Patriot Act the USA Patriot

¶ … Patriot Act

The USA Patriot Act

was enacted right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate without much opposition and was promptly signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The law gives sweeping powers of search and surveillance to the domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies ostensibly for preventing terrorism. It has been severely criticised by the civil libertarians who believe that the Act compromises the Civil Liberties granted by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights to U.S. citizens. The government is equally vigorous in the defense of the law and contends that it is absolutely necessary for protecting further terrorist attacks on the United States. In this paper I shall discuss the controversy that still surrounds the Patriot Act besides examining its impact on the law enforcing agencies and the fourth amendment.

The Controversy about the Patriot Act

Passed in a Hurry:

The bill is 342 pages long and makes small as well as large changes to over 15 different statutes. The short time that the bill took to be passed and signed into law despite its complex nature indicates that it was not thoroughly discussed in the House or the Senate and several key procedural processes applicable to most proposed laws, including inter-agency review, normal committee and hearing processes and thorough voting, were suspended during the passage of this bill. ("EFF Analysis ..., " 2003)

2. The Official and Opposing Views:

The Bush administration and the U.S. Department of Justice insist that the Patriot Act is not aimed at restricting civil liberties and consists of only modest, incremental changes in the law in order "to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network." The Department of Justice Website claims that following its passage, the Patriot Act has "played a key part in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists." ("The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty," 2003) Others such as the "American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) beg to disagree and denounce the defense of the Act by the government as misleading and dishonest. Their main worry is that the expansion of police powers and the reduction of personal privacy do not make Americans any safer from terrorists - it only allows the government to interfere with the privacy of its citizens. They point to the several thousand people who have been placed in custody without the benefit of a lawyer, or access to family members and without any criminal charges being filed against them as proof of the ways in which a government can use its powers to harass its citizens.

3. Still a Hot Issue:

The Patriot Act is still a controversial hot issue three years after its passage because more than a dozen provisions of the Act are due to expire by late October 2005 under a "sunset" provision unless renewed by Congress. These include authority for judges to issue search warrants that apply nationwide, authority for FBI and criminal investigators to share information about terrorism cases and the FBI's power to obtain records in terrorism-related cases from businesses and other entities, including libraries. One of President Bush's declared priorities in his second term is to persuade the Congress to do so. ("Bush Sees Patriot Act ....," 2004)

As a matter of fact the 'hawks' in the administration consider the original Patriot Act to be strong enough to deter terrorists and want a more stringent law in place. A draft "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,"

which was leaked to the press last winter envisaged considerable expansion of the government's surveillance and investigative powers allowed in Patriot I and was shelved due to the criticism received. However, in the aftermath of President Bush's victory in the November election, Patriot II is likely to be revived. (Lithwick and Turner, Part I, 2003)

Impact on Law Enforcement Agencies

Various provisions of the PATRIOT Act substantially increase the powers of the law enforcing agencies. Specific sections that expand such powers are briefly discussed below.

Section 215 of the Act extends FBI's powers to conduct essentially warrantless searches of the financial, travel, video rental, phone, medical, or virtually any other third-party record of a person without his/her consent or knowledge.

Section 216 clarifies that pen register/trap-and-trace authority applies to Internet surveillance as well as for phone taps. This regulates the existing law in which it was up to the judges and the Justice Department whether the rules for phone taps applied to the Internet as well. However, this provision of PATRIOT expands the application of such internet taps to other crimes such as drug smuggling and Internet fraud besides terror-related activities.

Section 206 authorizes roving wiretaps: taps specific to no single phone or computer but to every phone or computer the target may use. The provision means that if one computer in a public place, e.g., a library is tapped by the law enforcement agents, every communication by every user of the computer can theoretically be intercepted.

Section 411 makes even unknowing association of aliens with terrorists a deportable offense. Section 412 allows the attorney general to order a brief detention of aliens without any prior showing or court ruling that the person is dangerous.

Most controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act have done away with the previously mandatory judicial oversight giving the law enforcing agents increased discretionary powers. This gives rise to justified fears of misuse of powers by over-zealous law enforcement officers. Many stories of such abuse have appeared in the press. For example, Jason Halperin gives a vivid eye-witness account of a PATRIOT-authorized police raid on an Indian restaurant in his article, "Patriot Raid" (2003).