[OPLINLIST] Patriot Act Update

[Kent Oliver]

FYI, Kent


Let's examine Patriot Act closely before renewing it
Web-posted Apr 3, 2005
Tom Teepen
The Daily Oakland Press

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/040305/opi_20050403013.shtml=20

When the American Civil Liberties Union and gun lobbies make common
cause, it is time to pay attention.  That is exactly the case with the
new Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, an improbable coalition of
liberal and conservative - nay, archconservative - organizations cobbled
together to contest the thoughtless renewal of the Patriot Act that
President Bush has called for.

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The ACLU is bedded down here with, among still more, the American
Conservative Union, the Eagle Forum, the Free Congress Foundation and
Citizens for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr,
a Republican, heads the unlikely affair.

Unlikely, but welcome. Slammed through Congress in panic and without
serious hearings or debate in just six weeks after 9/11, the act mowed
down traditional civil liberties, wholesale, and concentrated new,
dangerous powers in the executive branch.

Key provisions, particularly those dealing with surveillance, are
scheduled to sunset at the end of this year unless Congress extends
them. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are pushing for a quick
endorsement of the act as it is.

Some of the innovations in the act are reasonable and probably were
overdue even before the terrorist attacks - roaming wiretaps under
judicial supervision, for instance, that focus on the subject and are
not limited to just this or that form or place of communication.

But many provisions are way over the top. Section 802 defines terrorism
so broadly it could be used to criminalize ordinary political activity
and subject citizens who are exercising protected political rights to
secret surveillance and their political organizations to police
infiltration.

Section 215 allows the government to rummage through citizens' medical,
library and gun-purchase records without probable cause and without
informing the subject of the snooping. Section 213 allows secret
searches of homes and businesses - "creep and peep," in opponents'
shorthand. Gag orders keep even legal challenges to parts of the act
secret, a truly Orwellian scenario.

Barr's organization argues that America "can wage an effective war on
terrorism without locking up its own citizens without access to their
families and attorneys, and without trial or charges."

The administration's answer to widespread concerns about the act's sweep
and the data mining it has set off is, in effect, "Trust us." The
administration says the extraordinary powers have not been misused, as
least not by the administration's own assay. Even if that is so - and
the answer is unknowable because of the act's double-blind secrecy -
that is scant comfort. History is very clear on the subject: If a
government power can be misused, sooner or later it will be.

Barr was one of the howling right-wingers of the GOP's Gingrich
generation, and out of office he has become arguably the leading
conservative voice for principled defense of individual liberties and
for protecting citizens' besieged zone of privacy.

The thrust of his organization's pitch is that Patriot should not be
renewed automatically but, rather, its effects and implications should
be thoroughly examined by Congress. That would be real patriotism.

Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address is
teepencolumn@coxnews.com.


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Kent Oliver, Library Director
Stark County District Library
715 Market Ave., N., Canton, OH 44702
W: 330 458 2710 FAX: 330 455 9596
KOliver@starklibrary.org
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  Benjamin Franklin