Just last night John Conyers posted a reminder on his blog that the House and Senate are on the verge of reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act. He also linked to an article he wrote for PDA about misuses of the Act by the Justice Department.
Losing the War Against Terror
July 29th, 2005Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member, House Judiciary Committee
Nearly four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 tragedy, many of us warned that we should not let our anger over an attack against our nation be used as an excuse to undermine our fundamental liberties. Unfortunately, today, as the USA PATRIOT Act comes up for renewal, it seems increasingly clear that we have failed in the task of balancing our nation’s need for security and our citizen’s freedoms.
While the PATRIOT Act may not deserve all or even most of the ridicule that is heaped against it, there is little doubt that the legislation has been repeatedly and seriously misused by the Justice Department. Consider the following:
* Its been used more than 150 times to secretly search an individual’s home, with nearly 90% of those cases having had nothing to do with terrorism.
* It was used against Brandon Mayfield, an innocent Muslim American, to tap his phones, seize his property, copy his computer, spy on his children, and take his DNA, all without his knowledge.
* Its been used to deny, on account of his political beliefs, the admission to the United States of a Swiss citizen and prominent Muslim Scholar to teach at Notre Dame University.
* Its been used to unconstitutionally coerce an Internet Service Provider to divulge information about email activity and web surfing on its system, and than to gag that Provider from even disclosing the abuse to the public.
* Because of gag restrictions, we will never know how many times its been used to obtain reading records from library and book stores, but we do know that libraries have been solicited by the Department of Justice - voluntarily or under threat of the PATRIOT Act - for reader information on more than 200 occasions since September 11.
* Its been used to charge, detain and prosecute a Muslim student in Idaho for posting Internet website links to objectionable materials, even though the same links were available on the U.S. government’s web site.
Even worse than the PATRIOT Act has been the unilateral abuse of power by the Administration. Since September 11, our government has detained and verbally and physically abused thousands of immigrants without time limit, for unknown and unspecified reasons, and targeted tens of thousands of Arab-Americans for intensive interrogations and immigration screenings. All this serves to accomplish is to alienate Muslim and Arab Americans - the key groups to fighting terrorism in our own county - who see a Justice Department that has institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling, without the benefit of a single terrorism conviction.
(Whole thing.)
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