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Toledo Blade - September 14, 2003
Patriot Act: helpful or harmful?
Civil rights groups, some states and communities voice opposition
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USA PATRIOT ACT: WHAT THE ACT NOW ALLOWS
Passed six weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, the USA Patriot Act provides law enforcement with added tools to detect and prevent terrorism. They include:
Added powers in terrorism investigations, including expanded monitoring of telephones and the Internet and authority to check records of libraries and businesses.
An increase in the sharing of information among government agencies.
Increased penalties for those who commit terrorist crimes.
POWERS SOUGHT BY THE BUSH TEAM
Give the Justice Department the power to issue itself administrative subpoenas instead of having to go to a judge or grand jury.
Make more terrorist crimes subject to the death penalty.
Hold terrorism suspects in jail without bail.
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By ANN McFEATTERS
BLADE WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
WASHINGTON - The 2001 USA Patriot Act - dangerous threat to civil liberties or vital tool that, as President Bush claimed this past week, needs sharpening to help keep the United States safe from terrorists?
It’s rare that radical militia groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, America’s Muslim organizations, and librarians join forces, but they have aligned in protest of what they see as excessive zeal in efforts to root out potential terrorists.
On the other hand, it’s just as rare that a sitting attorney general goes on a public relations blitz around the country to resell a law that passed Congress with virtually no dissent, arguing that the country won’t be safer unless it is strengthened and that the Patriot Act probably would have prevented 9/11.
The Patriot Act, passed quickly and overwhelmingly after 9/11 by horrified lawmakers, is under reassessment.
A poll by Knowledge Networks conducted earlier this month found that 52 percent of Americans worry the country "has gone too far" in compromising civil rights, a significant increase from the same poll a year ago. Only 28 percent said they agree with Attorney General John Ashcroft that the government needs more power to monitor and detain individuals. The government’s holding of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without a lawyer or formal charges also was an alarm bell to many.
This summer the House, controlled by Republicans, voted solidly to block a provision which authorized secret searches of a suspect’s property, the so-called "sneak-and-peek" warrants. Some portions of the law have gone to court. Some detractors are even demanding repeal of provisions of the law, which must be reauthorized in 2005. Several states and at least 160 communities have adopted resolutions opposing the law.
And in a report to be released tomorrow, the Lawyers Committee said a "new normal" in America threatens basic freedoms and rights once protected by the law. The committee argues some of the provisions of the Patriot Act are sensible and necessary but that there is a disturbing shift from "an iron-clad commitment to the rule of law.’’
Tom Ridge, secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, has warned since 9/11 of the need to balance civil liberties with the demands for heightened security. He said last week that he thinks the balance has been kept but argues the public has not understood that the crime-fighting tools law enforcement officials have used for traditional crimes must be extended to fight terrorism.
That’s one reason why Mr. Ridge, Mr. Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller, and CIA director George Tenet finally agreed after weeks of discussion that the Patriot Act must be extended, despite the public’s new wariness.
In a speech carefully staged at the FBI’s training academy at Quantico, Va., just before the second anniversary of the nation’s worst terrorist attack, Mr. Bush said the act is not strong enough and must be expanded.
Mr. Bush did not go as far as Mr. Ashcroft originally sought to do, refusing so far to endorse, for example, a provision Mr. Ashcroft sought to target people offering "material support" to terrorism suspects. Several key Republicans quietly told Mr. Ashcroft some of his more extreme provisions would be "dead on arrival" on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Bush attempted to portray critics of the law and its extension as standing in the way of the war on terrorism. "The House and the Senate have a responsibility to act quickly on these matters - untie the hands of our law enforcement officials so they can fight and win the war against terror.’’
One provision the administration now seeks would give the Justice Department the power to issue itself administrative subpoenas instead of having to go to a judge or grand jury.
A second provision would make more terrorist crimes subject to the death penalty.
Finally, the Justice Department could hold terrorism suspects in jail without bail.
Mr. Ridge said while the use of the administrative subpoena can be used routinely in civil cases to get business records, law enforcement officials have been hampered by having to go to a judge or grand jury for records in terrorism investigations. For example, he said, after the 9/11 attacks, officials were desperate for hotel records to trace the travels of the hijackers but faced "incredible" delays in getting them.
Mr. Ridge said such tools as administrative subpoenas and making it more difficult to get bail have to be implemented. "The President is not asking Congress for new authorities,’’ he emphasized, but to use powers already extended for some crimes against potential terrorists.
An analysis of the act, as it is being implemented by the federal government and subtly revised by the courts, indicates that so far it has not threatened the civil liberties of millions as some claim but neither has its use avoided unintended consequences and damage to innocent lives. The problem is that because of government secrecy - the fate of some Muslim-Americans rounded up since 9/11 is still unknown - it is difficult to know exactly how the law is being enforced.
Passed overwhelmingly by Congress, the Patriot Act, also called the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act,’’ became law on Oct. 25, 2001. It has 153 separate provisions, written in complicated legalese in 300 pages, with some of them highly controversial but most deemed of little threat to law-abiding Americans.
For example, the law says money should be spent to pay for the cost of reestablishing the operational capacity of a government office destroyed by terrorists. The law condemns discrimination against Arab or Muslim-Americans. The law also permits more hiring of translators by the FBI. The law provides for more cooperation to deter money laundering and calls for more border guards on the U.S.-Canadian border.
More controversial are provisions that give new authority to the Justice Department to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to terrorism, including voice-mail messages, and the mandatory detention of terrorist suspects.
One of the most controversial provisions - it’s been the subject of alarming TV commercials - gives the federal government the authority to demand that libraries hand over records of all those who took out certain books. The federal government actually has used library records in a number of famous cases and may even have used them more often before the Patriot Act. The idea is simple - anyone who checked out a copy of a book with bomb-making instructions might be a person of interest. Nonetheless, librarians have been outraged.
The problem is that almost any law, if enforced in the extreme, can harm innocent citizens. If enforcement is benign, most people never worry. Another issue is outcome and who is affected and whether some judges, fearing they might be blocking attempts to get legitimate terrorists, let the government get away with treading too heavily on citizen rights.
For example, international human rights groups have excoriated the United States for detaining suspected terrorists at Guantanamo without the legal rights Americans have. But Mr. Ridge and other administration officials stress that the prisoners have given the United States vital information that has probably prevented other terrorist acts. They also insist that judicial intervention will keep the feds honest. But judges so far have kept secret, for example, the number of times, if any, the government has asked for library records.
While information on implementation of the Patriot Act has been difficult to impossible to obtain - reports to Congress are classified, despite the administration’s insistence that public oversight keeps the government honest - many members of Congress vow that next year they will make a concerted effort to learn more. Several key lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, say it is unlikely there will be a Patriot Act II without more forthrightness from the Justice Department.
Whatever the outcome, a huge debate through 2005 is likely. While the administration insists more tools are needed, a joint congressional report about intelligence breakdowns before 9/11 concluded that it wasn’t that the United States didn’t have the right tools to prevent such attacks but that there was a lack of communication, cohesion, and coherence that permitted the attacks to succeed.
With or without the Patriot Act, Mr. Ridge said it is certain that more attacks are being planned and that a certain amount of luck is needed to stop them. Yes, he said, the United States is safer today than it was two years ago but the threat of more attacks is now, he stressed, a permanent condition.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030914/NEWS08/109140136
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