Posted on 10/27/2001 9:33:56 AM PDT by freedomnews
H.R.3162
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001
Section 802 of the final version of the anti-terrorism legislation, the Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (H.R. 3162, the "USA PATRIOT Act") creates a broadly defined new crime of domestic terrorism. We oppose this definition of terrorism because it is unnecessary and could be used to prosecute dissidents.
Under federal law there are already three definitions of terrorism - international terrorism, terrorism transcending national borders and federal terrorism. The September 11th attacks violated all three of these laws.
Under Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act, a person commits the crime of domestic terrorism if within the U.S. they engage in activity that involves acts dangerous to human life that violate the laws of the United States or any State and appear to be intended: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.
The Administration has not adequately explained why this new crime should be created or why the definitions in existing anti-terrorism laws are insufficient. This over-broad terrorism definition would sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest if those acts were dangerous to human life. People associated with organizations such as Operation Rescue and the Environmental Liberation Front, and the World Trade Organization protesters, have engaged in activities that could subject them to prosecution as terrorists.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act, once the government decides that conduct is "domestic terrorism," law enforcement agents have the authority to charge anyone who provides assistance to that person, even if the assistance is an act as minor as providing lodging. They would have the authority to wiretap the home of anyone who is providing assistance. Also, the government could prosecute the person who provided their home under a new crime of "harboring" a terrorist (Section 803) or for "providing material support" to "terrorists."
The ACLU does not oppose the criminal prosecution of people who commit acts of civil disobedience if those acts result in property damage or place people in danger. That type of behavior is already illegal and perpetrators of these crimes can be prosecuted and subjected to serious penalties. However, such crimes often are not "terrorism." The legislative response to terrorism should not turn ordinary citizens into terrorists.
In addition, this provision gives the federal government the authority to prosecute violations of state law, which should be prosecuted in state courts, not in federal court.
Exactly
By Scott Shane
Sun Staff
Originally published October 29, 2001 Inside, the judges of America's secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, rule on requests to tap the phones, bug the rooms and break into the houses of terror suspects on U.S. soil.
With President Bush's signing Friday of sweeping new anti-terror legislation, the secret court's jurisdiction has been widely expanded. Attorney General John Ashcroft said he would order investigators to immediately use the new wiretap powers to track down those responsible for the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks and to prevent new acts of terror.
With authorities on highest alert, the FBI and the National Security Agency are casting a wide surveillance net, targeting suspicious foreigners in the United States. FISA court warrants are a key tool, because they can be issued on the basis of far less evidence than traditional criminal warrants.
Previously, the secret court could issue warrants only when the collection of foreign intelligence was "the purpose" of the bug or search. The new law allows the court to act when intelligence is "a significant purpose," allowing criminal investigation as a simultaneous goal.
Advocates of the change say it merely updates the original 1978 FISA law to cope with terrorism. Intelligence surveillance often grows into criminal cases, as wiretaps reveal plans for terrorism or other crimes. The new law merely acknowledges that fact, they say.
Stewart A. Baker, a Washington attorney who served as NSA general counsel from 1992 to 1994, says the expanded authority of the FISA court is justified and timely.
"Now there's almost no national security problem that doesn't have a law enforcement aspect," Baker says. "We're all aware there's a foreign terrorist gang operating inside the U.S."
Civil liberties concerns
But the court's new powers, which expire in 2005 if not renewed by Congress, disturb some civil libertarians. They say the change weakens constitutional protections by enabling the FBI to circumvent the requirements for criminal wiretap warrants.
"I'm as afraid of terrorism as the next person," says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who opposed the changes. "But if we give up our principles, what are we fighting for?"
Critics such as Cole were already unhappy with the court's absolute secrecy and history of granting virtually all warrant requests the FBI and spy agencies seek. Its scorecard since 1979: 12,178 warrants approved, 1 denied.
Even before the law passed, the FISA court had never been busier. Last year it approved a record 1,005 warrants for eavesdropping and covert entries, twice the number in 1993 and more than double the 479 wiretap warrants issued by federal judges nationwide in all criminal cases. Legal observers say that record will be shattered.
"We're likely to see an explosion in the number of foreign intelligence surveillance authorizations," says David L. Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington.
There is no way of knowing for certain what goes on in that sixth-floor chamber. The annual number of warrants applied for and granted is the only record made public. "No one knows very much about the FISA court because it's so secret," says Cole.
The court gets no mention on the U.S. judiciary system's voluminous Web sites. "It's a court that would a lot rather operate, and can operate more efficiently, without a lot of media attention," said David A. Sellers, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. At The Sun's request, however, he did fax a list of the seven FISA court judges. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth and three other judges turned down interview requests.
The court's members, appointed to seven-year terms by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, are federal judges who work most of the time in their home states on criminal and civil cases. They come to Washington to sit in FISA court in two-week rotations, working alone to review warrant requests.
Despite its secrecy, the court has surfaced in dozens of important criminal cases, from the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 to the prosecutions of John A. Walker Jr., Aldrich H. Ames and Robert P. Hanssen for spying.
One 1998 espionage case, in which a married couple were charged with spying for East Germany, revealed the intensive surveillance possible with the court's sanction.
The couple, Theresa Squillicote and Kurt Strand, were the targets of telephone taps, an electronic bug in their bedroom, two clandestine searches of their house and a download of files from their home computer. Agents even listened in while they talked to their psychotherapists, according to documents made public when their lawyers unsuccessfully challenged the FISA statute.
Despite its broad application in such cases, Bush administration officials decided after the Sept. 11 attacks that the FISA court needed more power. They may have been spurred by an episode that has tormented investigators by raising the possibility that the attacks might have been prevented.
A month before the attacks, FBI agents wanted to seek a FISA warrant against a Moroccan-born French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested Aug. 17 on immigration charges after seeking training to fly -- but not land -- jetliners. But FBI supervisors decided that there was insufficient evidence under the FISA law to seek a warrant, according to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Now, having tracked phone calls and wire transfers between Moussaoui and the Sept. 11 hijackers, authorities believe Moussaoui may have planned to become the "20th hijacker," though he has not been charged in the plot.
Wider court powers
It's unclear whether the changes in the FISA law would have made it easier to target Moussaoui, but the changes that took effect Friday increase the secret court's powers. The new measure lengthens the term of its warrants from 45 to 120 days, with extensions permitted for up to a year. Warrants now target a person rather than a specific telephone number, a change Ashcroft said is necessary in an era of disposable cell phones.
Most of the objections, however, concern the blurring of the distinction between criminal and intelligence warrants.
To get a criminal warrant, investigators must convince a judge that there is "probable cause" to believe the target has committed a crime. For a FISA warrant, by contrast, they must present evidence only that the person is "an agent of a foreign power," such as a foreign nation or terrorist group.
"The concern is, you're basically obliterating a very important distinction in the law," says Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "FISA was created for the most part for surveillance of foreign embassies. It lacks meaningful oversight and public accountability. There was no plan to use it for criminal prosecution."
Ironically, when it was created in 1978, the FISA court was intended to provide some protection against intelligence wiretaps, which previously were performed at the whim of the president and attorney general. A congressional investigation had disclosed that NSA had intercepted the communications of thousands of U.S. citizens targeted because of their political activities, from actress Jane Fonda to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The 1978 law forced the FBI and NSA to get the court's permission for spying on U.S. soil, whether on foreign citizens or Americans suspected of spying. A 1995 amendment required a FISA warrant if agents wanted to break in to search private premises.
"It was a significant improvement over prior practice," says Steven Aftergood, who studies intelligence and secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. He noted that in the 1999 investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a U.S. nuclear scientist suspected of spying for China, Justice Department attorneys declined to ask the FISA court for a warrant because they didn't think they could justify it.
"At that point, I was sold on the argument that FISA protects the civil liberties of innocent Americans," Aftergood says.
In his only public statement on the FISA court, Chief Judge Lamberth, a federal judge in Washington, disputed its reputation for never seeing a warrant application it didn't like.
Lamberth told an American Bar Association breakfast meeting in 1997 that he resented the charge that the court is a "rubber stamp for the executive branch." While applications may not be rejected, he said, they are closely scrutinized and may be revised before being approved.
"I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what's going to be done and why," he said. "I have pen-and-inked changes myself on the things."
Lamberth said he couldn't imagine a better system for balancing intelligence secrecy and privacy rights. Then he added a comment that seems prescient today.
"The age of spying is not over," he said. "And the age of terrorism is just dawning."
A hundred thousand people to die?
The weapons of today are a hundred times more powerful than yesterday.
If any more Americans die by the hands of these Terrorists, it will be the responsibility of the government.
For not closing off our boarders and stopping all Visa's and rounding up all Arabs
that are not U.S. citizens.
Never Forget~Never Again.
The safety of the people is the supreme law!
This was all debated before around 80 A.D.soon after the lions got fat.
A local radio talk show had on a J Birch Society guy on who stated that NOBODY read it, because it hadn't been printed by the date of the vote.
Take that fwiw, but it will be a great question to ask the elected office holders.
This country was founded by extremists, not by moderates. The Declaration of Indepenence was an act of rash extremism. The Sons of Liberty were not shy about their thoughts or tactics. I'm pretty sure that no one will confuse you with those type of men.
Extremists are the ones who get things done because they are men of action; moderates are not men of action.
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