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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?"
How about Guantanamo Bay, at least if there were some way to actually question the people being detained there? Some 545 people from 40 countries are being held there. Nearly all of the detainees are being held without charges and some have been imprisoned there for more than three years.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It does not matter if the government has actually abused citizens via the Patriot Act. The only thing that matters is that it can.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act"
These assholes covered up the murder of a Federal inmate at the Oklahoma City Transit Center, among numerous other situations.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Personally? I don't care if there was a single abuse of the Patriot Act or not. It should not have been passed in the first place. The simple fact of the matter is that the government should not have passed an act that allows for civil rights violations.
"Could it be that there has just been a lot of fuss over nothing?"
Hopefully that is the case but it also shows why it is important to "fuss". You cannot just mindlessly accept things and hope for the best. If you don't agree, and many people do not (although only 1 senator doesn't) then it is important to raise a fuss to let them know you're watching.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
If a government action that would otherwise be illegal becomes legal under the patriot act, is that an abuse? Or does it have to be blantently obvious and clearly wrong? What about the patriot act being used for non-terrorism related purposes? Isn't that an abuse?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Of course he won't find them, if he's only relying on publically disclosed information.
(not read TFA)
it will be very difficult to prove wrongdoing as long as all the evidence is kept classified. any incriminating evidence can just be hidden.
Whether or not there have been abuses (and whether or not the public at large is aware of them yet - no small matter considering the fine print of the Act), has absolutely nothing to do with whether we are "fussing over nothing." We are discussing the unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions.
Consider the meaning of these traditions. The fact that someone working for our president can point his finger at you and say, "you, come with me," and then you spend years in a cage without a lawyer, due process, a phone call, etc, is bad. The only time it is not bad is in the theoretical and impossible perfect world where we all have perfect, omniscient knowledge and only, ever, use this power for good.
The rules we have to regulate our law enforcement activities are not there to make law enforcement easier or harder. They are there to protect us against ourselves - they inscribe a well-known and ancient protection against human nature, and our ancestors had to bleed into the earth for many, many generations to secure these freedoms, after wearying, inconceivable repitition of abuses, time, after time, after time.
We made our constitution difficult to change to protect our children from cowards. Cowards who run crying, begging for protection from terrorists at any price - even though they kill fewer people than slipping and falling, even though they are selling freedoms that sufficed for us through many, many crises before. I'm sure there are many here who are scared enough of Osama to sell out their civil rights on the chance it will make them a little safer. It's the price we all pay for the general ignorance of history.
The PATRIOT act itself stirs up a lot of confusing debate because it is a beast of many parts; I hope we can stay on topic and remember that we are not objecting to interdepartmental communications and red-tape reductions in law enforcement, but rather the rolling back of safeguards that were established very recently - and in response to abuse of power by American law enforcement so systematic and staggering that even Congress and the President were frightened into enacting them.
Hoover's FBI is not ancient history, it is recent history. And we are Americans - it is shameful to forget our past so conspicuously as to suggest complaints over the PATRIOT act are trifles and fuss. These are matters of principle, of black-letter constitutional law. We do not need to wait for abuses to "fuss." The abuses have already happened, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again... This is why we had safeguards for PATRIOT to remove in the first place. How many times does it have to happen for us to really get it? How thick is America's collective skull?
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This follows from the fact that what the media originally aired as abuses were merely allegations of abuse at the time.
Although the fact that publicly reporting you've been charged under the act is itself a crime doesn't help.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Perhaps the Department of Justice, like many government agencies, are so biased for themselves, they can't see their own failings. That combined with a total lack of accountability leads to the inefficient operation and complete inability to change seen across the government.
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.
haven't been able to talk to thier lawyer or any outside contact.
You receive a National Security Letter demanding that you turn over information. You consider it an abuse, but you can't argue with them and you can't tell anyone about it (or you're in violation). So it's a big secret, nobody has to know, and they don't have to report it to Congress.
So there could be hundreds of abuses that we'll never know about...all because it's written into the law as a big fat secret.
The PATRIOT provisions requires the Deparment of Justice Office of the Inspector General to collect and respond to complaints, when appropriate, and issue a report on its findings twice a year.
The March 11, 2005 report is here.
And from TFA:
Consider the stats from the latest report, released on Friday. DOJ received 1,943 complaints about alleged civil liberties abuses. Of these, 1,748 either did not warrant an investigation or were outside DOJ's jurisdiction:
Approximately three-quarters of the 1,748 complaints made allegations that did not warrant an investigation. For example, some of the complaints alleged that government agents were broadcasting signals that interfere with a person's thoughts or dreams or that prison officials had laced the prison food with hallucinogenic drugs. The remaining one-quarter of the 1,748 complaints in this category involved allegations against agencies or entities outside of the DOJ, including other federal agencies, local governments, or private businesses. We referred those complaints to the appropriate entity or advised complainants of the entity with jurisdiction over their allegations.
Of the 195 complaints that did warrant investigation, 170 involved what the report describes as "management issues" rather than civil liberties abuses, such as reports by "inmates [who] complained about the general conditions at federal prisons, such as the poor quality of the food or the lack of hygiene products."
The bottom line is that PATRIOT, while not itself a "law", merely modified existing statutes, mostly to bring them up to date (e.g., dealing with cell phones, wireless devices, email, etc. in the context of "wiretaps") and expand definitions in others. The result is imperfect, like all laws, and should be watched for abuse. But there is nothing inherently evil about it. Interested persons would do well, at a minimum, to at least read the text of the act.
Government investigates itself and doesn't find any problems. News at 11.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
No. Because the fact that there is now a potential for abuse means that someday it will happen even if it hasn't already. The lid on Pandora's box is wedged open and the tyranny that Jefferson and Adams and the rest of the founding fathers fought to protect us from is slowly escaping to menace us once again.
First rule of being abused by the Patriot Act:
You don't talk about being abused by the Patriot Act.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
> 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?"
The fact that we're able to ask questions and write articles about the PATRIOT Act indicates that the PATRIOT Act is not being abused. If the PATROIT Act really were being abused, we wouldn't know about it -- because the victims (and anyone foolish enough to write about them) would be disappeared.
Likewise, you'll know that PATRIOT is being abused - if and only if you stop finding evidence that it's being abused, because all the evidence will be private. Except for this evidence, which (because it's public) is evidence that it's not being abused.
The logic sounds complicated, but it's really quite simple:
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).
Could it be that the corporate media reported only flimsy allegations of Patriot Act abuse, because it was cheaper, and more convenient for the Justice Department to deny? And never investigated more serious abuses, covered up by the Justice Department, because it was cheaper, and the Justice Department is investigating only those reported in the media - not the more serious abuse? Could it be that the Justice Department is investigating only those abuses easily dismissed as mere allegations? Could it be that the corporate media is reporting only the Justice Department press releases, without investigating whether these investigations are serious?
Once the Justice Department is being run by partisan bureaucrats (including Ahscroft and Gonzales) who will create and defend an anticonstitutional Act, authorize torture and rendition and other abuses, what would make them investigate their own abuse? Why would a media corporation that missed the story when it was "news" ever cover it again, when we're supposed to be "over it"?
--
make install -not war
It doesn't matter if there have been any abuses or not.
What matters is whether the potential is there for abuse or not.
America has stayed free for 200+ years because her people learned a lesson earlier than most others: you don't wait for the secret police to show up at your door to start demanding your rights. Because by then it's too late.
Read my blog.
"Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty."
Of course this is true. The Constitution recognizes civil liberties, rather than grants them, in the view of the founding fathers. In this respect the ACLU and the writers of the Constitution agree. You quoted this as if it were a bad thing to have an idea of civil liberties independent of the Constitution.
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
You are simply, and rather blatantly, misreading me. Your misreading makes me out to be "making too much fuss." But I am not suggesting by any means this is the end of everything. "Merely," the unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions.
Very trivially:
"unraveling of hundreds of years of sacred American values and traditions" != "the end of American civilization", "the end of everything"
Living like slaves didn't end civilization in China (yet). I suspect there are people not able to make distinctions this fine, but I hope you are not one of them.
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Defenders of the USA Patriot Act love to defend it by asking its critics how the Patriot Act has personally affected them. Well, I love to turn this argument against them by asking how terrorism has personally affected them, because for the vast majority of the public, terrorism has not affected their lives in any way. The government's response to terrorism, OTOH, has made life much more difficult though for law-abiding citizens.
The reality is that the 9/11 attacks resulted in very few people being killed compared to the number of people that die in, say, auto accidents. The potential for abuse by government officials is simply too great, and even if no abuses have yet been found, the track record of the government is pretty poor in this regard.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
there have been exactly *zero* successful prosecutions of terrorists in the USA under this act--so, was it really worth it, or even necessary to pass this bill? what *good* has it done? this is just a classic example of 'lowering expectations'...
and of course, the Bush disinformation machine continues cranking at high speed--even the network news is delivered prepacked and 'on message': Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
so forgive me if i don't breathe a sigh of relief about this 'news'...
and the right was later reinstated at the end of the war
Haven't you been paying attention to Bush? There isn't going to be an end to this war. No, I'm not being flip here, he's said that multiple times and he really means it no matter what the spin doctors say.
The problem isn't the abuse of power, it's the power to abuse.
-metric
Head meet sand.
Nothing is presupposed here, I'm not for the patriot act, but I'm not for knee-jerk reactions either.
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
Besides which, how on earth could you know that any of the detainees were guilty of crimes? They haven't been charged with any, let alone had their cases heard in any form of court. Or are people now guilty of crimes simply because the US military thinks they are?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
One of the odd things about debates over the Patriot Act is that even its harshest informed critics actually only oppose a very small part of the Act;
Why is that odd?
No, really, I don't get it. It would be utterly astonishing if that wasn't true. Treating that as news is like treating it as news that only a small number of incidents of speeding or drunk driving actually lead to accidents, or that the majority of suicide attempts don't lead to death.
Do you have a point, or are you just trying to muddy the waters?
Its NEVER a fuss about nothing when it comes to my freedoms, even if it "seems" harmless! Freedom isn't something to be taken and given at will, depending on the threat of the week. Even if this hastn't been abused yet, it will be, mark my words. If you want to sacrifice a little liberty here and there for a supposed sense of safety, I'm sure Aus or England would love to have you.
The suspension of rights for the wars that you mention are in no way comparable to the suspension
of rights in the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism. The wars that you mentioned had endings, while the
WOD and WOT are the encroachments of a police state.
You say that we cannot afford to give more civil protections to Tony Soprano than we do to Osama bin
Laden. Let me paraphrase that: We cannot give more civil protections to a citizen than we can to a
noncitizen enemy combatant who is suspected of committing mass murder. Surely that is not what you
meant. I would prefer to take the chance of being killed by a terrorist than to risk being tortured by the government.
To misquote the tired old chestnut from B. Franklin, those who would sacrifice a little liberty for a
little more security deserve neither. Franklin was talking about you, wombatcontrol.
President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus entirely ... and the right was later reinstated at the end of the war.
Oh good. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the government to declare an official end to the War on Terror. Should be any moment now...
Certainly those who protest the PATRIOT Act now must recognize the horrendous erosions of civil liberties that occurred in the previous Administration under the guise of the "war on drugs" including no-knock warrants and other practices.
Yes, we do. Your point?
Oh, I think I see your point: previous administrations have trashed the Constitution, so it's OK for this one to as well.
The Patriot Act is overkill for the losers the Administration is catching with it.
Having lived in a police state, I find that offensive.
And yes, knee-jerk. Your original post, which is what I was critiquing was a poorly thought-out, knee-jerk reaction to the article.
Just imagine how prosecutors will try to get people classified as terrorist.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The Act should be challenged from a Constitutional standpoint with regard to the suspension of hebeas corpus.
Lincoln explicitly suspended hebeas corpus during the Civil War; to the best of my recollection, Bush has done no such thing and the PATRIOT ACT does not explicitly do so either. Whether or not it implicitly does so, however, is another question.
There is nothing in the Patriot Act about Guantanamo Bay. There is nothing about torture, or deporting people to countries where it is practiced. Nothing about depriving anyone of the right to counsel. Nothing about secret trials. Nothing about the way people who aren't subject to the Geneva Conventions are treated.
Do these things happen, and should we be concerned about them? Absolutely. Do they have anything to do with the PATRIOT Act? Nothing whatsoever. Do people who complain about the PATRIOT Act being responsible for these things spread FUD and cloud the real issues? Yes. Is that a real problem? I think so.
There's a strong precedent in US history for the institution of slavery as well. This country has been fallible, and if you go far enough back in history, you can find a preedent for every abuse. That's not a convincing argument.
And when you talk about not being able to afford to give protections to , I disagree. We give protection to everyone. Then the courts decide who the bad guys are, not the DOJ. I've lived in countries where the executive can do as it pleases. I found some of the goings-on there quite disturbing. But maybe you would like it better if the US became more like Saudi Arabia?
And no, you're wrong. Proponents of the PATRIOT Act should justify why these intrusions on our rights are so necessary. The benefit of the doubt has to be on the side of liberty, not more unaccountable state power. Or do you believe that we only have rights that are granted us by our wise and all-knowing leaders?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Abusing people may not be happening, but that does not mean that the Patriot Act is not stomping all over our rights. You are not "abused" if your free travel is interfered with; but your rights are being interefered with...
So the government cannot find evidence of the government doing wrong? Hmmm...
The terrorists never really have to do anything else in the US other than use rhetoric...did it not occur to anyone in government that one terrorist act was all they would do? Then just make threats to screw up everything here...
Here is something you have to eat.
Only 1% of it is poisonous.
It is 99% good! See, you should eat it!
What are you fussing about?
Oh, that that 1% may kill you? What kind
of a whiny left wing socialist are you?
Eat!
David
emt 377 emt 4
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.
The US Constitution specifies some things that the federal government shall do and specifies particular procedures for doing those. Much of the rest of the Constitution is a list of things the federal government cannot do.
This stands to reason. If there is no limit to what the federal government can do, or no limit to what can be accomplished with a majority vote, why bother to have a constitution? Without the long list of limits, you could have written it on a 18th century Post-It note: "We the people of the United States of America empower the government to do whatever a majority of our elected representatives vote for and the elected president signs. The supreme judiciary shall verify that whatever is done is done according the letter of the laws we pass." This, of course, is a recipe for an elected tyrany.
So, no, it is not possible for something under the Patriot act, or any other law, to make legal a government activity that would otherwise be forbidden by the Constitution. If any offending part of the Patriot act is used to bring someone to court, it will immediately be struck down.
This does not, however, prevent Patriot act powers to be used to pursue someone, then find other offenses under other laws (tax evasion, for example, Mr Capone?) to charge them with, thus shielding the Patriot act powers from court scrutiny. Remember, you have to have standing in order to challenge a law, i.e. you personally must be charged or restrained under the law in order to challenge it.
I think that Congress should review the prosecution history of the Patriot Act powers. If someone has not been successfully prosecuted under a particular section, or the agencies involved cannot positively indicate when they will begin court proceedings under that section of law, then obviously, that power is not valuable for the purpose it was passed, and should be repealed. You don't leave matches in the hands of babies, firearms in the hands of violent felons, sportscar keys in the hands of teenagers, you shouldn't leave unneeded powers in the hands of government.
They are all hot topics, just like Gitmo... and all have nothing whatsoever to do with the PATRIOT Act... just like Gitmo.
So... how do you feel about late term abortions?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Perhaps the administrators of /. could emphasize the purpose of modding more than they do now.
If the administration didn't let Rumsfield resign over Abu Gharib, why should we think it's going to let the Justice Department give it's favorite roll-back of civil liberties a bad mark? It's just not going to happen.
We're producing propaganda pieces and selling them to TV stations as news stories, and we're going to come clean about Patriot Act abuses? Not a chance.
I mean, what do you think the Chinese government is going to conclude if they set up a task force to look into their possible human rights abuses??
there may be a few hundred who are hell bent on inflicting as much violence as possible on innocent people.
I agree. And they work for the US government.
A latent existence
Ahh /.
;-)
Breeding ground of intelligent discussion for almost a decade
My entire post is open to interpretation. Thats just one possible scenario. I thought it would be fun to point it out. You can argue both ways but I hate the presumption that we are outright denying these guys rights. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. How can we really judge since we don't even know who most of these terrorists or would be terrorists, or maybe terrorists, or "folks" as GWB puts it are? I am just saying, the Geneva convention doesn't instantly apply because we have them detained at Gitmo.
There will always be collateral damage. My heart goes out to the truly illegally detained. Its a messy world. How can we possibly make everyone happy?
Jeremy
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.
---
The reason that the Department of Justice has not found any abuses of rights caused by the USA PATRIOT Act is because of the nature of the Act. It allows the government to detain anyone, anytime, without providing a reason, without allowing a trial, and without ever having to let them go. We don't know about any abuses because the abuse is also in the covering up. There may be thousands of prisoners held somewhere, not knowing why they are held, or how long they will be held for, but we will never know, because they are held, and the USA PATRIOT Act allows this to happen. They can't tell us that they're being abused because they have lost all of their rights. For those of you who are skimming, here it is in one sentence: There are no reported abuses by the USA PATRIOT Act because the Act itself suppresses reports of abuse.
All your
How can we possibly make everyone happy?
In the US, we call them trials. You know, where the government gets some smart people together, and they come up with this totally incredible thing called "proof" and convince this group of people who do nothing but sit all day and stare at the theatrics that they are, in fact, correct.
Or yeah, we could just throw random people into jails and claim they are obviously terrorists because otherwise they wouldn't have been thrown in jail. That works too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I imagine if you asked a Japanese-American citizen during WWII--or an Arab-American now--you might have a somewhat less lackadaisical attitude.
Being arrested on secret charges and secret evidence and held indefinitely without trial has a way of affecting one's job, social status, and entire life. For some people so arrested, it might well be the end of everything.
As long as you're still free to decry the PATRIOT act, I don't think we have a major problem.
Quite right. As long as the First Amendment is preserved, why worry about spirit of the Fifth or Sixth Amendments? I'm sure that any detained individuals will be pleased to know that the rest of us are free to protest outside their cells--assuming we're told where they're being held. Hm.
~Idarubicin
First, you have been trolled by the parent post.
Second, a world government is bad because it is SO distant from the common man. In the United States, according to the Constitution, I have the right to elect those who rule me, on a state and federal level (lets leave the electoral college out of this one for simplicity's sake). However, my life is impacted by globalization organizations like the WTO, which passes laws or rules or resolutions or judgements which by treaty force my elected federal government to change our laws or enact new laws to stay in compliance and avoid punitive action. What say do I have in the WTO, and how exactly did I agree to be ruled by them. I understand how we got here and I understand how some people see a need for such, but I believe that supernational governments like the WTO or the EU or even the UN, disenfranchises citizens like me who are members of a democracy, who have established the federal laws and system by which we agreed to be ruled, and suddenly have found a new layer of government on top of us which is far far out of our reach. All the anti-globalization protesters who show up at WTO meetings and shout outside may have the right to protest if they live in a nation like the US, but they don't have the right to actually vote against actions on that organization.
Supernational organizations with binding authority disenfranchise the common voter in any nation that allows voting, in my opinion. That's one of the reasons I pity my European cousins now living under the EU. I'm just waiting for the American Union to be created so that my national represented officials will have to share an equal vote with not only Canadian and Mexican officials, but officials from the Dominican Republic can also make decisions and vote to affect my life. Thanks but no thanks.
The USA-PATRIOT act was signed in the hysterical, paranoid aftermath (within weeks) of the the 9-11-01 attacks. It received broad bipartisan support, naturally. At the time, though, people in podunk towns all across America were deathly afraid that terrorists might fly planes into the local piggly-wiggly or tastee-freez. When a populace is hysterical and paranoid, they'll agree to anything that purports to increase safety or allow law enforcement greater power to identify and lock up the evildoers. Once you've identified a person or group of people as "Evil", you can do anything to them -- even inhuman, unethical things -- because they're not human.
The act allows library and bookstore records to be searched under secret warrant. If such a warrant is served, it is unlawful for the librarian/bookseller to disclose the event or its parameters -- the secrecy must be maintained because you don't want to tip the terrorists off and you can't compromise national security. What if someone's browsing for books about poisons or explosives? This would mean that they're thinking about poisons or explosives, and if they're thinking about these things, they may be thinking about a crime. So what is the secret search trying to find out? It's trying to find people who may be thinking about things that could be related to crime -- thoughtcrime. The Orwellian quality of it is frightening.
The act permits secret warrants to be issued for unannounced secret searches of any and all premises that are the subject of terror-related investigations. Anything can be confiscated or taken, without any public record, as a part of the search. The owner of the premises need not be informed of who did the search (or even that a search took place) or what was taken as a part of the secret investigation. The act basically allows law enforcement/intelligence/covert/homeland security agencies to conduct burglaries of any property in the US without any evidence or charges being brought beforehand. Speculation is all that is required, in addition to the secret sanction of a judge who (as it turns out) is bound by the law to not reveal that the investigation, warrant or subsequent search and seizure of property ever took place.
No-fly and watch lists -- enough has been posted about these already.
To return to my introductory point, so much of what the act allows is so secret that there is no way to determine if abuse has taken place. What's especially alarming is that in the 18 months following the 9-11-01 attacks, sooooo many things (like drug abuse and insurance fraud) were being implicitly associated with terrorism. What were ordinary instances of bad judgement or lawbreaking pre-09-11-01 suddenly became wrapped in terrorist clothes. After passage of the act, its scope seemed to snowball and since we don't have any way of knowing how the growth in scope has been exploited (since its all secret!), we may have unleased a Stasi-style security apparatus under the aegis of USA-PATRIOT.
The whole thing gives me the willies. It's doubleplusungood.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
And in other news today, the Justice Department has reported that it is not abusing it's power. To quote the Fuhrer, uh, I mean, director: "A bunch of people called us to tell us we were abusing the system, but then we looked into it and those people are totally wrong. And even though a couple of those people were sort of right, they totally called the wrong number to complain, so they don't really count."
Think for a second. Forget whether or not the bill of rights applies to their situation, and ask yourself: Why did we pass the bill of rights? What is the value behind it? When a suspect is so obviously caught red-handed doing a bad thing, just what is the point of giving them due process, instead of lynching them on-the-spot?
Those questions shouldn't be hard to answer. If they are hard, then you're a American poseur, comrade.
But assuming you can answer them, you will see that all the reasons for those principles applying to American citizens, apply to everyone else too. The people at Gitmo should have trials, not because it's the law, but because it's how Americans should want their government to behave. Alas, most of us don't really want it anymore, because we lost the cold war with USSR and they assimilated us into their culture. (Am I joking? Is that tongue-in-cheek? I don't even know anymore.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One everyday consequence of the Patriot Act is that your government is making your bank spy on you. I recently moved some money from a money market account that I have with one bank to my checking account at another bank. I then wired the money from that account to make an investment. (It was easier for me to wire money from my checking account). I got a call on my answering machine from the bank saying that it was about my checking account. I figured they just wanted to be sure it was me who was wiring that money, not some thief with my drivers license and bank card. So I called them back. The lady at the bank started asking all sorts of questions -- who I worked for, where the money I had deposited came from, what the "business purpose" of my investment was, etc. I asked what this was all about and she said it was required by the Patriot Act.
You have no privacy any more.