Anti-Civil Liberties Legislation Progresses

hillct writes: "The ACLU has a very good comparison chart of anti-terrorism provisions in legislation currently being considered by congress. It covers the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, the House Bill (PATRIOT Act) and the Senate Bill (USA Act), comparing it all to current law. We've all seen pieces of this information but the ACLU staffers did a great job consolidating it all." CDT also has a very good pdf guide to these about-to-be-passed laws. But the Onion has the best commentary.

Comments

News Flash! - AP wires report bill blocked

[pyramid termite]

"The Bush administration's anti-terrorism legislation has stalled because of one senator's concern that it will erode civil liberties. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., tried to hurry the bill through Tuesday, but Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., refused Daschle's request to let the bill go through without debate or amendment."

I'm glad to see that one of our representatives feels a responsibility to have this discussed before it's passed. The article's available through Yahoo's home page - it would seem that Feingold wants to change several key provisions of the bill.

Please Sign This Petition

[The Slashdolt]

This is a petition to keep people from taking your freedom. Stand up for your rights, please! Do it before it's too late. It's much more difficult to take back laws once they are in place.

Meanwhile, UK plans to halve trial by jury

[JPMH]

As part of a wider report into the future of the UK justice system published on Monday, Lord Justice Auld recommends removing the right of trial by jury in 50% of current cases.

The right to trial by jury would be abolished in all instances where the sentence was likely to be less than two years. This would include most prosecutions under sec. 296 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act (the UK's DMCA), as well as serious reputation-destroying charges such as theft, assault and drug offences, where defendants can at the moment insist on jury trials. To prevent "perverse" decisions, Auld also recommends that judges should be allowed to ask juries specific menus of questions about the facts of the case instead of innocent-or-guilty verdicts, reserving the final decision for the judge themself.

In a democratic system, the last ditch defence against a really bad law is that a jury can refuse to convict, in spite of the evidence, if they think that the prosecution is unfair or unreasonable. Cases thrown out by UK juries against the evidence in recent years include vandalism charges against GM crop protesters, official secrets charges against civil service whistleblowers and shoplifting charges against confused elderly people. Juries have also tended to be more critical of police evidence than judges and court officials; and to have had more relaxed views in obscenity and pornography cases.

Specific comment: Independent, Guardian
General reports: BBC, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent
(submitted to /. yro yesterday; rejected).

And remember, as this week's NTK points out, bad UK law is often just version 0.1 for bad law in the US.

My favorite Feingold quote

[Sarcasmooo!]

"What we are seeing on television are not really party conventions, where representative delegates come to confer and choose, rather, these are basically now corporate trade shows for the delegates, while the main show is behind closed doors at big dollar soft money fund-raisers, and those soft money contributions, make no mistake, are setting the agenda for the American congress, and for the United States as a whole.

So, my friends, these conventions are both examples and symbols of a broader problem. We have devolved from a representative democracy to a corporate democracy in this country. This is not a system of one person one vote, or one delegate one vote, but a system of one million dollars, one million votes. It is a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion."

(the speech)