Slashdot Mirror
The Continuing Hunt for PATRIOT Act Abuses
Throtex writes "Orin Kerr, Associate Professor of Law at George Washington University writes at The Volokh Conspiracy that the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act. This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time. Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
Guantanamo is outside of the US, so it's not officially under US juridiction. So it's not illegal to detain these people there even if it's indeed a concentration camp for deported war prisoner, except that the Geneva Convention is not respected there.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Because no abuses are being found. That is a danger sign.
I was an investigative journalist ten years ago. I investigated a psychiatric hospital, where there were continual 'rumours' of patient abuse at the hands of staff. The management told me that there had been no complaints. What it turned out that mean was that there had been 600 complaints, but none of them had been upheld. The investigation consisted of the management asking patients and staff what happened. The staff denied the abuse and their word was taken as truth, because the inmates were mental patients and therefore could not be believed.
After my piece aired, there was a year-long public inquiry into conditions at the hospital and wholescale reform.
Whenever someone tells you 'there is no abuse', worry. If there is scope for abuse, it WILL happen.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Except the detentions at Camp X-Ray, regardless of one's opinion about them, have nothing to do with the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act has to do with domestic anti-terrorism, not the treatment of detainees obtained in military operations.
That being said, there have been some questionable uses of PATRIOT Act provisions for non-terrorism cases that should be investigated. The PATRIOT Act is an anti-terrorism act, and if the Justice Department wishes such powers for conventional cases they should go through the legislative process to get them. The PATRIOT Act should be limited to use only in anti-terrorism prosecutions.
Article 4. Section 2.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
Jeremy
Wen Ho Lee, Mazen Al-Najjar, and Allah knows who else, happened during the Clinton/Reno era, so they don't count (since we can't blame their cases on Bush, Ashcroft, and the PATRIOT Act).
Guantanamo is outside of the US, so it's not officially under US juridiction.
That is certainly the position of the Bush administration. I'm pretty sure, however, that it has been rejected by the courts. (Thus the ruling that the detainees at Gitmo must have some form of access to the U.S. court system to determine whether they really are "enemy combatants.")
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
http://www.bushpresident2004.com/ashcroft.htm
From the article:
In the Spring of 2003, Ashcroft's PROTECT Act was signed into law limiting judges' discretion in sentencing criminal offenders below the Justice Department's sentencing guidelines. While each individual case carries with it countless unique circumstances that a judge uses to form a fair and appropriate sentence, John Ashcroft acted bravely to prohibit judges from considering the individuality of cases for fear of being black-listed by the Justice Department.
This caused uproar among judges across the nation including conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Members of Congress inspired by Ashcroft's success are proposing the VICTORY Act to employ tactics similar to the Patriot Act on suspected drug offenders.
The Bill of Rights Amendments specifically affected by the Patriot Act and other Bush Administration efforts are the following:
The First Amendment: The Patriot Act allows the search of libraries' and religious organizations' records without cause. This might infringe upon the First Amendment's declaration that the government may not abridge freedom of speech nor prohibit the "free exercise" of religion.
The Fourth Amendment: The Patriot Act allows searches and seizures of U.S. citizen's property without probable cause and without a specific warrant. This is expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment: The Bush Administration claims it may designate Americans as "enemy combatants" and detain them without conviction in court. This is in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment stating that persons may not be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Supreme Court has regularly upheld the "due process" requirement even in national security crises.
The Sixth Amendment: With the claim to designate Americans "enemy combatants", the Bush Administration also states that it may imprison persons indefinitely without trial, without access to an attorney, and without any means to challenge their detention. The entire Sixth Amendment is essentially shredded in this case.
[End of quoted article]
I don't think that's a lot of fuss about nothing. I can think of several abuses already, including Jose Padilla, who has been held for years now and has never been charged with anything. He's a goddamn US citizen for chrissakes. If you don't think that's scary that the Feds can come lock you up in a military brig indefinitely without charging you with any crime, then you need to pull your head out of the sand and take a look at what's going on around you.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Hmm, aren't the prisoners held in Guitmo in US war prisons and as such on US "soil." Sort of like our embassys in other countries considered on US soil.
Let me correct a couple of facts for you:
We're not at war. Only Congress can declare war, and they have not.
Guantanamo does not fall under US jurisdiction.
The prisoners held in Guantanamo are mostly "enemy combantants", and no "prisoners of war."
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The ACLU has NEVER stated that the entire Patriot Act was wrong or bad. There's so much crap in there that it would be near impossible for them to not agree with at least some of it. The problem is that the 10% of it they don't like, THEY REALLY REALLY don't like. So arguing that they are ok with 90% of it is really no argument at all.
The ACLU even has a video where they say they don't disagree with the entire patriot act (this video is typically given free to new members of the ACLU). The same video also documents abuses of the patriot act that the government, surprise surprise, can't seem to find.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Here's specific for you: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =12263&c=206
It's a rather lovely summary of surveillance issues in the Patriot Act.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
The Taliban were the government of Afghanistan, to some degree previously supported by the U.S. Before the U.S. declared them terrorist sympathizers for failing to produce Bin Laden at the U.S.'s request (certainly a cultural impossibility, quite probably a physical one as well) and backed the rebel Northern Alliance, people had a legitimate right to go there to support that government's fight against rebels - or to study Islam, or to engage in humanitarian actions.
We don't know the circumstances under which these people were captured, what they were doing there. If basic principles of law and justice were followed, those accused of being accessories to terrorist acts of murder would have fair trials at which facts could be determined.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Just a correction, re-read the post you're responding to - in 1943, Japan had as many nukes as everybody else, because /nobody had nukes/. America nuked Hiroshima in 1945.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
The Patriot Act is overkill for the losers the Administration is catching with it.
(emphasis mine)
It appears that the State gets to decide when to give them rights, but is obligated to give them their Geneva Convention rights, regardless of whether they're lawful soliders of a signatory nation.
I'd encourage you to look over the ACLU's (admitedly biased, but generally accurate) page on the expanded surviellance powers available to law enforcement under the PATRIOT act.
I have. As I noted, they are deceptive. I asked you to give an example, not to link to propaganda. I maintain the fact that, contrary to your implication, courts are required for warrants under the PATRIOT Act, just as before. If you disagree, you can point to some fact that shows me to be wrong, such as a quote from the bill itself.
I'll humor you with an example: They write, "The requirements for getting a PR/TT warrant are essentially non-existent: the FBI need not show probable cause or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. It must only certify to a judge - without having to prove it - that such a warrant would be 'relevant' to an ongoing criminal investigation. And the judge does not even have the authority to reject the application." This is, perhaps, what you were referring to when you implied that a judge's approval was not needed for a warrant.
But it is actually incorrect. They are simply lying when they say a judge does not have the authority to reject it. It is not true. What *is* true is that the scope of the warrant is increased, so that if one judge says no, that another judge elsewhere might say yes. They are lying by stating that the judge cannot reject the warrant. What is true is that the judge cannot by himself prevent another judge from approving it, but that is a very different thing from what is said and implied.
As you can see, I have done my homework on this, so simply showing me a link to a bunch of biased claims is not sufficient.
Again, I refer you to the Channel 4 programmes. (If you Google for 'guantanamo channel.4', the first several links mention the series, including Channel 4's own set of pages.)
One programme, 'The Guantanamo Guidebook', attempted to reproduce some of the interrogation methods used there. These include sleep deprivation, extremes of heat and cold (hypothermia), verbal abuse, enforced nudity, shaving and sexual humiliation, bombardment with bright lights and loud music, sensory deprivation, and being forced to hold stressful positions for hours, &c. In combination. While carefully crafted to fall short of the legal definition of 'torture', it certainly sounds like torture to me. (See some of those sites for reports by the programme's volunteers who submitted to it. They're shocking.)
Another, 'Is Torture A Good Idea?' was made by a lawyer who represented some of the Guantanamo detainees. Among other things, he looks at how the methods used there led to confessions that were completely and demonstrably false. I don't expect that all the detainees are innocent, but some certainly are. And without due process, how can you tell?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Librarians are opposed to the Patriot Act because they know what the FBI will do given an inch. American librarians successfully fought off the FBI in the 1970s, when it wanted to peek at library records to determine who was reading subsversive materials. In the 1990s, I personally witnessed FBI personnel violate patron privacy in a library with the help of library staff who were not librarians versed in the principles of patron privacy. Just because there aren't any public incidents, don't assume that the FBI isn't using the Patriot Act to intimidate librarians. The FBI has done it before, they will do it again, and they are probably doing it now.
I think you need to do some research. Let's start with Article 1, Section 2:
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
How about Article 1, Section 3:
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
Or maybe Article 2, Section 1:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
I don't know about you, but it almost seems to me like the founding father thought that we would be citizens of the United States.
Please note that the identical AC post in this story was me, but I accidentally posted it as AC the first time.
Here's a basic list of just a handful of abuses I came up:
And finally, maybe there haven't been as many abuses as there will be once all 2nd legal track the preparations are in place.
---
Or you could realize that it's a quote from the end of the movie "Sneakers".
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Well, lets look at costs, shall we? Here's a random study - Kansas. Emphasis mine.
Conclusions
The estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000).
Items:
The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases.
The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 per death case; $32,000 per non-death case).
The appeal costs for death cases were about 21 times greater.
The costs of carrying out a death sentence (including death row incarceration) were about half the costs of carrying out a non-death sentence in a comparable case.
Trials involving a death sentence averaged 34 days, including jury selection; non-death trials averaged about 9 days.
For death sentence cases, the pre-trial and trial level costs were the most expensive parts: 49% of the total costs. The costs of appeals were 29% of the total, and incarceration and execution costs accounted for the remaining 22% of the total.
P.S. - I agree with the GP; however, I wasn't commenting on my personal views (which are, in fact, that the purpose of our judicial system is prevention, not retribution). I was just trying to bring facts into the discussion, and the facts are that the death penalty states have *higher* murder rates. If one believes that the purpose should be retribution - well, that's your opinion, and if it is your opinion, then believing in the death penalty, despite the clear lack of a preventative effect, is a good choice for you.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!