Patriot Act Facts
Vito Fossella
NEW YORK Post Opinion
January 26, 2006
WHEN Osama bin Laden crawled out from under his rock last week, it was a chilling reminder that our nation is still at war with an evil enemy. But Osama's "offer of truce" pointed to something else: Al Qaeda's ability to attack our homeland is massively diminished.
Bin Laden's impotence is due not to a lack of trying, but rather to new and enhanced U.S. security measures. Since 9/11, U.S. officials and forces have disrupted 150 terrorist threats and cells, incapacitated 3,000 operatives worldwide and captured or killed nearly two-thirds of al Qaeda's senior leaders.
One key element has been the Patriot Act, which finally armed law enforcement and the intelligence community with the legal means to detect, disrupt and stop terrorists before they could strike.
Congress passsed the Patriot Act with overwhelming bipartisan majorities just six weeks after 9/11. However, in the 4 1/2 years since, partisanship has turned this essential tool of the War on Terror into a weapon of political attack.
Despite ominous predictions about abuse of the antiterror law, Americans' civil liberties have been protected even as the law has been successfully used to disrupt terror plots. Congress has thoroughly scrutinized the Patriot Act in 115 hearings and more than 100 pages of responses to specific questions by members of the House.
The conclusion: Personal freedom and personal security can co-exist.
With the law set to expire early next month, Congress is poised to pass a new Patriot Act that maintains the terrorist-fighting tools but adds 30 new safeguards and judicial oversights to protect our personal freedoms, including several measures related to wiretapping and search warrants.
Partisan politics derailed a Senate vote on the bill last month, creating the real possibility that the Patriot Act may become a historical footnote in less than two weeks.
Here's what America stands to lose:
Expanded existing laws to fight terror: The Patriot Act took laws already approved by the courts to fight organized crime and drug trafficking — such as roving wiretaps and delayed-notice search warrants — and applied them to terrorism.
Gone are the days when law enforcement could conduct electronic surveillance to investigate mail fraud — yet couldn't do the same for terror-linked crimes like chemical-weapons offenses. Now the government can track and pursue Osama bin Laden as it does the Gotti family.
Expanded information-sharing: The 9/11 Commission skewered the federal government for its bans on information-sharing among the law-enforcement, intelligence and defense communities. The Patriot Act tears down this infamous wall so investigators can "connect the dots" to uncover and stop our enemies before they attack.
Indeed, that's precisely how nine terrorists affiliated with a violent Islamic extremist group with ties to al Qaeda were captured and jailed in the "Virginia Jihad" case in 2004. Law enforcement and prosecutors used information obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to investigate members of the Dar al-Arqam Islamic Center and dismantle their terrorist cell.
Updates to reflect new technologies: While al Qaeda embraced the digital age by using the Internet and satellite phones to conduct business, law enforcement was forced to wage its battle with laws from the rotary-phone era. The Patriot Act modernized the law to match today's technology. For instance, a provision to extend the trap-and-trace surveillance technique to online communications helped law enforcement identify several of the terrorists who kidnapped and murdered American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Stiffer penalties for terrorist crimes: Prior to the Patriot Act, a terrorist could be convicted of attacking a national defense installation, nuclear facility or power plant and face a maximum of only 10 years in jail. These and other crimes now carry sentences of up to life in prison, along with new penalties for harboring terrorists and providing material support for terrorism. The law allows prosecutors to treat these cases as racketeering, which could add 20 years to any sentence.
By Feb. 3, Congress will either renew its commitment to fighting terrorism or hand Osama and his henchmen a victory by returning law enforcement to the pre-9/11 days. Now is not the time to turn back the homeland-security clock to Sept. 10, 2001.
Rep. Vito Fossella (R) represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.
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