USA PATRIOT Act revisited

Back in 2003 and 2004, I wrote and spoke extensively in Boone about the USA PATRIOT Act and the threats it posed to our civil liberties. I argued that while most provisions of the law were consistent with efforts to disrupt terrorist plots, other sections of the law were wholly unnecessary and even might endanger our country.

As a result, I wrote a resolution to the Boone Town Council condemning a handful of the law’s sections, a resolution that was sent to President Bush, then Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as members of Congress and the North Carolina General Assembly (see the resolution here: http://bordc.org/detail.php?id=292).

The resolution passed by the narrowest of margins –– 3-2. One member of the Council, who indicated via email that he would support the resolution, told me moments before the vote that he had changed his mind because he believed my resolution was motivated by partisan politics. In fact, I had approached both the County Democratic and Republican parties and asked them to speak about the resolution; only the Democrats gave me the opportunity to address them.

Another member of the Council stated he did not have a problem with the resolution but that since we were at war, it was not the time for such a resolution – "you don’t pass such resolutions when you are at war," he said. To him, it only makes sense to stand up for civil liberties when they are not being threatened.

Afterward, our former mayor refused to sign the resolution, forcing the mayor pro-tem to sign it.

My question to these three individuals (one of whom still serves on the Boone Town Council) is –– how do you feel about the USA PATRIOT Act now that widespread abuses have been confirmed? We’ve learned that the FBI has been spying on thousands of Americans and simultaneously failing to report their investigations as required by law.

The ACLU summarizes findings from a report of the Justice Department’s Inspector General: "the FBI has issued significantly more National Security Letters than previously disclosed. The report found serious breaches of department regulations and numerous potential violations of the law. It also criticized FBI for lax managerial controls that invited abuse, and found that agents had claimed ‘exigent circumstances’ where none existed, and that some recipients had provided more information than authorized by law."

National Security Letters can be used to acquire e-mail and telephone records as well as financial information like credit and bank transactions. The USA PATRIOT Act ended the requirement that such records belong to someone under suspicion; today any innocent person’s records can also be obtained as long as federal agents consider them relevant!

As I suggested to the Town Council back in 2004, when you give governmental agencies these powers, they are inevitably abused (for more see http://www.justiceblind.com/usapatriotactseries.htm).