to attend a peaceful protest of some “governmental action or policy, you possibly could be called a “domestic terrorist” if it became ugly through no fault of your own. With the FBI free to attend public meetings, they, could starrt something, , and you the political dissident silenced. Can you see this happening in union actions?



Wasn’t this Hitler’s tactics? Simply have his own men start a riot, and blame it on Communists? Then more repressive laws followed