NEWS: Patriot Act criticism increasing
By: Eddie Glenn, and Associated Press reports
November 19, 2003
zwire.com
Although it passed through Congress at breakneck speed in the aftermath of 9/11, the Patriot Act is now drawing fire from those who feel it does more harm than good.
Former Vice President Al Gore has been especially critical of the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation, calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act and accusing the Bush administration of exploiting Americans' post-9/11 fears for political gain.
"They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, 'big brother'-style government - toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' - than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America," Gore said last week in a speech sponsored by Moveon.org, a liberal activist group, and the American Constitution Society, a national organization of law students, professors, lawyers and others who oppose the "dominant, narrow conservative vision of American law today."
Gore, who lost the disputed 2000 presidential election to Bush, said earlier that terrorism-fighting tools granted after Sept. 11 amount to a partisan power grab, leading to the erosion of the civil liberties of all Americans.
He brought the crowd to its feet when he called for a repeal of the Patriot Act, which expanded government's surveillance and detention power, allowing authorities to monitor books people read and conduct secret searches.
Gore criticized the administration for what he said was its "implicit assumption" that Americans must give up traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.
"In my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin Laden," Gore said.
In both cases, Gore said, the administration has "recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger."
"USA Patriot" in the Patriot Act is actually an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. It was signed into law on Oct. 26, 2001, a month and a half after four hijacked planes were flown into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center buildings, and a farm in rural Pennsylvania.
The act includes changes to many previously passed laws, including the Wiretap Statute, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, the Pen Register and Trap and Trace Statute (pen register devices trace outgoing calls, trap and trace devices trace incoming), the Money Laundering Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Money Laundering Control Act, the Bank Secrecy Act, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Despite the Patriot Act's broad scope, though, Gore said the Bush administration still has "no serious strategy" for domestic security, charging that there aren't sufficient protections in place for ports, nuclear facilities, chemical plants and other key infrastructure.
"They're still not checking incoming cargo carriers for radiation. They're still skimping on protection of certain nuclear weapons storage facilities. They're still not hardening critical facilities that must never be soft targets for terrorists. They're still not investing in the translators and analysts we need to counter the growing terror threat," said Gore.
"The administration is still not investing in local government training and infrastructures where they could make the biggest difference. The first responder community is still being shortchanged. In many cases, fire and police still don't have the communications equipment to talk to each other. The CDC [Center for Disease Control] and local hospitals are still nowhere close to being ready for a biological weapons attack."
According to Gore, the Bush administration's anti-terrorism plan has actually hampered law enforcement.
"The mass collecting of personal data on hundreds of millions of people actually makes it more difficult to protect the nation against terrorists, so they ought to cut most of it out."
The states of Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont, along with 210 U.S. communities, have passed resolutions urging a curbing of the Patriot Act. Last week, a broad cross-section of society - liberals, conservatives, Libertarians, gays and Hispanics - rallied in Nevada, calling on that state to pass a similar resolution.
"The fact that this issue crosses the political spectrum really lends credibility to the concern," said Janine Hansen, president of the conservative Nevada Eagle Forum.
The Patriot Act was cited as justification for two recent law enforcement acts in Nevada. The FBI in Las Vegas acknowledged agents used Patriot Act authorization instead of the grand jury to investigate a striptease club owner and several elected officials, and members of a homeowners associaton board were recently asked for their Social Security and drivers license numbers by a bank.
"They said they had to check us against a terrorist list," said Rebecca Foster, a grandmother whose five-member board oversees a Las Vegas community. "That seemed kind of preposterous. None of us are terrorists."
According to James Alexander, associate professor of political science at NSU, the Patriot Act is by no means the first piece of legislation to raise constitutional eyebrows.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was given the power to hold Confederate prisoners with no regard for their civil rights, and during World War II, American citizens of Japanese descent were held in camps for the duration of the war.
"It's not uncommon during times of crisis for emergency procedures to be put in place," said Alexander. "The United States certainly has a history of, in times of crisis, limiting our civil liberties."
Dr. Justin Halpern, associate professor of political science at NSU, pointed out other historical instances of legislation that had patriotic intentions, but constitutionally questionable results.
"The closest parallel I see is with the Espionage Acts and the Sedition Act during World War I," said Halpern. "They were used after the war against people who were primarily just Socialist agitators."
The Sedition Act of 1918 imposed a fine of $10,000 or 20 years in prison on "whoever shall by word or act support of favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United State therein."
According to Alexander, the mounting American casualties in Iraq, and the drop in Bush's job approval polls, have likely given people like Gore - who oppose the Patriot Act - opportunities for criticism they may not have had when the legislation was passed.
"What we saw after Sept. 11 was the inability of any opposition to take any sort of stance for fear of being labeled unpatriotic," said Alexander. "Things seemed to be working well and then we had some problems, and from a political standpoint, that opens up opportunity for criticism."
Perfidious Poll?
The Daily Press ran a poll on our Web site, www.tahlequahdailypress.com, asking, "Do you think the Patriot Act erodes civil liberties?"
The poll began Thursday of last week, and for two and a half days, the results wavered between 60 and 70 percent responding "yes." However, over the weekend, the poll was inundated with almost 300 "no" votes in a very short period of time, leading us to believe someone was more concerned with having their own views appear popular than with actually determining how a cross-section of our Web site readers felt about the issue.
According to one comment posted to our Web site: "I keep trying to put up a comment and getting kicked off. Anyway, I hate to tell you this, but your poll is probably invalid. Saturday night I was at a club and a guy I know bragged he voted like a million times in your poll by just resetting his browser, which emptied the cache or cookies or whatever signals your Web site you've already voted in a poll. He's a really big supporter of the Bush administration. I don't give a damn one way or another but I don't like the Patriot Act. Everyone I know voted against it on your poll, but yet it looks like people around here love it, and that is explained by this guy doing his voting cheat. I went home and tried it, and sure enough, I was able to vote twice, and in fact three times. I always vote in your polls and I've never seen this much response, which makes me believe this guy did what he said he did."
To those readers who are actually interested in knowing how others in this area actually feel about the Patriot Act, we apologize.
For those who aren't sure how they feel about the Patriot Act, we suggest visiting the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Web site, which has a relatively readable, yet comprehensive, summary of the Patriot Act. The Web address is www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/. The full Act is available is also available on several government Web sites, as well as at www.publicintegrity.org. |
