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USA PATRIOT Act Survives Amendment Attempt
crem_d_genes writes "A bill to modify the USA PATRIOT Act that would have blocked part of the legislation's provisions that allow for the investigation of people's reading habits was defeated by a 210-210 vote in the U.S House of Representives. The House leaders kept the roll call open for 23 minutes past the 15 minute deadline to persuade 10 Representatives to change votes. According to the article 'Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said he switched his initial "yes" vote to "no" after being shown Justice Department documents asserting that terrorists have communicated over the Internet via public library computers.' On the other hand, 'Critics of the Patriot Act argued that even without it, investigators can get book store and other records simply by obtaining subpoenas or search warrants.'"
The problem is, if i email you something saying how to create a virus and take out networks and they see it went to you. You are now suspicious and since that can be seen as 'terrorist' activity, you can be held without a lawyer, or charges, for an indefinite amount of time.
Does that sound like America to you? Sounds like the old Mother Russia or the 3rd Reich.
I'm not even from the US and am so totally against this "ACT". It's terrible that the terrorists have beaten the US of A and they don't even know it.
Our way of life has changed and we fear anything and everyone now.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Wrong, there have been numerous articles detailing abuses and mis-use of the Patriot Act by government and law enforcement agencies.
For example, www.infowars.com is constantly details such abuses
How ironic it is that a law which allows the government to keep track of reading habits (let alone our surfing habits), is called a Patriot Act.
Please refer to the new government handout, provided by the Ministry of Truth: http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html
For all you Bush haters/Kerry lovers out there remember both Kerry and Edwards voted for the Patriot Act.
In addition to a president. Bush yesterday promised to veto any amendment to the Patriot Act. So the house vote really doesn't matter as much.
I think the "essential" and "temporary" parts are especially poignant in this case, as is this great quote:
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
The FBI has been used to abuse power before. Ever here of this really nice old man by then name of J.Edgar Hoover? Power like this is meant to ensure continued power. Ever check out a book on kama sutra at the local library for you and the Mrs? Better hope you don't run for public office if someone finds out about it. They'll call your wife a whore and you'll be a pedophile (simple leaks to the media get blown well out of proportion with their creative impulses). Ever check out any book that is critical of a sitting president or a party just because you were curious? Well your political opponent will say, once the info is leaked to the media, that you're an anarchist hell bent on destroying our way of life. This power infringes on the freedom to think. Do you want to research Vietnam's alternate theories, the ones that Uncle Sam says are bogus? Would you still do so under public scrutiny? The moment we let our private thinking become legal fodder for our government is the day that we can no longer honestly ascend to the ranks of a government official. Slippery slope indeed.
Now come on. You know very well that there's a huge difference between what is happening in America today and what the Soviets did.
Sure. However:
I don't know about you, but I do not have any fear of being woken up in the middle of the night, thrown into a van, and being shipped off to some Siberian gulag just because I surfed the wrong website last night.
Well depending on your nationality, maybe you should... somewhat... See http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
The book is called "Nineteen Eighty-Four" not "1984", accordingly I presume you intended to link to this page rather than this one.
>>>>some Siberian gulag
No, the Americans keep their gulag in Cuba.
I gather from your post that you are from the USA and probably do not a member of the 1200 people that were detained without trial after the 9/11 bombings. And lucky for you you don't live outside the USA, because you could end up in Guantanamo bay
Disclaimer: This opinion was created without the use of any facts
You are right. It won't be Siberian :-)
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
You're 22 times more likely to be killed by firearms if you have a firearm in your house. I don't see how people can argue with such a statistic.
Old TJ was more irate over the charges of sacreligious materials (more complete quote below). Quoting him out of context is a bit of a cheap shot.
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. --From In Freedom
It is not called a Patriot Act. This is a farce, it's a trick. It is called Public Law 107-56, because it's the 56th law of the 107th congress. This is how laws are named. The first section of the law mentions that it's okay if you call this act the:
...You know, for short!
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act
Which, conveniently, abbreviates to U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.
I suggest not playing the name game, and calling the law 107-56, or saying all the letters separately, "uh ess, aye, pee, aye..." because this forces people to question the law on its merits, rather than its ridiculous name.
There is Nowhere in the law that it's supposed to be known as the USA Patriot Act, where "Patriot" is one word. It's a misnomer.
Yeah, it confused the heck out of me too. It was an amendment to a Bill about funding security services. The amendment was (cut and paste):
H.AMDT.652 (A021)
Amends: H.R.4754
Sponsor: Rep Sanders, Bernard [VT] (offered 7/8/2004)
AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
An amendment numbered two printed in the Congressional Record to add a new section to the bill prohibiting funds from being made available to make an application under section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 for an order requiring the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, library Internet records, book sales records, or book customer lists.
Essentially, it would block the funds of the activity they wanted to block, thus making it unable to be done. An old Congress trick.
Someone posted this below, but was karma'd out:
Actually, while the naming was done to promote "unity" or some such (it was passed after the 9/11 attacks after all), it is actually an acronym. The real name is "USA PATRIOT Act" and the "USA PATRIOT" stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
Thousands fought and died for those freedoms that you so carelessly and thoughtlessly toss away. Safety is not worth it. Neither your nor my life is worth it.
And if you just do not understand that, you have my pity, sir.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Devil's advocate or not, this kind of bullshit rhetoric is dangerous. It can't possibly help stop terrorists. Our government has a trillion dollar a year budget (literally), and had already gotten "a little more leeway" even before this happened. It was not clueless, FBI agents had everything they needed, months in advance, to have noticed this and put a stop to it. They didn't even come close.
And now, you're suggesting that we give up our last little bit of freedom, just so they can pretend they're protecting us?
Let's put this number in perspective for a second. According to death stats for 2001, on average 6,620 people died every day in 2001. 1,918 of those from heart disease - every day! How about the European heatwave of 2003? 35,000? 11,000+ in France alone? Not to mention we've lost 880 US soldiers in Iraq.
I've seen reports of Iraqi civilian casualties over the 11,000 mark. A people that we haven't even proved had anything to do with the attacks. Who's the terrorist now?
Yes, it's terrible that 3,000 people were murdered on a single day which also took down the WTC towers. The reason it hits you hard was because it was in one place in which you could watch it unfold on TV. Taken in perspective though, I don't think it's worth losing the freedoms and liberties that those who came before us fought and died for. To quote another famous figure in US history, FDR, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Or a taxi driver in the wrong place at the wrong time.
evil is as evil does
Kerry and Edwards both voted for the original PA. You are right it's very cut and dry.
Vote Libertarian in 2004!
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
(disclaimer -- I'm from Vermont and think Rep. Sanders does a great job ... usually)
President Bush was going to veto the whole bill if this amendment were attached -- and every house representative, including the amendments supporters, knew that going in.
The bill it was attached to was a finance bill for the Justice, Commerce, and State departments -- hardly the right place for it.
The PATRIOT Act itself has a formal review coming up soon anyway.
What Rep. Sanders hoped to achieve at this time is questionable. With all those other things stacked up against him, the best he could have hoped for was a little media buzz at the expense of 420 representatives' time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, and I support the idea behind this proposed legislation, but this specific instance was doomed from the start.
Don't complain that it didn't get passed this time since it wasn't going to anyway. Help get it passed when the timing is more appropriate.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
"Abu Ghraib prisoners were abused, not tortured like they were when Saddam was in power. Their abusers should and will be punished. Their is a fine line between abuse and torture."
THe following items qualify as torture.
Women were raped, Men were raped, men had broomsticks and lightsticks shoved up their asses. 11 people died at least 9 of those were declared to be murder by the military medical examiners. People's legs were ripped open by dogs. People were smeared with feces and held in crucifiction poses for long periods of time. People were crucified on metal beds and jail bar for several days with handcuffs.
All that is detailed in the report put out by the army itself. God only knows what they left out. There are still thousands of pictures which have not been released because we don't really have free press in this country but the politicians who have seen them have described them as sickening. Rumsfeld used the word "sadistic".
Please read the report that the army put out and then go check out some foreign news sources. You are clearny not getting the entire picture from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
evil is as evil does
Actually, part of that is false. Ethel Rosenberg was never a spy at all and basically only had a very very low level involvment in the whole affair.
This is from Wikipedia about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg:
"It is believed that part of the reason Ethel was indicted in addition to Julius was so that the prosecution could use her as a 'lever' to pressure Julius into giving up the names of others who were involved. If that was the case, it didn't work. On the witness stand Julius asserted his right under the Fifth Amendment to not incriminate himself whenever asked about his involvement in the Communist Party or with its members. Ethel did similarly. Neither defendant was viewed sympathetically by the jury.
Investigations into the couple's history revealed conflicting evidence that Julius Rosenberg may have had some dealings with an NKVD agent. Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian government has released documentation that shows Julius Rosenberg was providing information to the NKVD. Julius Rosenberg's main contact was Alexander Feklisov, who met Julius on over 50 occasions over a three year period beginning in 1943. Mr. Feklisov when contacted by the press said that he never received any atomic information from the Rosenbergs.
Before he died, Theodore Hall, who moved to the UK from the US partly because of an FBI investigation of him in the 1950s, admitted that it was he, a scientist working at Los Alamos, who gave atomic information to the USSR, not anyone else such as Ethel Rosenberg, a housewife living in a poor (the Lower East Side) New York neighborhood.
The Rosenbergs' conviction on March 29, 1951 and death sentence on April 5, helped to fuel Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade against "anti-American activities" by US citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well documented, they denied the spying charges even as they faced the electric chair. Their defenders said they never stood the chance of a fair trial given the anti-Communist Red Scare that pervaded the United States in the 1950s.
Decades later, in late 2001, Greenglass admitted that he had committed perjury and falsely implicated his sister Ethel. Greenglass said he chose to turn in his sister in order to protect his wife and children. Recently released Soviet documents seem to show that Julius Rosenberg was in fact guilty of espionage, and Feklisov's veracity on the specific question of nuclear secrets has come under increasing question by students of the case. The same documents also seem to show that Ethel had little or no role, and the true extent of her part in the affair remains a mystery."
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Hold your congresmen accountable.
Roll Call Results
Bill Text
We have the best government that money can buy.
at the moment the European Union is just as bad, if not worse.
For those who doubt imogthe's words, read this document (Acroread only, sorry) It's a draft decision by the EU council of ministers to require all telecommunications logged, and data stored for a year. Wish I was kidding...
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
In reading some of the comments on this story it seems to me that most people have not actually read the PATRIOT Act.
First of all, the full title is the USA PATRIOT Act and it's an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism". Second, there was no new law created for the act. All it did was extend current laws that were only used against drug dealers and the mob. It would have been illegal for the FBI or other investigative body to use those tools against a terrorist. So, a law was needed that would allow that. Plain and simple. How many of you created the same uproar that is now created for the PATRIOT Act when those laws applied to drug dealers and mobsters? I expect that some will say 'but anyone could be considered a terrorist' but the same argument could be made about being a drug dealer or mobster.
The other important factor to remember is that the tools allowed under the act can not just be applied randomly to any U.S. citizen. The act states that a court can only issue orders "after the government demonstrates the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a U.S. person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment." It does NOT say that they can obtain a warrent for just anyone to see what pops up. The key words there are "international terrorism" and "clandestine".
Since these laws have existed for a long time (well before 9/11) and we did not see an errosion of our liberty, I can not see what is the problem of applying these same laws to terrorist. If the laws were so bad why didn't people give the same arguments they give now to the PATRIOT act to them? I suspect that because it was Bush who was President at the time it was passed? Even if they voted for the act to exist for 5 years, both Kerry and Edwards voted for the act. As someone quoted elsewhere regarding Franklins statement about giving up temporary liberty and then went on to say that is why it is bad, remember that Kerry and Edwards voted for that so they are guilty of that as well.
You have to remember that our government has three prongs. One leads and proposes laws to lead us in a direction, another creates and passes the laws and still another checks those laws against our constitution. Perhaps some of you forgot that the Supreme Court recently ruled that you can not be held as an enemy combatant without trial? So the system does check itself. Ordinary Joe will not be searched or investigated for no reason and will not be arrested without being charged and will not sit in a prison without going to court.
I just had to comment because everyone seems to be running their mouths off as to how much of our freedom has been taken away. That is simply NOT the case.
How did your Representative vote? Check here, or look on H5373 and H5374. (Don't know who your Representative is? Here.)
Those who changed their vote (and the discussion about "when are you going to close the damn vote, you've kept it open past its deadline!?!") are on H5373. Harris, Cubin, Gilchrest, Bereuter, Davis (VA), Bilirakis, Kingston, Smith (MI), Bishop (UT), Wamp, Tancredo, and Musgrave all changed their votes from "yes" (in favor of adding the Freedom to Read Amendment) to "no."
(Amusingly, at one point in the Record, Rep. Nadler acridly remarks, "How much time has elapsed on this vote? Are we going to hold this vote open until enough arms are twisted?")
I have five letters from the Senate Finance chair, Chuck Grassley, from my voting residency state (live and work in Canada -WOOHOO!!!) In all five of these letters he states that he has not found out yet whether or not bombs containing tonnes and tonnes of depleted Uranium were utilized in the newer bunker busting bombs used in Afghanistan and Iraq. (note - this is seperate from the 500 tonnes in GW1, 300 tonnes in Kosovo, 300 tonnes in Afghanistan, 600 tonnes in Gulf War II, Okinawa, and Vieques Island used in antitank weaponry the last 15 or so years). But he keeps stating that he is asking the Pentagon about that. That is the Senate Finance chair. I first mailed him about this in March of 2003. This is a big deal. Canadian GWI troops had depleted uranium in their piss two years after the fact in mass spectroscopy studies - no studies done like that in the US. Depleted Uranium is pyrophoric and burns so hot that over 90% of it is converted into 1 micorn or smaller particles which exhibit brownian motion. It floats in the air for years and then when ingested - whammo - five six years later big spike in certain leukemias and kidney cancers - especially in children. How can the Senate even be a part of the debate of whether to expand the broadcast usage of a chemical and radiological poison from anti-tank munitions outside of cities usually to urban environments with the bunker busters if they do not even know if it is occuring? There can be no democracy if the House and Senate do not receive information or they are given hideously incorrect info. Wo, letter writing is semi ineffectual at best. For me it is catharsis. Sen. Chuck did help with my pacifist friends in Des Moines who were indicted by a rogue Federal Grand Jury over a "terrorism" investigation, that was quashed. And Sen. Grassley did do a lot to try and aid the sacked FBI translator - although just recently Ashcroft made it illegal to post even previously public information about her 9/11 information. The point is - some of us do do these things, have been doing it for twenty or so years, and things just keep getting worse. It is going to take a bit more than letter writing. Peace, Mark
Try reading it yourself:
Section 215 gives the goverment additional powers to look at third party records for individuals (libraries, medical, universities, internet, etc.) and even force the third party to hand them over. Under the new power, the government no longer not needs to show probable cause (as required by the Fourth Amendment) or even that they are related to criminal activity. It also removes the requirement that the government demonstrates the person under suspicion is an "agent of a foreign power". There is also reduced judicial oversight in that the government only needs to swear to a judge that the search meets the statute. They don't actually have to demonstrate it or show any evidence of it, plus the judge doesn't even have the authority to reject the warrant, which really makes it a pointless exercise. Finally, the third party is prohibited from notifying the person under surveillance.
Section 213 expands the government's power to search private property without notification, and it can be done as part of normal criminal investigations without having anything to do with terrorism.
Section 218 expands the government's surveillance power to secretly conduct secret searches (physical or wiretaps).
Section 214 also expands the Fourth Amendment exception by including the "addressing" of communications
The Baathist party was a created and supported the US and British intelligence services during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Saddam began his relationship with the US intelligence services (State Department and CIA) in 1957 when he was in exile for attempting to assasinate the president of Iraq.
Read, L
Okay, I found it!
The bill was sponsored by Rep Bernard Sanders, Bernard [VT] and I see no reference to a Rep Otter.
Ammendment information is here
Vote results are here
char *mySig;
From Part 1 section 6:
And from section 8:
To those never entering the shitlist, what made a difference was the constant pounding of head against the beaurocratic [sic] brickwall, the humiliation of "sorry, you're not allowed to enter that flight", "you're not authorized by proper authorities", always have to submit to some greater authority. Always hearing "you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong". To most, that's something they could live with. And what it would take to change it had very little to do with leadership, it had to do with people getting off their asses.
Yours is one of the most informative comments I've read on Slashdot.
To anyone who doubts just how much we've become like the totalitarian societies we once despised, just compare what Dovregubbens Hall (583591) writes to your last visit to an airport or a Federal building.
We've learned to fear the screener for the Transportation Security agency, because if he doesn't like your attitude, he can keep you off your flight -- or from flying ever again. A year ago that screener was a janitor or a Microsoft Certification dropout. Today he can seriously disrupt your life if he wants to -- and for the first time in his life, he know he holds that kind of power.
We've got the government "training" long-haul truck drivers -- guys who routinely drive twelve or eighteen hours straight to meet deadlines --, and bus drivers, and rest stop workers to identify "suspicious" people and report them to a secret toll-free phone number. To think that this volunteer force can't be used to suppress dissent -- "Just keep a count of pro-choice bumper stickers" --is to be willfully blind to a century or more of police misconduct.
Even guys with cameras aren't safe from being scrutinized and added to government databases, because cops today wave the bloody shirt of 9-11 and invoke "patriotism" as a fig-leaf to justify anything they care do to -- reasonable or not, legal or not.
Protesters, exercising their First Amendment rights, are already being arrested solely because of the content of their speech. Whether they are eventually convicted or just harassed by cops and city inspectors, the message is clear: dissent will cost you at least a day in jail, enough money to hire a lawyer (or rely on a possibly incompetent court-appointed lawyer), and maybe a little roughing up by the cops.
Every war attracts a few war profiteers along with the honest, self-sacrificing patriots. Every increase in police powers gives police new tools to fight crime, but at the same time gives that minority of cops who are bullies, busybodies, and braggarts interested in throwing their weight around more occasion to lord that power over the innocent citizens.
The thing to fear is not another 9-11. It's not even Stalinist knocks on the door at midnight. What we need to fear is more subtle: a steady erosion of American liberties, of what it means to be an American.
I always believed that, as an American, I had a right to protest my government. It said so right in the Constitution. But now I'm reluctant not only to protest, but to even view protests, giving that several nurses at a conference in Washington D.C. were arrested along with protesters, just for being nearby.
I always believed that, as a citizen in a democracy, the police were not to be feared -- and weren't any "better" than me. Now we have the Hiibel decisi
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I'm not trying to invoke Godwin here by comparing the PATRIOT act or its supporters in particular to counterparts in 1930's Berlin. I'm really not. It is merely an historical example of an otherwise benign government transmuting into something fearsome, terrible, and utterly despicable under the guises of 'necessary', 'security', and 'expediency'. I maintain that "It won't be abused" is not sufficient protection for citizens from their government. Not now, not ever. And it is for that reason that I find the arguments for the PATRIOT act, even moreso than the act itself, to be of greater danger to the US populace than every terrorist who lives today. The moment the people truly believe that "It can't happen here" is usually followed by the moment when they find themselves to be totally screwed.
Dyolf Knip